ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION By virtue of their close relationship to humans, we often look to our fellow primates, the monkeys and apes, for clues about the origins and evolutionary signicance of many of our own social behaviors and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them. On the face of it, this is perfectly sensible. Darwin himself suggested that a close study of baboons “would do more for metaphysics than Locke.” When considering the results of these efforts, however, it becomes apparent that such comparisons represent an uncritical acceptance of a particular philosophical perspective and often have very little to do with evolution at all. As a result, they do an injustice to both sides, failing to recognize the distinctive nature of nonhuman cognition, on the one hand, and promoting a somewhat misleading view of our own cognitive abilities on the other. In what follows, I want to illustrate how a different philosophical outlook may allow us to ground our own sociality (in the sense of tracing its evolutionary roots) in a way that remains true to Darwin’s vision of continuity, without merely constructing other primates in our own image.
