Animal Mental Action: Planning Among Chimpanzees

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Review of Philosophy andPsychology ISSN 1878-5158 Rev.Phil.Psych.DOI 10.1007/s13164-014-0228-x

Animal Mental Action: Planning AmongChimpanzees

Angelica Kaufmann

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Animal Mental Action: Planning Among Chimpanzees

Angelica Kaufmann

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract I offer an argument for what mental action may be like in nonhumananimals. Action planning is a type of mental action that involves a type of intention.Some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of proximal mental actions, andsome intentions are the causal mental antecedents of distal mental actions. Thedistinction between these two types of “plan-states” is often spelled out in terms ofmental content. The prominent view is that while proximal mental actions are causedby mental states with nonconceptual content, distal mental actions are caused by mentalstates with conceptual content. I argue that, when we are investigating animal cogni-tion, we need a nonconceptual account for the content of intentions involved in mentalactions such as action planning: non-immediate intentions. This in order to defend theclaim that creatures that lack conceptual capacities are capable of entertaining plan-states, and thus of exercising mental agency in the form of action planning.

1 Introduction

The hunter—Christophe Boesch (2009, pp. 100–101) says—“not only has to anticipatethe direction in which the prey will flee (recorded as a half anticipation), but also thespeed of the prey so as to synchronize his movements to reach the correct height in thetree before the prey enters it (recorded as a full anticipation) . . . . We also recorded adouble anticipation when a hunter not only anticipates the actions of the prey, but alsothe effect the action of other chimpanzees will have on the future movements of thecolobus, that is he does not anticipate what he sees (the escaping colobus), but how afuture chimpanzee tactic will further influence the escaping monkeys.”

Tai Chimpanzee group hunting is one of the most sophisticated distal-orientedanticipatory behaviour ever recorded in the animal kingdom. The Primatologist Chris-tophe Boesch and colleagues argue that these group hunting practices possess therequisites for being acknowledged as instances of action planning among nonhumananimals. In this paper I argue that nonhuman animals are capable of mental actions suchas action planning and that this evidence has important philosophical consequences.

Rev.Phil.Psych.DOI 10.1007/s13164-014-0228-x

A. Kaufmann (*)University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgiume-mail: [email protected]

Author's personal copy

The question we are asking is how we should characterize the capacity for a mentalaction such as action planning in animals other than human beings. The proposal is that,if nonhuman group hunting is an instance of action planning, then intentions, which arethe constitutive mental states of this mental action, would be best understood innonconceptual terms.

Conspicuous instances of action planning among birds and mammals have become arecurrent topic of investigation (Naqshabandi and Roberts 2006; Correia et al. 2007;Osvath and Osvath 2008; Martín-Ordás et al. 2010; Osvath 2010). The most remark-able case is the hunting behaviour of chimpanzees of the Tai Forest, in Ivory Coast(Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000).

The research on this practice reveals that chimpanzees plan actions in advance ofaction initiation and online adjustments to exogenous stimuli. From a comparativeperspective, it is interesting because some human hunter-gatherer populations in Vene-zuela and Paraguay present very similar behavioural patterns. The structure of theactivities of Tai chimpanzees and South-American hunter-gatherers is analogous(Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000). Thus, if we concede to name planned actionscertain human hunting practices, so shall we do for chimpanzee group hunting. But whilewe already have various established theories for action planning in humans, we lack onefor nonhuman animals. And because the cognitive faculties of human and nonhumananimals are different in many respects, we need a theory of action planning that takesthese differences into account, and that can accommodate this body of empirical work.

This is the argument that I will defend, as an inference to the best explanation: P1.Nonhuman animals are capable of mental actions such as action planning; P2. Actionplanning is guided by non-immediate intentions; P3. Only mental states of linguisticanimals have a conceptual content. The conclusion and the claim of my proposal willbe: mental agency, such as action planning, in non-linguistic animals is guided bynonconceptual non-immediate intentions.

The paper is structured as follows: first, I explain that planning is a mental action;secondly, I present Michael Bratman’s Planning Theory and the distinctive role thatintentions play in this theory; thirdly, I describe chimpanzee’s group hunting withinPlanning Theory; in the last two sections I suggest why, given a Davidsonian character-isation of conceptual thought as linguistic, we need to develop a nonconceptual accountof mental content in order to understand mental action in nonlinguistic creatures.

