In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's deepest (...) mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come. (shrink)

This paper attempts to formalize and to address the 'leakproofing' of the Singularity problem presented by David Chalmers. The paper begins with the definition of the Artificial Intelligence Confinement Problem. After analysis of existing solutions and their shortcomings, a protocol is proposed aimed at making a more secure confinement environment which might delay potential negative effect from the technological singularity while allowing humanity to benefit from the superintelligence.

A history of the world from the big bang to the present. "Big history" is a new approach to world history that joins the history of the world as a physical entity to human history. David Christian is the leading proponent of this approach to world history.

In Less Than Nothing, the pinnacle publication of a distinguished career, Slavoj i ek argues that it is imperative that we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more ...

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different reaction: (...) "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appropriate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871). (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is one of the truly great philosophers of the modernist period, and there is currently a major renaissance of interest in his unduly neglected texts and ideas amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and social theorists. Creative Evolution (1907) is the text that made Bergson world-famous in his own lifetime; in it Bergson responds to the challenge presented to our habits of thought by modern evolutionary theory, and attempts to show that the theory of knowledge must have its basis (...) in a theory of life. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is one of the truly great philosophers of the modernist period, and there is currently a major renaissance of interest in his unduly neglected texts and ideas amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and social theorists. Creative Evolution (1907) is the text that made Bergson world-famous in his own lifetime; in it Bergson responds to the challenge presented to our habits of thought by modern evolutionary theory, and attempts to show that the theory of knowledge must have its basis (...) in a theory of life. (shrink)

His introduction offers a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter survey of the work, and there are also explanatory notes.

The mathematical theory of communication.

John Barrow is increasingly recognized as one of our most elegant and accomplished science writers, a brilliant commentator on cosmology, mathematics, and modern physics. Barrow now tackles the heady topic of impossibility, in perhaps his strongest book yet. Writing with grace and insight, Barrow argues convincingly that there are limits to human discovery, that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable. He first examines the limits on scientific inquiry imposed by the deficiencies of the human mind: our (...) brain evolved to meet the demands of our immediate environment, Barrow notes, and much that lies outside this small circle may also lie outside our understanding. Barrow investigates practical impossibilities, such as those imposed by complexity, uncomputability, or the finiteness of time, space, and resources. Is the universe finite or infinite? Can information be transmitted faster than the speed of light? The book also examines the deeper theoretical restrictions on our ability to know, including Godel's theorem--which proved that there were things that could not be proved--and Arrow's Impossibility theorem about democratic voting systems. Finally, having explored the limits imposed on us from without, Barrow considers whether there are limits we should impose upon ourselves. For instance, if the secrets of the atom are to be found only by recreating extreme environments at great financial cost, just how much should we devote to that quest? Weaving together this intriguing tapestry, he illuminates some of the most profound questions of science, from the possibility of time travel to the very structure of the universe. (shrink)

Studies of animal culture have not normally included a consideration of cetaceans. However, with several long-term field studies now maturing, this situation should change. Animal culture is generally studied by either investigating transmission mechanisms experimentally, or observing patterns of behavioural variation in wild populations that cannot be explained by either genetic or environmental factors. Taking this second, ethnographic, approach, there is good evidence for cultural transmission in several cetacean species. However, only the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops) has been shown experimentally to (...) possess sophisticated social learning abilities, including vocal and motor imitation; other species have not been studied. There is observational evidence for imitation and teaching in killer whales. For cetaceans and other large, wide-ranging animals, excessive reliance on experimental data for evidence of culture is not productive; we favour the ethnographic approach. The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans, and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties. The wide movements of cetaceans, the greater variability of the marine environment over large temporal scales relative to that on land, and the stable matrilineal social groups of some species are potentially important factors in the evolution of cetacean culture. There have been suggestions of gene-culture coevolution in cetaceans, and culture may be implicated in some unusual behavioural and life-history traits of whales and dolphins. We hope to stimulate discussion and research on culture in these animals. (shrink)

As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits.

A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, "democratic transhumanism," by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and (...) biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human - "posthuman" or "transhuman" - the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit priest. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The (...) Phenomenon of Man, the first of his writings to appear in America, Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. When published in France it was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year. (shrink)

