Abstract:
Like us, monkeys have complex social lives. Bonnet macaques, the most common monkey in southern India, appear to track the relationships between other group members, remember their social attributes, recognise their own place in the social hierarchy, and make decisions, based on this social knowledge—suggesting a rudimentary sense of the self.
But does this mean they are conscious?
Join the talk as our speaker draws on more than three decades spent with bonnet macaques to explore what they can teach us about cognition, consciousness, and a sense of the self in other-than-human beings.
About the Speaker:
Anindya ‘Rana’ Sinha’s early research concerned the molecular biochemistry of yeast, social biology of wasps, and the classical genetics of human disease. His principal interests, over more than three decades, have, however, been in the behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, population and behavioural genetics, evolutionary biology, urban ecologies, ethnobiology, and conservation studies of nonhuman primates. He is also deeply interested in biological and cognitive philosophies, art and performance studies, and in the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of India, especially concerning current and historical human–nonhuman relations. Rana’s current obsession, however, is to understand cognitive and conscious decision-making by individual nonhuman beings and engage with their unique, lived experiences, explore the traditional ethological knowledge and natural philosophies of indigenous human communities, and reflect on the opportunities that ethnographic, rather than ethological, explorations offer for our understanding of more-than-human lifeworlds.