Human-Enculturated Apes : Towards a New Sythesis of Philosophy and Comparative Psychology

This chapter is a philosophical discussion about the unexpected psychological developments that occur in apes when they grow up with meaningful others, who happen to be humans. Since these apes are psychologically transformed by their everyday relations with humans, it appears that ways of living and forming relationships with each other have psychological significance and consequences, and should not be treated merely as circumstantial evidence of hidden mental architecture. It is that human-enculturated apes, such as Kanzi, challenge traditional philosophy and its scientific continuation in comparative psychology. Doing psychological research with human-enculturated apes implies that Home/Lab duality characterizes also the human. The notion of 'Home' as a place where human/animal relationships develop and change the participants can be discerned in many forms of human-animal studies (HAS) -transformed research. Keywords:comparative psychology; Home/Lab duality; human-animal studies (HAS); human-enculturated apes; Kanzi