My understanding of Mike Tomasello's theory is that apes do not pay
attention to how (and why?) others do what they do. The example with a log
with ants under it that can be overthrown by another ape or by wind is very
illustrative. This seems to suggest that, according to Mike T., an ape
treats other individual ape as another object of their environment rather
than a subject. It will be interesting to know if Mike T. agrees with that.
I do not think that Mike T. thinks that imitation is exactly copying
somebody's behavior or actions. He may be has "soft" version of his theory
, which is about "paying attention" to ways and directions of somebody's
actions rather than doing exactly what the actor does.
However, I think that Mike T. might overlook a bigger context of activity.
First, paying attention to ways and directions of somebody's actions may
take different forms. I think that animal hunt and escape can, in some
cases, be a good example of such attention to someone's ways and direction
of actions. I also remember that Primak and De Waal report about rather
sophisticated ways of how apes in captivity deceive zoo keepers. Second,
observations made by De Waal seem to suggest that treating other as a
subject (not as an object) requires special social arrangement and its
history. In brief, apes are social animals and live in societies (not in
zoo cages). I think this is neglected in Mike T.'s experiments. I
personally doubt that experiment (at least in traditional sense of fully
controlled environment) can be applied to study the phenomena of
intersubjectivity.
As to "transmission of knowledge," I think that as Ana, Jay, and Eva argue
that this metaphor has its own limitations. Under a close look,
"transmission" involves co-construction rather than copying and "knowledge"
involves a process rather than some entity.
I personally think that to search for some relative differences between
humans and apes on should focus on different forms of co-constructon in a
broader societal contexts rather than on individual abilities of younger
apes in experimental circumstances.
Speaking metaphorically, we should probably switch from blaming a student
(i.e., an ape for lack of imitation skills) to blame of a teacher (i.e.,
the experimenter or "more knowable ape") to blame of an ape/human society.
Maybe we finish up not blaming anybody at all at the end. Anyway, I think
that Mike T.'s hypothesis is an important step in this process. It will be
interesting if somebody who studies apes can dispute Mike's hypothesis in
empirical work.
Eugene Matusov
PS I found it is an interesting fact that people try to "discover" culture
from novice-expert interaction.
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Eugene Matusov
Department of Educational Studies
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19711
http://www.ematusov.com