2 Planning as Mental Action

There is little consensus on the issue of whether mental actions are genuine actions:Several philosophers, like Alfred Mele, Christopher Peacocke, Joёlle Proust, andMatthew Soteriou have defended the view that mental actions are acknowledgeableas actions. By contrast, for instance, Galen Strawson questioned whether all thinkingneeds action1 (Strawson 2003, p. 21). There are compelling reasons to believe that atleast plans can count as mental actions (Mele 1997, 2009; Peacocke 1992, 2009). Thisin virtue of the distinctive commitment to action that intentions, i.e. the constitutivemental elements of plans, have (Bratman 2014).

1 In Strawson (2003), actions are always intentional actions.

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By ‘action planning’ I mean a type of mental action that has a type of intention as aconstitutive element. Call this type of intention: non-immediate intention (see Section 3).

Along with many philosophers I conceive of both overt bodily actions and mentalactions as events with a causal history, where such causal history features otherelements—mental states like beliefs, intentions, desires. Mele (1997) defines this“General Causal Theory” as follows: “Assuming a fine-grained conception of act-individuation, every intentional action-event is an event having a pertinent mental itemas a significant cause; alternatively, assuming a coarse-grained view, every event that isan intentional action under some description is an event having a pertinent mental itemas a significant cause” (Mele 1997, p. 233).2 The “pertinent” mental item that Melenames could be a reason, an intention, or an intention-acquisition. In this view, thereasons for which we act should be placed among the causal components of theproduction of a specific action. According to Mele this causal chain should not onlyapply to overt actions but also to mental actions (Mele 1997, p. 240).

Among the defenders of the view that certain mental states involved in the causationof actions are genuine mental actions there are some disagreements: Peacocke (2009)maintains that the distinguishing mark of mental actions is that these lack the involve-ment of any bodily component. On the other hand, Proust (2009) argues that what holdsfor bodily actions may unproblematically hold for mental actions. However important itmay be to appreciate these different perspectives on mental action and actual action,taking Peacocke’s view rather than Proust’s does not affect my argument. Indeed, thesedisagreements can be reconciled: there seems to be a broad consensus that thedisctinctiveness of action planning rests on its constitutive elements, namely intentions.Differently from mental states such as beliefs and desires, intentions involve a com-mitment to action that other mental states do not need to satisfy (Bratman 1987). Morespecifically, intentions have fulfilment conditions, which are satisfied if the agentultimately achieves the goal that her intentions represented (Rescorla 2013). Then, ifintention implies a commitment to action, so does action planning, which—followingMele—we acknowledge as a type of mental action.

Mele offers a variation on the General Causal Theory: if at least some intentionalactions have pertinent mental items as causes, then, at least some intentional mentalactions have pertinent mental items as causes as well (Mele 1997, p. 240).

We can manipulate Mele’s variation on the General Causal Theory as follows: Ifaction planning is a type of mental action, then intention is its “pertinent” causal mentalitem. Henceforth we can claim that instances of action planning [i.e. at least someintentional mental actions] have intentions [i.e. pertinent mental items] as causes.

In sum: mental actions can be explained in causal terms, and action planning can beconsidered a mental action that has causal mental antecedents. In the following section Ianalyse the causal mental antecedents of action planning, that is, non-immediate intentions.3

2 Following Mele 1992, ch. 2, I assume the reality of mental causation.3 I shall point out that not all the friends of mental action would say that intentions are the mental antecedentsof mental actions. For instance, Hieronymi (2009) disagrees with this view. Also Peacocke and Mele aredoubtful as to the idea that every intentional action-event must have a mental item, such as an intention, as asignificant cause. They independently, argue that an agent can, but need not, be in a position to intend to P. ForP to be an intentional action, all that is required is that the agent is in a position to intend to try to P. Peacocke(2009) argues that tryings should be distinguished by intentions, while Mele (2009) holds a softer stance withregards to the possibility for an intention to count as the causal mental antecedent of a mental action.

Animal Mental Action


3 Intentions as Plan-States

Intentions are the mental states of the agent who performs or plans to perform anintentional action.