Table of Contents Contributor Biographies ix Part I Roots and Core Themes 1 1 The Philosophy of Transhumanism 3 Max More 2 Aesthetics: Bringing the Arts & Design into the Discussion of Transhumanism 18 Natasha Vita-More 3 Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up 28 Nick Bostrom 4 Transhumanist Declaration 54 Various 5 Morphological Freedom -- Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It 56 Anders Sandberg Part II Human Enhancement: The Somatic Sphere 65 6 (...) Welcome to the Future of Medicine 67 Robert A. Freitas Jr. 7 Life Expansion Media 73 Natasha Vita-More 8 The Hybronaut Affair: A Ménage of Art, Technology, and Science 83 Laura Beloff 9 Transavatars 91 William Sims Bainbridge 10 Alternative Biologies 100 Rachel Armstrong Part III Human Enhancement: The Cognitive Sphere 111 11 Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind 113 Andy Clark 12 Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Humanity 128 Ben Goertzel 13 Intelligent Information Filters and Enhanced Reality 138 Alexander “Sasha‘ Chislenko 14 Uploading to Substrate-Independent Minds 146 Randal A. Koene 15 Uploading 157 Ralph C. Merkle Part IV Core Technologies 165 16 Why Freud Was the First Good AI Theorist 167 Marvin Minsky 17 Pigs in Cyberspace 177 Hans Moravec 18 Nanocomputers 182 J. Storrs Hall 19 Immortalist Fictions and Strategies 196 Michael R. Rose 20 Dialogue between Ray Kurzweil and Eric Drexler 205 Part V Engines of Life: Identity and Beyond Death 213 21 The Curate’s Egg of Anti-Anti-Aging Bioethics 215 Aubrey de Grey 22 Medical Time Travel 220 Brian Wowk 23 Transhumanism and Personal Identity 227 James Hughes 24 Transcendent Engineering 234 Giulio Prisco Part VI Enhanced Decision-Making 241 25 Idea Futures: Encouraging an Honest Consensus 243 Robin Hanson 26 The Proactionary Principle: Optimizing Technological Outcomes 258 Max More 27 The Open Society and Its Media 268 Mark S. Miller, with E. Dean Tribble, Ravi Pandya, and Marc Stiegler Part VII Biopolitics and Policy 279 28 Performance Enhancement and Legal Theory: An Interview with Professor Michael H. Shapiro 281 29 Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital 291 Andy Miah 30 The Battle for the Future 302 Gregory Stock 31 Mind is Deeper Than Matter: Transgenderism, Transhumanism, and the Freedom of Form 317 Martine Rothblatt 32 For Enhancing People 327 Ronald Bailey 33 Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right? 345 Patrick D. Hopkins 34 Freedom by Design: Transhumanist Values and Cognitive Liberty 355 Wrye Sententia Part VIII Future Trajectories: Singularity 361 35 Technological Singularity 365 Vernor Vinge 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity 376 Anders Sandberg 37 A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept 395 David Brin, Damien Broderick, Nick Bostrom, Alexander “Sasha‘ Chislenko, Robin Hanson, Max More, Michael Nielsen, and Anders Sandberg Part IX The World’s Most Dangerous Idea 419 38 The Great Transition: Ideas and Anxieties 421 Russell Blackford 39 Trans and Post 430 Damien Broderick 40 Back to Nature II: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century 438 Roy Ascott 41 A Letter to Mother Nature 449 Max More 42 Progress and Relinquishment 451 Ray Kurzweil Index 454. (shrink)

A controversial scientific vision predicts a time in which humans and machines will merge and create a new form of non-biological intelligence, explaining how the occurrence will solve such issues as pollution, hunger, and aging.

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

This is explained in a new introduction that goes beyond the interpretative enterprise of the rest of the book to assess Marx in relation to contemporary ...

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion. Drawing upon developments in philosophy, most notably those in philosophical logic, Edward R. Wierenga examines the traditional divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, timelessness, immutability, and goodness. His philosophically defensible formulations of the nature of God are in accord with the views of classical theists. The author provides an account of each of the divine attributes by stating in contemporary terms what such classical theists as Augustine, Anselm, (...) and Aquinas wrote about the nature of God; he then seeks to determine whether one can defend the ascription of traditional divine attributes to God against philosophical objections. Clearly written and comprehensive, The Nature of God contains a wealth of illuminating and original material on a central topic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

This target article presents a theory of human cultural learning. Cultural learning is identified with those instances of social learning in which intersubjectivity or perspective-taking plays a vital role, both in the original learning process and in the resulting cognitive product. Cultural learning manifests itself in three forms during human ontogeny: imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning – in that order. Evidence is provided that this progression arises from the developmental ordering of the underlying social-cognitive concepts and processes involved. (...) Imitative learning relies on a concept of intentional agent and involves simple perspective-taking. Instructed learning relies on a concept of mental agent and involves alternating/coordinated perspective-taking (intersubjectivity). Collaborative learning relies on a concept of reflective agent and involves integrated perspective-taking (reflective intersubjectivity). A comparison of normal children, autistic children and wild and enculturated chimpanzees provides further evidence for these correlations between social cognition and cultural learning. Cultural learning is a uniquely human form of social learning that allows for a fidelity of transmission of behaviors and information among conspecifics not possible in other forms of social learning, thereby providing the psychological basis for cultural evolution. (shrink)

