Primate tool use and the socio-ecology of thinging: how non-humans think through tools

Abstract

While ecological psychology and embodied approaches to cognition have gained traction within the literature on non-human primate tool use, a fear of making assumptions on behalf of animal minds means that their application has been conservative, often retaining the methodological individualism of the cognitivist approach. As a result, primate models for technical and cognitive evolution, rooted in the teleological functionalism of the Neo-Darwinist approach, reduce tool use to the unit of the individual, conflating technology with technique and physical cognition with problem-solving computations of energetic efficiency. This article attempts, through the application of material engagement theory, to explore non-human primate technology as a non-individualistic phenomenon in which technique is co-constructed through the ontogenetic development of skill within a dynamic system of structured action affordances and material interactions which constitute an emergent, species-specific mode of technical cognition.

Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India

“…To uncap a bottle, however, an individual would need a more detailed and sophisticated understanding of the complexity of the screw-cap mechanism, an alternative approach to solving the task by forcefully puncturing the bottle ( cf. Mosley, 2021 ). This behavioral step could potentially be learnt through a combination of social and individual learning processes.…”

“…The ‘affordance learning’ hypothesis, for example, proposes that innovative extractive foraging behaviors could derive from pre-existing schemata ( Parker and Gibson, 1977 ). The regular interactions with an object – a hard-to-extract food item, for instance – could provide opportunities to appreciate the affordance of its physical and action-relevant properties, and finally contribute to the development of novel extractive foraging behaviors ( Lockman, 2000 ; Mosley, 2021 ).…”

Ergonomic clusters and displaced affordances in early lithic technology

“…Note that no ''world-in-mind'' was necessary for these performances. They were modest extensions built on the resources of motor procedures performed in context, and indeed precursors exist in non-human primate tool use (see Mosley, 2021). The only feature resembling a mental simulation was the action-level simulation of testing.…”

Biosemiotics and Hominidae history: technicity, animals, and the limitations of human exceptionalism

“…2019; Moscovici 1998), and more and more research betrays complex intelligence in the behaviour of nonhuman animals (Pika et al. 2019; Thompson, Carvalho, Marean & Alemseged 2019), it becomes clear that cultural creativity, as a distinct attribute of the human mind, simply builds on the architecture of nonhuman animal abilities to learn, share, and communicate (see Abadia & Morales 2020; Lombard & Hogberg 2021; Malafouris 2021 a ; Mosley 2021). Adapting Latour's apt critique of our Enlightenment pretension to pure reason, not only have we ‘never been modern’ (Latour 1993), we have never even really been just human (Pyyhtinen & Tamminen 2011).…”