Some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of proximal actions, and someintentions are the causal mental antecedents of distal actions.4 The distinction betweenthese two types of state is often spelled out in terms of mental content. The prominentview is that while proximal actions are caused by mental states with nonconceptualcontent, distal actions are caused by mental states with conceptual content. I aminvoking the need of an account for the nonconceptual content of intentions involvedin mental actions such as planning distal actions. For creatures that lack conceptualcapacities, i.e. all nonlinguistic animals, are capable of entertaining plan-states, andthereby exercise mental agency in the form of action planning. I am concerned withintentions that guide individual and coordinated action planning (i.e. non-immediateactions), and not with intentions that guide bodily movements (i.e. immediate actions).

I analyse non-immediate intentions, and this is my working definition: Non-imme-diate Intentions are mental states that figure as distinctive causal components of actionplanning and as distinctive mental antecedents of the execution of a plan.

Having narrowed down the notion of intention at play in this paper, let us discuss thefunctional role of non-immediate intentions.

The most developed account is Bratman’s Planning Theory, which states thefollowing: “to intend to do something is to be in a plan state, where we understandwhat a plan state is by explaining its role in the rational dynamics of planning agency.Intending leads to action in ways that normally involve diachronic planning structures”(Bratman 2012, p. 4).

According to Bratman (2012), the capacity for action planning depends on twofeatures: (1) the capacity for temporally extended intentional agency, and (2) self-governance. And a theory of agency depends on a full understanding of these capac-ities: (1) Temporally extended intentional agency is the capacity to (1.a) recognise thatone’s actions are placed within a larger structured activity, and to (1.b) recognise thatthere is a practical commitment towards that larger structured activity. (2) Self-governance is the capacity of an agent to have a practical standpoint guiding his acting.

These two conditions are guaranteed by the role played by non-immediate inten-tions. These mental states provide control to the agent and stability to the plan. Theyprovide control because they direct the agent towards the performance of an action, andthey provide stability because they favour the agent to keep control over the world he isacting on, or planning to act on. So, control and stability are relative, and not absolute,features of non-immediate intentions (see Holton 2009, pp. 5–9, for different ways ofunderstanding control and stability as features of intention; see, also, Sheperd 2013, fora full account of control).

If the capacity for temporally extended intentional agency, and the capacity for self-governance are the prerequisites of action planning, there is a third feature that is

4 Philosophers have proposed various “dual-intention theories” (Pacherie 2008). Searle (1983) distinguishesbetween prior intentions and intentions in action, Brand (1984) between prospective and immediate intentions,Bratman (1987) between future-directed and present-directed intentions, Mele (1992) between distal andproximal intentions, and Pacherie (2008), who actually introduces a “trial-intention theory”, distinguishesbetween distal, proximal, and motor intentions.

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required for the inter-personal coordination of action planning that is (3) thecapacity for shared intentional activity. This is the result of the capacity to interlockindividual planning capacities, and to ascribe to other agents, intentions withmeshing sub-plans (Bratman 2014). Although the issue of coordination is orthog-onal to the issue at stake in this paper, it is necessary to talk about it, for theempirical literature on nonhuman action planning that I analyse concerns multi-agent coordinated action planning.

Arguably, the two capacities for extended intentional agency and for self-governanceare crucial to individual action planning. These two, plus the faculty for sharedintentional activity, are crucial to coordinated action planning, such as group hunting.

I shall note that Bratman’s proposal has been taken to be very cognitively demand-ing. But Bratman never provided an account for the content of non-immediate inten-tions such that we should be led to think that his view is as demanding as some havebeen claiming (Butterfill 2011; Tomasello 2014). On the contrary, he recently claimedto be open to the possibility of exploiting his Planning Theory to debate comparativeissues (Bratman 2014).

Leading philosophers in this field have explored alternative approaches to thePlanning Theory in order to make it suitable for explaining the behaviour of creaturesthat lack conceptual capacities (see Pacherie 2000, 2008, 2011, 2013; Butterfill 2011).But, arguably, none of these other proposals have taken into account the possibility toappreciate Bratman’s view in the light of a notion of nonconceptual mental content fornon-immediate intentions. For this reason, as should become clear in Section 5,traditionally, philosophers resisted the idea of attributing non-immediate intentions tononhuman animals. At most, nonhuman animals are thought to be capable of engagingin action-oriented anticipatory behaviour. This involves no intentions but mere motorrepresentations of goals to which their outcomes are directed (see, for instance,Butterfill and Sinigaglia 2014).