The evolution of life on Earth has produced an organism that is beginning to model and understand its own evolution and the possible future evolution of life in the universe. These models and associated evidence show that evolution on Earth has a trajectory. The scale over which living processes are organized cooperatively has increased progressively, as has its evolvability. Recent theoretical advances raise the possibility that this trajectory is itself part of a wider developmental process. According to these theories, the (...) developmental process has been shaped by a yet larger evolutionary dynamic that involves the reproduction of universes. This evolutionary dynamic has tuned the key parameters of the universe to increase the likelihood that life will emerge and produce outcomes that are successful in the larger process (e.g. a key outcome may be to produce life and intelligence that intentionally reproduces the universe and tunes the parameters of ‘offspring’ universes). Theory suggests that when life emerges on a planet, it moves along this trajectory of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if organisms emerge that decide to advance the developmental process intentionally. The organisms must be prepared to make this commitment even though the ultimate nature and destination of the process is uncertain, and may forever remain unknown. Organisms that complete this transition to intentional evolution will drive the further development of life and intelligence in the universe. Humanity’s increasing understanding of the evolution of life in the universe is rapidly bringing it to the threshold of this major evolutionary transition. (shrink)

Vidal’s (Found Sci, 2010 ) and Rottiers’s (Found Sci, 2010 ) commentaries on my (2010) paper raised a number of important issues about the possible future trajectory of evolution and its implications for humanity. My response emphasizes that despite the inherent uncertainty involved in extrapolating the trajectory of evolution into the far future, the possibilities it reveals nonetheless have significant strategic implications for what we do with our lives here and now, individually and collectively. One important implication is the replacement (...) of postmodern scepticism and relativism with an evolutionary grand narrative that can guide humanity to participate successfully in the future evolution of life in the universe. (shrink)

The standard view of philosophers is that the existence of particular events within our universe is capable of being explained in terms of initial conditions and natural laws, but that the existence of our universe itself is a 'brute given' that is incapable of naturalistic explanation. A supernatural explanation of the existence of our universe may be alleged to be possible ('God created our universe so that humans may exist and the existence of humans is an intrinsic good'), but an (...) explanation that appeals only to factors, situations or regularities in nature is deemed to be in principle impossible. It is also a standard view of philosophers that the less fundamental natural laws of our universe are capable of being explained in terms of more fundamental laws of our universe, but that the most basic natural laws of our universe are incapable of being explained naturalistically. Perhaps they can be explained supernaturally, by asserting that God ordained them so that humans may eventually evolve, but no other explanation is supposed possible. (shrink)

Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate (...) the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification as to where human and nonhuman animals' abilities to approximate a PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to attempt to discuss propagating organization of process, a poorly articulated union of matter, energy, work, constraints and that vexed concept, “information”, which unite in far from equilibrium living physical systems. Our hope is to stimulate discussions by philosophers of biology and biologists to further clarify the concepts we discuss here. We place our discussion in the broad context of a “general biology”, properties that might well be found in life anywhere in the cosmos, (...) freed from the specific examples of terrestrial life after 3.8 billion years of evolution. By placing the discussion in this wider, if still hypothetical, context, we also try to place in context some of the extant discussion of information as intimately related to DNA, RNA and protein transcription and translation processes. While characteristic of current terrestrial life, there are no compelling grounds to suppose the same mechanisms would be involved in any life form able to evolve by heritable variation and natural selection. In turn, this allows us to discuss at least briefly, the focus of much of the philosophy of biology on population genetics, which, of course, assumes DNA, RNA, proteins, and other features of terrestrial life. Presumably, evolution by natural selection—and perhaps self-organization—could occur on many worlds via different causal mechanisms. Here we seek a non-reductionist explanation for the synthesis, accumulation, and propagation of information, work, and constraint, which we hope will provide some insight into both the biotic and abiotic universe, in terms of both molecular self reproduction and the basic work energy cycle where work is the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom. The typical requirement for work itself is to construct those very constraints on the release of energy that then constitute further work. Information creation, we argue, arises in two ways: first information as natural selection assembling the very constraints on the release of energy that then constitutes work and the propagation of organization. Second, information in a more extended sense is “semiotic”, that is about the world or internal state of the organism and requires appropriate response. The idea is to combine ideas from biology, physics, and computer science, to formulate explanatory hypotheses on how information can be captured and rendered in the expected physical manifestation, which can then participate in the propagation of the organization of process in the expected biological work cycles to create the diversity in our observable biosphere. Our conclusions, to date, of this enquiry suggest a foundation which views information as the construction of constraints, which, in their physical manifestation, partially underlie the processes of evolution to dynamically determine the fitness of organisms within the context of a biotic universe. (shrink)

