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17 How Folk Psychology Ruined Comparative Psychology And How Scrub Jays Can Save It Derek C. Penn Abstract The cognitive revolution in psychology was founded on the premise that all cognitive processes result from rule-governed operations and that cognizers do not need to understand these rules to act “rationally” or “intelligently.” Despite its intent to replace romantic folk psychological intuitions about how the mind works, anthropomorphism is prevalent throughout much of comparative psychology: claims that animals perform “human-like” feats find broad acceptance in the media and permeate the academic debate , while less anthropomorphic explanations are largely dismissed. To construct a viable scientific theory of nonhuman minds, comparative psychology must aim for a computationally explicit account of cognition—not just folk psychological descriptions . Given the impressive body of data that has been collected on the social cognitive abilities of scrub jays, compiling a functional specification of corvid social cognition would be a great place to start. Introduction Recently, a pair of papers appeared in Current Biology claiming that chimpanzees may have a human-like understanding of death (Anderson et al. 2010; Biro et al. 2010). In the first paper, boldly entitled, “Pan Thanatology,” Anderson et al. (2010) describe how a group of chimpanzees living in a Scottish safari park “grieved” over the death of an elderly female chimp named Pansy. The researchers claim that a chimp named Chippie “appeared to test for signs of life by closely inspecting [Pansy’s] mouth and manipulating her limbs” (Anderson et al. 2010:R350). They admit that Chippie also attacked the corpse three times, jumping and pounding on the body. However, the researchers suggest these acts were an expression of “denial,” “frustration,” and “anger toward the deceased ” or perhaps an attempt at “resuscitation” (Anderson et al. 2010:R350). 254 D. C. Penn The authors provide no evidence for these colorful suggestions other than the fact that the animal’s behavior was, as they put it, “strikingly reminiscent of human responses to peaceful death” (Anderson et al. 2010:R350). In an accompanying paper in the same issue of Current Biology, Biro et al. (2010) describe how two mothers, whose infants had died of a respiratory epidemic, carried the bodies of their dead children around for days, even after the infants’ bodies had undergone complete mummification. The “fascinating” question, the authors write, is the extent to which the chimp mothers “understood ” that their offspring were dead (scare quotes taken from the original). The authors do not claim, however, that the mothers “understood” that their offspring were dead and, indeed, do not believe that the evidence warrants such an interpretation. “In many ways,” Biro et al. (2010:R352) point out, “[the two mothers] treated the corpses as live infants, particularly in the initial phase following death.” Indeed, in all of her discussions with the media, Biro explains, “[I] made it very clear that we had no idea whether the carrying of the corpses in any way reflected an understanding of death...or whether any of the responses the mothers and other individuals in the group showed toward the dead infants had any parallels with human responses to death” (Biro, personal email Nov. 9, 2010).1 These two papers were cited by hundreds of mainstream media outlets as if they both supported the same anthropomorphic conclusion. AP Press carried the story under the headline, “Chimps deal with death like humans.” NPR entitled their story, “Chimps May Mourn Lost Ones, Study Suggests.” Like Anderson et al. (2010), the mainstream media expressed few doubts that chimps understand death in a human-like way. Indeed, Discovery News opined that this finding was not even particularly surprising and then published a video clip of a squirrel attempting to “resuscitate” a dead comrade (Viegas 2010). Biro et al.’s more careful assessment of the evidence was hardly mentioned. It would be nice if one could blame this case on the hyperbole of commercial media outlets or the radical views of a fringe movement in comparative psychology. However, stories such as these are ubiquitous. Hardly an issue of Current Biology or Animal Cognition goes by without some new effigy of human cognitive uniqueness being torn down and dragged through the mud. The authors of these claims rarely bother to elucidate alternative interpretations that don’t convey an anthropomorphic story line (Shettleworth 2010b). Far from being a fringe movement, Anderson et al. (2010) represent the reigning consensus among comparative psychologists when they argue that “the differences between humans and...

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