I shall now apply Bratman’s Planning Theory to describe group hunting amongchimpanzees in order to show that it constitutes an instance of nonhuman animal actionplanning.

4 Mental Agency in the Tai Forest

There is a large amount of evidence that different animal species are capable offoresight thinking, and more specifically, of action planning (Gulz 1991; Raby et al.2007; Boesch 2009; Osvath 2009).

Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) act jointly in a wide range of situations in ways thatlead researchers to appreciate the complex nature of their behaviours and the plasticityof their practices across a range of ecologies and across a long time span (see Mullerand Mitani 2005 and Hare and Tan 2012, for a comprehensive review; for work ongrooming practice, food sharing and coalitionary behaviour, see de Waal 1982, 1997;Nishida 1983; Goodall 1986; Kano 1992; Parish 1994; Vervaecke et al 2000; Watts2002; Hohmann and Fruth 2002).

For the purposes of the present discussion, group hunting practices are especiallyinteresting (Nishida et al. 1979; Wrangham 1999; Boesch and Boesch-Achermann2000; Watts and Mitani 2001; Mitani and Watts 2001; Williams et al 2004).



Group hunting is well documented among different animal species, like hyenas (Mills1990), lions (Stander 1992), wild dogs (Fanshawe and Fitzgibbon 1993), and wolves(Mech 1970). But it is far from being the rule among social animals. The reason why thisactivity is quite rare in nature is because it is cognitively very demanding, since it requiresthat individuals elaborate (and coordinate) their plans on the—relatively—long run.

According to Boesch and Colleagues, group hunting among the Chimpanzees of theTaï Forest, in Ivory Coast, is characterized by a distinctive quality: it is the mostsophisticated collaborative distal-directed behaviour ever documented. Group huntingis the rule, and not the exception (Boesch 1994a, b, c, 2002; Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000).

A hunting group is defined as such when: “individuals actively take part in a hunt byplacing themselves in positions where they could perform a capture” (Boesch andBoesch-Achermann 2000, p. 174)

Here is a brief description of this behaviour. Group hunting strategies require acoalition of up to four individuals. Taï chimpanzees can succeed in coordinating asingle hunt as long as each one of the participants to the hunt remains loyal to his role.And four roles have been identified: the driver, the blocker, the chaser, the ambusher.Roles are assigned on the basis of the current position of each chimpanzee with respectto the prey. The reward is distributed proportionally to the role covered during thehunting. Individuals who worked harder and exposed themselves to higher risks getmore than the others when it comes to sharing the spoils (for competing evidence, seeMelis et al. 2006; Greenberg et al. 2010; Warneken et al. 2011).

Group hunting occurs in different levels of sophistication: synchronic hunt, cooper-ative hunt and collaborative hunt. Synchronic hunt is when there are two or moreindividuals trying to react to each other’s actions simultaneously. Cooperative hunt iswhen there are two or more individuals that achieve space-temporal action coordina-tion. Collaborative hunt occurs when during the hunt each participant performs specificroles that are complementary and have the very same target. Taï chimpanzee grouphunting is collaborative in the 75 % of the documented cases. And this very highpercentage distinguishes the hunting practice of chimpanzees from those of otheranimal species.

Here is the description of an optimal hunting scenario, reconstructed on the basis ofwhat has been observed in the Taï Forest: initially, the driver forces the prey to take aspecific direction in the canopy, and, at the same time, the blocker makes sure that theprey cannot deviate from the direction forced by the driver. The chaser tries to catch theprey by climbing under it. Then, the ambusher smoothly blocks the escape and traps theprey by climbing in front of it.

Taï chimpanzees are selective toward a target prey, which is the red colobus monkey.5 This species is very abundant in the highest strata of the Taï Forest canopy. Redcolobus hunting is a double-step procedure: first, localization and, second, capture. Inorder to localize their prey, chimpanzees search for the red colobus sound. The searchfor red colobus, which lasts 16 min on average, has been reported to be intentional halfof the time (Boesch and Boesch 1989).

