Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What would the baboons say?, July 6, 2007
This review is from: Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind (Hardcover)
The intrepid team of Cheney and Seyfarth has done it again. Their work has a long-standing and deserved reputation for being both pioneering and sensible, a rather rare combination. This book traces implications for human evolution of their research on baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. I have had my camps in the Delta raided by baboons who must be close relatives of Cheney and Seyfarth's friends. I formed a healthy respect for their intelligence. They can bring off a raid with military precision and scientific thoroughness, taking advantage of the least opportunity to steal everything usable and wreck everything else.
The title comes from Darwin: "he who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke." Of course, we don't really learn about the baboons' metaphysics here; we learn how their behavior can change our metaphysics, as Darwin intended. (I don't know if baboons have metaphysics or not, but if they do, they surely believe that God is a huge dominant male baboon who mercifully sends endless parties of humans with crackers and bacon and peanuts.)
This book describes baboon social behavior and communication, and then goes on to show how it is and is not similar to human equivalents. They argue, convincingly, that human communication, complex thought, and high intelligence could and did evolve from primate social interaction. We need our smarts for our social life more than for toolmaking or feeding or avoiding predators. Their discussion of language is particularly good--a really thoughtful, excellent, up-to-date discussion of how human language differs from animal communication, and how this might have come about.
The authors also compare baboons with dogs, jays, and other highly social creatures. This leads them to many of their best insights.
I have three minor criticisms. First and worst, they take philosophy too seriously. We hear a lot about "theory of mind," "consciousness," "concept of the self," and other ineffable and "metaphysical" entities. The authors do as well as anyone could with these concepts, but one can go only so far in making a plate of cooked spaghetti stand up straight. Daniel Dennett's book CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED pretty well devastated philosophers' talk about consciousness, as opposed to the good old testable folk notion that contrasts being conscious with being knocked out, drunk, or asleep. And how do you really assess what an animal knows? I have spent thousands of hours listening to mockingbirds and still have no idea whether they actually think of or remember a jay or killdeer when they imitate one. I suspect they think only "This is a fun sound to work into my song." I suppose we will never know. At least we can know that they do NOT merely repeat mindlessly; they subtly change the imitations to fit their song patterns, such that the imitations change over time, according to a real if rudimentary plan. Cheney and Seyfarth try bravely to make operational science out of "theories of mind" and "the self," and say some very important things in the process, but one can go only so far in applying abstract, debatable, mentalistic concepts to animals, or even to humans.
Conversely, it seems to me that the real difference between people and baboons (and other animals) is that people can form deep hierarchic plans. We can go from tactics to strategy to goals, or from words to sentences to books to life work to whole literary genres. A baboon has trouble with "to be," and could never discuss how "to be or not to be, that is the question" fits with Shakespeare's oeuvre and the history of western drama. Baboons have tactics, strategy, and goals, but only at a quite simple level. They can raid camps and manage troops brilliantly, but can't do much beyond that. In communication and foraging, their plans are excellent but simple.
Second, somewhat related: The authors are somewhat primate-centric, and a bit unaware of how different other animals' communication and "consciousness" may be. Dogs, notably, live in a world of scent that is closed to humans. Dogs are alleged to have "no self-concept" because they don't make a big deal of mirror images of themselves. But, if you put a dog in front of a mirror for the first time, you learn why: the dog is startled by the strange dog in the mirror, sniffs it, and immediately loses interest--realizing that this is a trick of the light rather than a real dog. Similarly, when dogs meet, they don't communicate just by barking or whining; they interact by visual displays (which are exceedingly complex in their own right) and by pheromone releases. These latter are not detected by humans, so humans don't usually realize how complex the interaction really is.
Third, the baboons' very real abilities get somewhat short-counted here, because the interest is so much on humans. If baboons could talk (and read), they would surely say: "All very well for these stupid humans to talk about what we can't do, but let's see them execute a perfect campsite raid! Let's see them get into a 'guaranteed animal-proof' container in five minutes! Let's see them give up their fancy gear and still detect and escape lions, leopards and crocodiles!" Evolution gives us the minds we need, and documenting that is more interesting to this reviewer than trying to make sense of theories of "theories of mind" and self-consciousness about "consciousness of self."
