Dear Luke,
You asked, “Since these primates do not have the capacity to understand and produce language, they cannot express explanations, justifications, apologies and so on. In your view, are these primates responsible for their acts?”
This is a difficult question to answer. It is bounded by too many questions, each of which must be defined. Some non-humans primates do understand human language, and they also use it in the form of sign language. But non-human tool-using primates also inhabit their own cultures in the wild, and they have their own ways to communicate. Within their own cultures, non-human primates are probably responsible to one another. We know that non-human animals — primates, canines, and others — seem to have a sense of fairness and ethics. If this is so, then they are responsible for their acts, often in surprising ways.
There is much too much to say about this than I can answer. I’d suggest looking at Frans de Waal’s work on non-human intelligence, ethics, and emotions. These include the magnificent recent book, Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves. Other are: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?; Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved; Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence Culture and Individualized Societies; The Ape and the Sushi Master - Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist; Chimpanzee Politics. Power and Sex Among Apes; and Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals.
Many of these have something to say about responsibility among non-human primates.
While I generally agree with Klaus Krippendorff’s account of agency, I disagree with respect to dogs. Many of the dogs I have known and lived with did interesting things that could not be attributed to training. They had preferences of their own. They behaved well, as we expect of any responsible family member or — in canine terms, any responsible pack member. But within the bounds of responsible behaviour, they all invented things to do that they discovered on their own. The choices they made demonstrated untrained intelligence.
One example: When we lived in Norway, we discovered a large set of raspberry vines at the end of our yard. Our dog Jacob watched us picking these. He always wanted to taste what we ate, so he requested a couple of our raspberries. He found that he liked the flavour. Next, he imitated our actions to pick raspberries on his own. He soon discovered that the prickly parts of the raspberry were unpleasant for his lips. Watching us pick berries with our fingers, he learned to pick the berries with his teeth, keeping his lips back to pull the berry off the vine gently. He also learned to tell ripe berries from unripe.
Since we didn’t tell him to leave the berries alone, he decided to harvest ripe berries whenever he could. Berries up to our knees belonged to him. Berries higher up belonged to us. Soon after, he began to notice that berries ripened on sunny days, but not on cloudy days. When he went out in the morning, the first thing he did was to check the sky. If it was sunny, he would run down to the raspberries to grab fresh berries. If it was cloudy, he’d stroll around the yard close to the house. To me, this suggests learning capacity and intelligent inference. We did not train him to pick berries. He discovered that he liked raspberries, and learned the rest on his own.
We have much to learn about non-human intelligence and non-human culture. Some non-human animals have also adapted to human culture over thousands of years living and working with humans. This is the case for dogs.
Responsibility is a contextual issue. One must consider the context and define terms carefully to address the question of responsibility. That’s true of humans and non-humans both. Greek kings and warriors in Homeric times had a different concept of responsibility than did Greek citizens of the classical polis. The concept of responsibility differed yet again for anyone other than male kings, warriors, or citizens. Vikings had one set of ethical codes, medieval Christians another. And so on.
These matters are quite variable for human beings across time, history, and culture. They must certainly vary for non-humans, whether they live with us or live in the wild.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor | Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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