Boesch and Boesch-Achermann (2000) say that cooperation in hunting is kept stableby: (a) a mechanism for individual recognition, (b) temporary memory of actions in the

5 Red Colobus: middle-sized mammals. Adult males weigh about 13 kg.

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recent past, (c) attribution of value to those actions, and (d) social enforcement of thosevalues. Notably, the features pointed out by Bratman’s Planning Theory entails thefeatures that keep the hunting stable. The capacity for temporally extended intentionalagency depends on the ability to (b) retain memory of action in the recent past. Thissupports the capacity for self-governance that depends on the ability to (c) attributevalues to the actions in which the agents are engaged. This latter triggers (d) mutualresponsiveness to those actions in virtue of the values that are attributed to them. Then,this results in (a) a mechanism for mutual recognition that enables shared intentionalactivity.

Let us borrow an insightful example by Boesch (2005, p. 629), who canvasses thesimilarities between a case of human coordinated planned action with chimpanzeesgroup hunting:

“Like a team of soccer players, individuals react opportunistically to the presentsituation while taking into account the shared goal of the team. Some players will rarelymake a goal, like defenders and goalies, but the success of the team will criticallydepend upon their contribution. This is very reminiscent to group hunting in chimpan-zees where synchronisation of different coordinated roles, role reversal, and perfor-mance of less successful roles favour the realisation of the joint goal”.

On a similar note, evidence for collaborative hunting among nonhuman primatesmay even tell us about the similarities of the capacity for mental actions in species otherthan us. Interestingly, as mentioned earlier, drawing on studies on hunter-gathererhuman populations in Paraguay and Venezuela (Kaplan et al 1985; Walker et al.2002), the learning of hunting behaviour of humans has analogous developmentalpaths to those of Taï chimpanzees, both in terms of time necessary for learning andage-range during which individuals hunt more frequently and more efficiently.

As Boesch explains, the hunting behaviour is a learning process that starts around 8–10 years and that takes about 20 years of practice in order to be mastered. Differentroles in the hunt require different levels of expertise and can be performed by more orless experienced individuals. This practice is very demanding because it requires: 1) thecapacity to understand the behaviour of another species, i.e. the red colobus monkeys,and 2) the capacity to coordinate actions among individuals towards a common goalacross time.

As reported by Boesch and Boesch-Achermann (2000, p. 189):

Taï chimpanzees hunt very regularly and have developed a sophisticated systemof reciprocity in which hunters are rewarded for their contribution, not only fortheir participation in the hunt, but also for the type of contribution they makeduring the hunt. This indicates that they evaluate the contribution of differentindividuals and have a fine graded control of cheaters that pretend to hunt byadopting low costs tactics. Learning hunting tactics requires years and is fullyacquired only by the older males within the community.

Thus, collaborative hunting informs us about how chimpanzees manipulate theirworld counterfactually, about their awareness of the niche they occupy in a givenenvironment (see Cheney and Seyfarth 1990), and about how they mentally prepare foracting on such environment: in other words, about their capacity for mental action suchas action planning.



The research on group hunting among the chimpanzee populations of Ivory Coastsuggests that certain nonlinguistic animals have a rather rich understanding of the socialnature of their joint successes. And the explanation for this rich understanding may bein their capacity for this type of mental actions.

At this point, we have compelling reasons for ascribing planning capacities tononhuman animals, but we lack a theory consistent with their cognitive skills. I shallexplain why that is the case, and why we need such a theory.

5 Can Nonlinguistic Animals Perform Mental Action? A debate

The claim that intentions are plan-states that guide the future actions of chimpanzeesraises important philosophical issues. It is controversial whether all cognitive systemsare capable of forming intentions, to ascribe intentions to themselves, and to ascribeintentions to others. But if nonhuman animals are capable of mental actions likeplanning, they must also possess and ascribe intentions, since intention is the consti-tutive element of a plan.

Our problem, then, is narrowed down to: how should we characterize the intentionsof nonhuman animals? Both the philosophical and the empirical literature have beenswitching from views that were underestimating to views that were overestimating thecognitive capacities that a creature needs in order to possess, and to exercise, thepossess of mental states like intentions.

All contemporary views for or against the idea of attributing mental states tononhuman animals were influenced by Davidson’s main argument (1985, p. 478) that:

1) in order to have a mental state, it is necessary to have the concept of that mentalstate.

2) in order to have the concept of a mental state one must have language.

Davidson argues that the content of thoughts, or mental states is both conceptual andlinguistic and that these two features for content are interdependent. In his view, then,nonlinguistic animals do not have intentions.

