As we try to show in this book, however, the language we tested and
reported – in our capacity as ‘good scientists’ – was not the language
Kanzi actually acquired by sharing life with humans.The bonobos’ lan-
guage has been underreported. The daily linguistic dramas have been
invisible.
On everyday skeptics despite everyday reality of talking with ape:
p. 117-118:
Is scepticism reluctance to acknowledge our primal culture?
Why is scepticism regarding the possession of language considered a
reasonable attitude towards apes such as Kanzi, when it appears absurd
with regard to us? As far as we know, no one has tried to prove, scien-
tifically, that we humans do not merely have the attitude that we have
language, but actually do possess it. Language tests are, of course, carried
out by speech therapists in order to determine whether certain indi-
viduals have specific difficulties in speaking or understanding language.
But such work does not aim at determining whether humanity possesses
language. If someone, just to be absolutely sure, tried to prove language
in humans by designing a rigorous test, it would be profoundly comical
to see this experimenter discuss the test informally with the persons
who accepted to participate as subjects of the experiment. What if the
result turned out to be negative, would a blushing experimenter whisper
to her research subjects that all of us lack language? Our knowledge that
we have language is not achieved through science and cannot be made
more certain through scientific research. It is nonsense to imagine this
knowledge as the result of a clever experiment. The most immediate
facts of life are not scientific. So, how can a sceptical attitude be oblig-
atory with regard to Kanzi’s language? Why should a clever experiment
be possible in his case, when it is nonsense in our own?
Few persons have thought deeper about this problem than Talbot
J. Taylor, and we turn to him for help (see Taylor 1994, and Savage-
Rumbaugh, Shanker and Taylor 1998). Taylor analyzes the problem in
terms of rhetoric. What we are inclined to say about animals and
humans is normally different.These inclinations result in two types of
rhetoric: one about animals, another about humans. Although many
dog owners honestly can say about their dog, ‘his barking means he
wants us to take him for a walk’, it is generally acceptable, especially in
academic culture, to be sceptical and to say that the dog’s barking ‘really
does not mean anything’. It is also acceptable to be sceptical more gen-
erally, and to ask whether any animal vocalizations can be said to have
meaning. <....>
After describing this asymmetry, Taylor asks the more
fundamental question of why the asymmetry is there. Why is a form of
scepticism that appears reasonable with regard to animals absurd with
regard to humans? Here is Taylor’s answer:
While the commonplace adoption of a skeptical attitude to everyday
metalinguistic remarks about humans would constitute a dangerous
threat to the metalinguistically mediated understanding of human
behavior that is essential to our participation in and maintenance
of social life as we know it, this is not the case for the adoption
of a skeptical attitude toward everyday metalinguistic remarks about
animals. It is here that one may find the source of the rhetorical
asymmetry between scientific discourse about the communicational
and cognitive abilities of animals and scientific discourse about
human possession of those abilities. (Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker and
Taylor 1998: 153)
Taylor’s explanation, then, is that there is reluctance to adopt a scepti-
cal attitude to human communication because it would, if put into prac-
tice, threaten our human social life. The daily hardship maintaining a
bi-species culture in a society that is not prepared for this possibility
illustrates Taylor’s explanation. Scepticism concerning the possibility
that an animal can communicate and live as a fellow-creature with
humans is not only a theoretical view: it is also an aspect of our regu-
lations, institutions and even our architecture. It is hard political labour
to protect the intermediary Pan/Homo culture. It is threatened almost
daily, in Taylor’s sense, and ape language research often tends to balance
on the verge of tragedy. We are trying to overcome many of these dif-
ficulties in our new facility in Des Moines, Iowa, not least the architec-
tural ones: the apes will have greater freedom of movement than visitors
will have, for the Great Ape Trust of Iowa is meant to be their home.