Great Apes Might Be Misunderstood

[Moontanman]

Great Apes Might Be Misunderstood

 

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2010) — Great apes might be much more similar to us -- and just as smart -- than science has led us to believe.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101006085450.htm

[HydrogenBond]

Humans have a conscious and unconscious mind, while apes make use of what would be the equivilent of the human unconscious mind. The ape babies may do better than human babies, simply because the two minds are differenting in the human baby but not in the ape. Once the separation is complete, the ape can't compete. The research says to me that the conscious mind of humans, use the unconscious mind as their template.

[CraigD]

The vagueness of the meaning of "smart", the exactness of the mirror test

An interesting article (as are its “related story” links), but IMO, as is usual (and, IMHO, forgivable) in popular science articles, the headline simplifies and exaggerates the planned research it describes.

 

In common usage, “smart” has a non-specific but well circumscribed meaning – agreement on precisely what it means is difficult or impossible to reach, but agreement on what it does not mean, easy. “You seem a smart person. You should consider a career in science or engineering,” is something we can imagine being said to a human with a disability that renders her unable to speak aloud, yet not (without a great, effectively fictional stretch of the imagination), of a great ape that is able to communicate silently using sign language. Clearly, in most of the usual ways we measure smartness, formally (aptitude and achievement test, etc) and informally (intuitively recognizing it), even moderately smart humans are much smarter than the smartest apes ever know.

 

In well-defined technical senses, such as the “joint attention” the article describes, apes may be as “smart” or even smarter than many collections of humans. Conflating this use of the word “smart” with the its usual use is, however a fallacy of ambiguity.

 

Humans have a conscious and unconscious mind, while apes make use of what would be the equivilent of the human unconscious mind.

Can you please provide a link or reference supporting this claim, HB? I think it’s entirely incorrect!

 

Individual great apes – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans – have all passed the mirror test. Although some controversy concerning interpreting subjects that fail this test exists, passing it is nearly universally (some philosophical objections exist) considered proof of self-awareness, which is generally considered synonymous with consciousness.

 

The concepts of conscious and unconscious minds are these days considered both by “hard” neuropsychologists and “soft” philosophers, psychologists, and psychotherapists, much less important than they were at the peak of the psychoanalytic approach in the 1960s and 70s. The concepts are notoriously hard to define (or circumscribe), but roughly, brain activity that individuals can report in a logically sequential narrative (eg: “I noticed there was no butter in the refrigerator, so planned to go to the store and buy some”) is conscious, while activity that can not, is not.

 

As great apes and other primates can suffer from behavior disorders due to poor childhood care and socialization very similar to those suffered by humans due to similar influences, I suspect that many familiar with psychoanalysis would be comfortable applying the same conscious/unconscious psychological model to them as to humans.