Davidson (1984, 2001) has the following view about the structure of thinking andthe place that intentions occupy in it. He argues that intention is a trait of thinking. Hesays that to be a thinking creature is to be able to articulate thoughts in terms ofpropositional attitudes. Davidson says that having propositional attitudes is necessaryand sufficient for thinking. And lacking possession of propositional attitudes is tanta-mount to lacking the capacity for thought.

Davidson’s idea that the content of mental states is conceptual is based on a two-steps argument: (1) in order to have propositional attitudes, it is necessary to have theconcept of a propositional attitude; (2) in order to have the concept of a propositionalattitude, it is necessary to have language: “in order to think, one must have the conceptof a thought, and so language is required in both cases” (Davidson 2001, p. 103).

This does not mean that thinking is to be reduced to linguistic activity, but rather thatin order to be a thinking creature, one needs to have a language to express its ownthoughts and interpret those of others. Davidson appeals to an argument for indetermi-nacy. In his view, doing so has the implication of denying the attribution of any sort of

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thinking to creatures without language. If all mental states have a conceptual content,and if intentions are mental states, then intentions have a conceptual content and non-linguistic creatures do not have intentions. Davidson has a consistent argument for thedistinctive structure of linguistic thought, and for the interdependency between con-cepts and language. But he never provided compelling reasons for his denial thatnonlinguistic animals can have mental states. Endorsing Davidson’s interdependencyargument only implies that we cannot ascribe conceptual content to the mental states ofnonlinguistic animals.

Davidson’s view was, and still is very influential. Accordingly, the question askedwas: is language the mark that determines if a cognitive system can have intentions andperform mental actions like planning? It depends on what we mean by language.

By language I mean human language. Thus, I will not call instances of languagemastery the following cases: Kanzi the bonobo’s instructed acquisition of vocabulary ofsigns that he mastered to match to the corresponding image or object. This is not aninstance of linguistic communication because Kanzi was not able to deliberately combinethose signs into new meaningful messages (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1996); vervetmonkey alarm calls for predators, because even though these calls could be classified aseach belonging to a specific predator, rather than being randomly produced, they lack thestructure of intentional communication that is characteristic of human language. And wehave no evidence that these vocalisations constitute messages intended to inform peersabout an imminent danger, or more generally recognized as intentional communicativeacts (Cheney and Seyfarth 1980, 1996, p. 59, 2005, p. 135; Rendall et al. 2009);chimpanzee gestural communication because they have a univocal meaning that cannotbe detached from the physical performance of the relevant gesture nor can it be combinedwith other gestures in order to produce new meanings (Hobaiter and Byrne 2014).

By language I want to refer to human language, that is, to the capacity to articulateabstract meanings in a productive, recursive and displaced way. Language is a systemof symbolic communication where a code connects certain signs to certain meanings,and allows its user to produce and convey new meanings into an infinite recursiveprocess: language is a recursive compositional procedure. This broad definition isshared even among competing views on psycholinguistics (Chomsky 1965; Tomasello2003; Skinner 1957). Given these parameters, any other usage of the term ‘language’ issimply oxymoronic. The logical incoherence [of animal language talking] is readilyillustrated: “The meaning of animal signals is typically neither purely motivational innature nor purely referential, but instead can be see to lie somewhere along a continuumbetween these hypothetical endpoints (Rendall et al. 2009, p. 236).

Until when the right question to ask in order to mark the boundaries of cognition,and more specifically, of foresight thinking, was whether a creatures had language—sodefined—it was widely agreed that mental states such as non-immediate intentionsbelonged to humans only (Davidson 1984). This idea gained novel popularity throughthe proposal of leading researchers in psychology too (see, Tomasello 2014). The viewis built up on these assumptions: first, intentions are mental states whose content isconceptual (Davidson 1984; Searle 1983), secondly, mental states with a conceptualcontent are peculiar to linguistic cognitive systems (Davidson 1984; Bermùdez 2003),thirdly, human beings are the only linguistic cognitive systems (Tomasello 1999, 2003).Therefore, human beings are the only creatures capable of forming intentions, ofascribing intentions to themselves, and of ascribing intentions to others.



