Raymond Tallis uses his own personal experience to indicate the immense divide between humans and animals. He recalls being the proud, though at times exasperated, owner of a flat-coat retriever named Barkleigh. Barkleigh was obsessed with the act of retrieving. He would constantly present Tallis with a ball, stick or other projectile for Tallis to throw so that he might chase after it and return it to him. But Barkleigh was not good at retrieving even though this is what he wanted to do all his waking hours. Endless practice did not make perfect.
Barkleigh’s problem was that he tended to look at Tallis rather than the missile when it was thrown. So he often failed to see where it went. Tallis often had to retrieve it for himself. Nor did pointing in the direction of the object do any good. Barkleigh was unable to understand where Tallis was pointing or, indeed, that he was pointing. As Tallis comments, “He had no grasp of the referential nature of pointing.”
The direction of pointing is only self-evident if a person has the idea of pointing, that is, has the concept that someone is wanting to point something out to him or her. Barkleigh not only had no idea of pointing, but no sense of objects independent of himself. He did not experience himself as an embodied subject and was also incapable of “having the sense of another embodied subject which might have information that he himself did not have. Further, he was incapable of comprehending the rules of pointing – the relationship between the pointer, the pointing finger and that which was being pointed at.
Tallis rejects any protests that those dogs called pointers actually do point at say game to indicate its presence and position. Firstly, if they truly point at game or a thrown-and-retrieved ball or stick, it is strange that they do not point at other things and under other circumstances. Nor do they use other means, for example, other parts of their bodies to point. Clearly, they do not grasp the underlying principles of the pointing convention. Their “pointing” is acquired by dumb imitation or wired in by instinct.
Also, with humans there is a differentiation between the hand used for pointing and our centre of consciousness, with the hand being used by the embodied subject as the tool of our agency. By contrast, there is no clear differentiation between a dog and the head it supposedly uses to point with. Yet human infants comprehend pointing very early on since their own generation of pointing gestures presupposes such understanding.
Indeed, not even the great apes have the capacity to participate in referential pointing. Tallis cites primatologist David Povinelli’s investigation as to whether, as is widely believed, chimpanzees, as the most intelligent of the apes, can in fact engage in referential pointing and shows conclusively that they do not and cannot.
Yes, chimpanzees do use gestures that structurally resemble pointing. When chimpanzees hold out a hand to beg for food there is no sharing of information, just “gimme!” They do not point in the wild. Povinelli conducted a key experiment in which “the experimenter points to a row of boxes, only one of which contains a reward. The chimpanzee will select that box if the experimenter’s index finger is closest to the box containing the reward. If, however, another box is closer to the index finger, even if the finger is not pointing at it, the chimpanzee will select that one – an incorrect box. When the pointing finger is equidistant from two boxes, but none the less clearly references only one of the boxes, the apes choose boxes at random. The chimpanzees rely on the distance between the finger and the box and not on the referential significance of the finger to decide which box to go for, and they identify the pointee [what is being pointed at] as whatever object is closest to the finger, irrespective of the direction in which the finger is pointing. In summary, as Povinelli concludes, pointing – rarely produced, and then only in captivity – is not a referential gesture but ‘a local physical cue to the location of a reward’” (42).
By contrast, two-year old children understand pointing even under the most difficult circumstances… “Unlike chimps, they get the point.” Even with small children pointing at an invisible object prompts them to search for what is being pointed at, something that never happens with chimps.
Tallis makes the all-telling point: “Our ascription of pointing to pointers is simply another example of how we project into beasts our own mental capacities and world pictures” (43).
Further experiments show how immensely different the workings of a chimp’s mind are from that of the human mind. A chimp may follow another chimp’s gaze and thereby see what the other chimp is seeing. But the chimp still has no notion of the other chimp as having a mental state of seeing. So experiments demonstrate that chimpanzees have no notion of a human observer being incapable of seeing something because his eyes are covered. Indeed, no animal is able to form the notion of another creature having a mind and, therefore, has no concept of meant meaning. Yet before they reach their first birthday human infants not only appreciate pointing but have the concept of seeing as a state experienced by another person and even produce pointing as well as understanding it. Chimpanzees can only point imperatively (“Gimme!”, but a one-year old child points declaratively, to share information.
One of the most striking aspects of the Genesis 1 creation account is the way it emphasises the uniqueness of human beings as those alone created in the image of God. It is an extraordinary thing to be human and it is high time that we returned to a recognition of the immensity of the gulf between the human and the animal realms.
Posted December 11, 2010
www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au
Upon clicking 'Buy now' you will be redirected to paypal.com where you can securely and quickly complete your purchase with a few clicks.
Immediately after payment at PayPal you will be redirected to a download page which
provides you instant access to your purchase.