Ultimately we will only understand biological agency when we have developed a theory of the organization of biological processes, and science is still a long way from attaining that goal. It may be possible nonetheless to develop a list of necessary conditions for the emergence of minimal biological agency. The authors offer a model of molecular autonomous agents which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary (and, we believe, conjointly sufficient) for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; (...) work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construction; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison. When combined with the arguments from preadaptation and multiple realizability, the existence of these agents is sufficient to establish ontological emergence as against what one might call Weinbergian reductionism. Minimal biological agents are emphatically not conscious agents, and accepting their existence does not commit one to any robust theory of human agency. Nor is there anything mystical, dualistic, or non-empirical about the emergence of agency in the biosphere. Hence the emergence of molecular autonomous agents, and indeed ontological emergence in general, is not a negation of or limitation on careful biological study but simply one of its implications. (shrink)

Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity—and possible other intelligent species—except perhaps in the extremely distant future, when the issue of “heat death” (in an ever-expanding universe) becomes actual. Here, an attempt is made to show that it may become a practical question much sooner, if an intelligent community wishes to maximize its creative potential. We estimate, on the (...) basis of a greatly simplified model, the rate of loss of potentially useful information due to the delay in undertaking the colonization of the largest gravitationally bound structures in an accelerating universe. In addition, we argue for a natural cosmological extension of the classical taxonomy of advanced technological communities given by Kardashev. New developments in the fields of anthropic self-selection and physical eschatology give, for the first time, solid foundations to such results. This may open some new (and possibly urgent) issues in the areas of future policy making and transhumanist studies generally. It may also give us a slightly better perspective on the SETI endeavor. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a modern expression of ancient and transcultural aspirations to radically transform human existence, socially and bodily. Before the Enlightenment these aspirations were only expressed in religious millennialism, magical medicine, and spiritual practices. The Enlightenment channeled these desires into projects to use science and technology to improve health, longevity, and human abilities, and to use reason to revolutionize society. Since the Enlightenment, techno‐utopian movements have dynamically interacted with supernaturalist millennialism, sometimes syncretically, and often in violent opposition. Today the transhumanist (...) movement, a modern form of Enlightenment techno‐utopianism, has evolved a number of subsects, from the libertarian utopians funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, to religious syncretists like the Mormon Transhumanist Association, to the left‐wing technoprogressives and their bioliberal intellectual allies. In reaction to accelerating technological innovation and transhumanist ideas, apocalyptic Christians, and even secular catastrophists, have begun to incorporate human enhancement into their End Times scenarios. With all sides believing that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, there is a growing likelihood of violent confrontation. (shrink)

Possibly the most fundamental scientific problem is the origin of time and causality. The inherent difficulty is that all scientific theories of origins and evolution consider the existence of time and causality as given. We tackle this problem by starting from the concept of self-organization, which is seen as the spontaneous emergence of order out of primordial chaos. Self-organization can be explained by the selective retention of invariant or consistent variations, implying a breaking of the initial symmetry exhibited by randomness. (...) In the case of time, we start from a random graph connecting primitive “events”. Selection on the basis of consistency eliminates cyclic parts of the graph, so that transitive closure can transform it into a partial order relation of precedence. Causality is assumed to be carried by causal “agents” which undergo a more traditional variation and selection, giving rise to causal laws that are partly contingent, partly necessary. (shrink)

Since the BBS article in which Premack and Woodruff (1978) asked “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?,” it has been repeatedly claimed that there is observational and experimental evidence that apes have mental state concepts, such as “want” and “know.” Unlike research on the development of theory of mind in childhood, however, no substantial progress has been made through this work with nonhuman primates. A survey of empirical studies of imitation, self-recognition, social relationships, deception, role-taking, and perspective-taking suggests (...) that in every case where nonhuman primate behavior has been interpreted as a sign of theory of mind, it could instead have occurred by chance or as a product of nonmentalistic processes such as associative learning or inferences based on nonmental categories. Arguments to the effect that, in spite of this, the theory of mind hypothesis should be accepted because it is more parsimonious than alternatives or because it is supported by convergent evidence are not compelling. Such arguments are based on unsupportable assumptions about the role of parsimony in science and either ignore the requirement that convergent evidence proceed from independent assumptions, or fail to show that it supports the theory of mind hypothesis over nonmentalist alternatives. Progress in research on theory of mind requires experimental procedures that can distinguish the theory of mind hypothesis from nonmentalist alternatives. A procedure that may have this potential is proposed. It uses conditional discrimination training and transfer tests to determine whether chimpanzees have the concept “see.” Commentators are invited to identify flaws in the procedure and to suggest alternatives. Key Words: apes; associative learning; concepts; convergence; deception; evolution of intelligence; folk psychology; imitation; mental state attribution; monkeys; parsimony; perspective-taking; primates; role-taking; self-recognition; social cognition; social intelligence; theory of mind. (shrink)