However, it is crucial to bring attention to this fact: the leading view that nonhumanprimates are essentially incapable of action planning (Tomasello 1999, 2014) has beensoftened during the years. Especially when referring to chimpanzees’ group hunting,Tomasello has recently admitted that this behaviour is indeed the most sophisticatedfuture-directed group behaviour ever recorded in the animal kingdom (see also,Tomasello 2014, p. 35). Arguably, it represents a good challenge to the strongerposition that was held back in the days.

If human language is not the mark of the capacity for future-directed intentionalaction but just the expression of the most sophisticated one, what is it that distinguishesthe intentions of nonlinguistic animals from those of linguistic animals? According toDavidson (2001) and Tomasello (2014) there is an interdependency between possessingconcepts and mastering language. And I shall endorse this statement. So, if anyintention can be attributed to nonlinguistic animals, and we have good reasons onempirical grounds for thinking so, then these intentions are best understood in nonlin-guistic and, thereby, in nonconceptual terms.

Intentional thinking, empirical evidence has shown, is widespread among species.So, if Davidson is right about what conceptual thinking requires (i.e. the capacity forlanguage) we need to understand what nonconceptual thinking might be (Chater andHeyes 1994; Gauker 2007).

I do not aim to provide a theory of nonconceptual mental content. My goal is simplyto point out that evidence for nonhuman animal mental action demands such noncon-ceptual account.

In the last section I shall reflect upon what the nonconceptual content of non-immediate intentions might be, without committing to any specific argument fornonconceptual content.

6 What Might Nonconceptual Mental Content Be?

Many philosophers argued that what would be problematic about the attribution ofconceptual thought to nonlinguistic animals is that the possession of conceptual mentalstates depends on complex representational capacities, such as those of natural lan-guage. This, for instance, is Peacocke: “There can be nothing more to the nature of aconcept than is determined by a correct account of the capacity of a thinker who hasmastered the concept to have propositional attitudes to contents containing that con-cept” (Peacocke 1992, p. 5, see also Crane 1992).

Holdingthisstancelargelydependsonthenotionofconceptthatsomeoneadopts.Wecan rely on Davidson’s authority; not entirely though, because according to Davidson(and others, for instance,Brandom1994;McDowell 1996;Burge 2010, p. 537; Sellars1963) concepts are constitutive elements of all thoughts. On other views, concepts areconstitutive elements of some thoughts only (see, for instance, Bermùdez 2003, 2007;Crane1992;Glock2000;Peacocke1997;Stalnaker1984).The latter clusterofviews iscongenial tomy argument for nonhuman animal’s planning abilities.

As I tried to show in this paper, when we talk about animal cognition we have plentyof evidence for characterizing their mental life as contentful: “Animals engage incomplex behaviour; thoughts participate in good explanations of that behaviour; soanimals probably have thoughts.” (see Beck 2012, for a review on this topic).

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According to Bermùdez (2003, ch. 3), Newen and Bartels (2007), and Camp (2009a)there is substantial empirical evidence for this claim. But how shall we characterizetheir mental actions?

Content is a term of art that, at least for the present purposes, we use to account forthe mental states that links thought to action and, by that means, instantiate mentalaction.

On the one hand, content can be, uncontroversially, characterized in terms of theaccuracy conditions that it determines or in terms of those that it is identified with. Itcan also be characterized with respect to the attitudes that are taken towards thatcontent. On the other hand, content can be, controversially, characterized as conceptualor nonconceptual; or as identifiable with the information that a cognitive systemreceives from the world or as the way in which the information are received from theworld by the cognitive system (Schellenberg 2013).

The conceptual/nonconceptual content debate is widespread and complex (see, forinstance, Stalnaker 2003; Byrne 2004), hence I give an—hopefully—uncontroversialdistinction: I take conceptual mental content to be the informational content of themental state of a subject that needs to master the concepts required to specify thatcontent in order to be in that state; and I take nonconceptual mental content to be theinformational content of the mental state of a subject who does not need to master theconcepts required to specify that content in order to be in that state (Bermùdez 2007).

