Discusses the theoretical and conceptual implications of the author's work for cognitive, developmental, and linguistic research, and uses it as a spring board to argue for a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind.

For more than twenty years, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been studying the linguistic and cognitive skills of a number of laboratory-reared primates. Recently, her work with Kanzi (a bonobo) has been acknowledged as having achieved a scientific breakthrough of stunning proportions: Kanzi has acquired linguistic and cognitive skills equal to those of a 2-1/2 year-old human child. Apes, Language and the Human Mind skillfully combines the exciting narrative regarding the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind.

Part I - Entry into Language
Chapter 1: Bringing up Kanzi
Kanzi: The ape who crossed the line
Would a bonobo learn language?
Mother and child
Kanzi had been keeping a secret
Morning exploits
Travels in the forest
Evening tours
Living with Kanzi
Cognitive accomplishments
Syntax grasped
Part II - Theoretical and Philosophical Implications
Chapter 2: Philosophical Preconceptions
The Cartesian revolution
Praedicet ergo est
Cartesian bifurcationism versus mechanist continuity
Moderate bifurcationism
Becoming a person
The 'charm' of the theory of mind thesis
The Cartesian view of the mental
The ascent of Pan
'The constitutional uncertainty of the mental'
Chapter 3: Rhetorical Inclinations
"Sure, but does he really understand what we say?"
Evaluating metalinguistic claims: Logical prerequisites
The commonsense picture of communication
Animal research and the Scarlet Letter factor
The epistemological conception and its methodological legacy
Methodological reductivism
Methodological operationalism
Metalanguage as cultural technique
Chapter 4: Beyond Speciesism
Apes have language: So what?
Our shared heritage
Primal man
Wholistic intelligence
Hierarchical intelligence
Language and mind
Linguistics and the innateness conundrum
The problem posed by Kanzi and alternative resolutions
The issue of intentionality
Social constructionism
The perspectival shift
Quine's dilemma and Locke's puzzle
Why Kanzi could not be ignored
The malliability of the nervous system
The achievement of meaning - with language
The emergence of the social contract
The new lens
References
Index