Abstract

Our aim is to elucidate the similarities and differences between humans and apes as concerns cooperative behaviour and its relation to communication. In particular, we will point to the decisive role of symbolic communication for making more advanced forms of co-operation possible. We distinguish between competitive and collaborative co-operation and take this distinction as a starting point for our analysis. In competitive contexts, co-operation is triggered by what is present in the environment. The resource that is competed for is available and accessible, but not yet in possession. Humans, but not apes, can as well engage in collaborative co-operation. In this type of co-operation the resource is not manifest, but mainly imagined. The reason why only humans can co-operate collaboratively is that they can imagine what is not there. We submit that language has evolved as a tool by which humans can make their imaginations known to each other, in order to enhance co-operation. Language gives human beings a great advantage as concerns co-operative behaviour, especially regarding communication about goals and the ways to reach them. Symbolic communication makes use of representations as stand-ins for actual entities. Use of representations thus replaces the use of environmental features in communication. A consequence of this is that language makes it possible to jointly attend to imagined goals. Joint attention is a more basic capacity than language-use. It is necessary for all kinds of co-operation because it makes it possible for different subjects to attend to a common goal. Apes can engage in joint attention, but do not achieve the same complexity as humans. They can jointly attend only to things that are present in the context. This makes it difficult to co-operat...

Citations