More specifically, we can sketch the distinction between conceptual and noncon-ceptual thought as follows: a conceptual mental content represents a particular asbelonging to some kind or of some particulars as standing in some relation. Thesecontents are inferentially related; whereas nonconceptual mental content represents a“similarity judgment” among different particulars, where no inferential process needs tooccur (Gauker 2005, p. 289). To be more precise, conceptual thinking is, arguably,propositional and it works by means of disjunctive exclusion through the attribution oftruth values. When non-immediate intentions belong to or are attributed to nonlinguis-tic creatures, we can invoke a nonpropositional-based explanation, because thesemental states do not need to have a logical form. We can say that, while beliefs areevaluable as true or false, intentions are more simply evaluable as fulfilled orunfulfilled.

Nonconceptual mental content, thus understood, can be applied to explain two keyfeatures of the Tai chimpanzees hunting. Firstly, as we have seen, Tai chimpanzees areselective towards a target prey: the red colobus monkey. A similarity judgment canguide the discrimination of the relevant perceptual properties that are ascribed to thisspecific target. Secondly, a similarity judgment can be instantiated at the planning stageof the hunting, where each participant has to place himself in the position that(coordinated with those of the other members taking part to the hunt) will more likelyproduce the intended and planned outcome.

A creature’s action planning is guided by non-immediate intentions that have thefollowing features: they are personal-level states, i.e. states of the individual(s) ratherthan her subsystems; they represent some goal of the individual(s); they have fulfilmentconditions, which are satisfied if the intention causes bodily motion that ultimatelyachieves the goal represented by the individual(s). These features may sound toogeneric to inform us about content, hence, in addition, I shall say that Raby andClayton (2012, p. 8) argued that the behavioural criteria that we deploy to identify



action planning do not demands that a creature possess conceptual capacities. They saythat in order to engage in planning a creature needs cognitive capacities that allow forthe following:

i) content: recollecting what happened, where, and when on the basis of a specificpast experience

ii) structure: forming and integrated spatio-temporal representation of that specificpast experience

iii) flexibility: flexible deployment of the information available from the event in newsituations

Given these features of intentions and the behavioural criteria to identify planning,we can understand how the mental content of mental actions like non-immediateintentions could a) drive the focus on an intended goal, b) allow to evaluate counter-factuals, c) enable to select the information upon which she forms an intention thatguides a plan for action.

Schellenberg (2013) claims that we can understand mental content in nonconceptualterms if we allow for it to give discriminatory capacities that establish accuracy orinaccuracy conditions, and that guides us through the identification of particularinstances of the world. Discriminatory capacities allow for the representation of theworld as being a certain way. And on the basis of what a creature represents the worldto be, she can exercise a similarity judgment, and reallocate possibilities through theestimation of different options and the control over the selected one. Accordingly, shecan mentally act in order to prepare for distal-oriented actions.

In conclusion, a nonconceptual account of mental content for non-immediate inten-tions should be saving compositionality (needed to articulate a plan) without entailingpropositionalism (the attribution of truth-values). These requirements are a necessarybasis for the framework that we can employ in order to explain how a future-orientedmental action can result from a nonlogical form of reasoning, leaving aside the fact thewe do not have other compelling reasons to endorse the view that reasoning throughcausal representing must entail mental states with a propositional structure and aconceptual content (see, Camp 2007, 2009; Clark 2013; Gärdenfors 2003; Gauker2007; Rescorla 2009a, 2013; Schellenberg 2013).

If we take this explanatory route, we are no longer committed to the idea that, sincenonhuman animals do not possess concepts, then non human animals cannot representthe world in a veridical way.

7 Conclusion

There is much evidence that—at least rudimentary forms of—mental agency existsamong different animal species. The research on Taï chimpanzee group huntingprovides a robust empirical ground for this claim.

I have defined ‘action planning’ as a type of mental action that has a type ofintention as a constitutive element. I explained that Taï chimpanzee’s group huntingexhibits the three Bratmanian constitutive faculties for action planning. This suggeststhat nonhuman animals can form non-immediate intentions in order to elaborate a plan

A. Kaufmann


for action. Such mental actions are caused by mental antecedents like non-immediateintentions. I also suggested that the behaviour of Tai chimpanzees can be explainedaccording to the Planning Theory, as long as we characterise the content of their non-immediate intentions in nonconceptual terms. And, as was said before, there is noexplicit reason why we should resist this idea. I argue that this is the best theoreticaloption. Even if a satisfactory account of what nonconceptual content is still underway, Ihope that the paper will contribute to the debate.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers, and to my supervisors Stephen Butterfilland Bence Nanay, for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.

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