UC San Diego

Comparative psychologists have recently agreed that some nonhuman animals, such as chimpanzees, are capable of mindreading or reasoning about the cognitive states of other agents. This claim has been heavily criticized by a small group of psychologists and philosophers led by Daniel Povinelli. Povinelli and colleagues argue that the experimental approach used by comparative psychologists to test for mindreading in animals is fundamentally flawed and propose a new experimental paradigm to take its place. In the first part of this dissertation, I argue that this criticism is mistaken. Focusing on visual-perspective- taking research in chimpanzees, I show how the experimental approach used by comparative psychologist provides evidence for mindreading, according to the critics' own definition of what counts as mindreading. I also show that the new experimental paradigm proposed by the critics fails, according to their own standards for success. The fact that chimpanzees mindread has far- reaching implications. In the second part of this dissertation, I examine the potential impact of this finding on our understanding of ape pointing. Humans use pointing gestures in order to direct the attentional states of other agents. I examine whether there is evidence that apes point with similar aims. Surprisingly few studies have addressed this question and I attribute this lacuna to the imperative-declarative distinction currently guiding ape pointing research. I argue that the constraints imposed by this distinction are overly restrictive and propose an alternative framing. There are several ways in which one can test whether apes point in order to direct gaze. I introduce these and then present the results of one such study, which I conducted in collaboration with the comparative psychologists Katja Liebal and Michael Tomasello. The results of our study suggest that apes do not point with the sole aim of directing gaze. However, more studies need to be done in order to determine whether directing gaze is a component aim of ape pointing