One of the things that cognitive science must ultimately explain is why humans are so much more flexible in their thought processes than other animals. Lots of animals are very smart, of course. Almost every pet owner I know, for example, is certain that his or her dog, cat, snake, or parrot is exceptionally intelligent.
Yet no animal, not even chimpanzees (or crows for that matter) have developed complex tool use and complex communication on the scale exhibited by humans. The question is why?
The answer may be in the ability to answer the question "why?"
In the past two posts, I summarized some key aspects about people's ability to think about causes. A number of researchers who study humans and animals have suggested that this ability to reason about causes is a major reason why humans are so much smarter than animals.
For example, Dan Povinelli reviews a large number of studies he has done with chimpanzees in his book Folk Physics for Apes published in 2000. In his studies, he gives chimps the opportunity to play with tools to try to solve problems that will allow them to obtain a treat.
His work finds consistently that chimps find more and more complex solutions to difficult problems like inserting a rod into a pipe to push food out. What these chimps seem to learn, though, is a relationship between a situation, a particular tool, and an action.
After a chimp learns to solve a particular problem, the situation is changed so that the particular action the chimp is using won't work any more. If the chimp understood how the tool worked, then he ought to be able to solve the new problem correctly, but in this situation, the chimp has to play with the tool and the new situation extensively before a new solution is found.
Human children given similar problems solve them quite easily, suggesting that the humans and chimps differ in their ability to understand why something works.
Mike Tomasello extends this point in his 1999 book, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. He notes that chimpanzees have tool cultures. For example, there are groups of chimps in the wild who all use stones to break open nuts for food. In other areas, there are chimps who fish for termites by sticking reeds into termite mounds. But, even after many generations, the chimps are all using the same tools in the same way.
In contrast, human cultures are constantly evolving. Tools gain in complexity. They are often being adapted for new purposes. Tomasello argues that this difference between humans and chimps also boils down to the ability to ask and answer the question "why."
When a chimp sees another chimp using a tool, he tries to reproduce the action. Eventually, he reproduces the action successfully and gets the right effect with the tool.
When a human sees another human using a tool, she tries to figure out why that tool is being used. She tries to reproduce the goal of using the tool. The advantage of focusing on the goal is that if she finds a better way to accomplish the goal, she can use that instead. Human culture increases in its complexity, because people are constantly trying to find new ways to accomplish goals.
There are many abilities that combine to allow humans to think more complex thoughts than other animals. But, it seems clear that the ability to ask and answer the question, "why" is an important driver of human cognitive abilities.
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