Exorcising Grice's ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals

Townsend, Simon W; Koski, Sonja E; Byrne, Richard W; Slocombe, Katie E; Bickel, Balthasar; Boeckle, Markus; Braga Goncalves, Ines; Burkart, Judith M; Flower, Tom; Gaunet, Florence; Glock, Hans Johann; Gruber, Thibaud; Jansen, David A W A M; Liebal, Katja; Linke, Angelika; Miklósi, Ádám; Moore, Richard; van Schaik, Carel P; Stoll, Sabine; Vail, Alex

doi:10.5167/uzh-125471

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Townsend, S. W., Koski, S. E., Byrne, R. W., Slocombe, K. E., Bickel, B., Boeckle, M., Braga Goncalves, I., Burkart, J. M., Flower, T., Gaunet, F., Glock, H. J., Gruber, T., Jansen, D. A. W. A. M., Liebal, K., Linke, A., Miklósi, Á., Moore, R., van Schaik, C. P., Stoll, S., … Manser, M. B. (2017). Exorcising Grice’s ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 92, 1427–1433. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12289

Abstract

Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i)