That said, this is a totally delightful book. Cheney and Seyfarth write well; no dry scientific dullness here. You will find yourself getting fascinated with even the most arcane matters of baboon social life.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
konrad lorentz, move over, June 24, 2007
This review is from: Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind (Hardcover)
Ok, that's a little hype. But the earlier chapters especially were practically as charming. Several thousand undergraduates will be assigned this book and for many of them it will be one of the most memorable things they read in college. Who's Simon and who's Garfunkle in this team of authors I don't know, but their style is very engaging. This is one aspect of the work, the pure ethology, and it's very good. How many of us have been chased up a tree with a bunch of monkeys by a lion? Me, only once or twice.
Another aspect is a running series of experiments done by the authors interspersed with others carried on by other researchers on monkey (and a little ape) behavior designed to "get inside their minds" in order to obtain a sense of how they view the world. No doubt many readers will have encountered many of these results here and there in their other reading. It's nice to have so many collected in one book and I can't help feeling up to speed on the subject now.
The BIG IDEA is that "social intelligence" is a precursor to language as it appears in humans, and I'll let the reader make her own judgments on that. It at least gives one a lot to think about and despite the remarks of one professional reviewer, it's not a particularly "challenging" book if that means hard-to-read. It is challenging for sure in that it-makes-you-think.Anyone interested in origin of language theory will need to read this book.
((I would only negatively remark as a onetime philosophy teacher that the authors have an inordinate amount of respect for the (current) folk philosophy of D. Dennet and the philosophy speak of intention and recursiveness. That's probably why the book is called "challenging". It's not really part of the science in the book, though reading the book you might think it is. Pain is a "mental state" and it doesn't have a referent. And is "belief" a mental state? Is it really that simple? Oddly, though the title "Baboon Metaphysics" is supposed to refer to the baboon's world-view, it would be more accurate to think of it as a book about baboons PRESUMING a particular metaphysics. Like all metaphysics it assumes a particular epistemology, fashionable but questionable. However, this does little to diminish the book or its interest, the philosophy is mostly irrelevant being mostly a fill-in for ideas that are simple and unexceptional in this domain of science. I hope all non-philosophy people ignore these remarks, it's a great book.))
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Party Animals?, November 15, 2007
This review is from: Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind (Hardcover)
Charles Darwin once wrote of his belief that if we would learn something very important if we could but understand the behavior of baboon.
The authors of this enthralling book are widely known for their studies of primate behavior in the Okavango in Botswana, and set out to do just that: understand how behavior baboons live and organize their lives.
Baboons live in groups of up to 150 individuals, which include a few males and eight or nine matrilineal families of females. The account of the daily life of the group reads like the script of Survivor!
There is a complicated mix of personal relationships ranging from short-term bonds for mating to long-term friendships that lead to cooperative rearing of the young. There are intrigues that may involve alliances of two or three individuals all the way up to battles that involve three or four extended families.
What this tells us is that the survival of an individual baboon and his or her family depends on an ability to predict the behavior of others and arrange to form the most advantageous relationships. So are these just reflexive behaviors, or do baboons form models of the world and their place in it? In such a fluid social environment, to what extent can they deduce the motives of other baboons?
This book sets out to discover the intelligence that underlies this social organization. In the process we learn a lot about ourselves.
The book is divided into twelve chapters:
1. The Evolution of Mind
2. The Primate Mind in Myth and Legend
3. Habitat, Infanticide, and Predation
4. Males: Competition, Infanticide, and Friendship
5. Females: Kinship, Rank, Competition, and Cooperation
6. Social Knowledge
7. The Social Intelligence Hypothesis
8. Theory of Mind
9. Self-Awareness and Consciousness
10. Communication
11. Precursors to Language
12. Baboon Metaphysics
These are followed by an appendix, references and a good Index.
The social lives of baboons are fluid and highly complex, and that reflects a complex and adaptable social intelligence. This will not surprise most people who live with animals: Many of them have quite elaborate social systems, sophisticated emotions and quite well developed concepts of social propriety and even of right and wrong.
The authors write very well indeed. They share their enthusiasm and the implications of their work.
This is a terrific book that deserves a very wide readership, not least because it helps put to bed the notion that humans are the only species with a complex social life.
Humans may be different, but we are not that different.
Highly recommended.
Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
