Planet of the Apes and Philosophy (38 page)

Consider the scene about thirty minutes into the movie in which Caesar corrects Charles, afflicted with Alzheimer's, who is holding a fork incorrectly at the breakfast table. This isn't the first sign that Caesar's intelligent, but it's an important one which demonstrates the main thing that philosopher Martin Heidegger argues distinguishes humans from other animals.

According to Heidegger, man is a ‘being-in-the-world'. At first this seems blindingly obvious—aside from the crazy guy at my local bus station, I can't think of anyone who would deny that we live in a world. But Heidegger's point is a bit more subtle than this—for him, we're not in the world in the same way that Jelly Beans are in a jar. It's more like being in love or in the army. If I say, ‘General Aldo's in the army', I don't mean that he can always be found at a particular place such as the barracks, but that he's committed to a certain activity with the skills and equipment that go along with it.

I'm in the world in the same sense—I have projects that matter to me and equipment and skills that enable me to do them. At the moment, I'm writing a chapter for
Planet of the Apes and Philosophy
, using a dusty old laptop and my touch-typing skills. Earlier this afternoon, I used a different skill-set to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich using two knifes, a chopping board and George Foreman grill. I'm not telling you this to boast (although I have to say, I do make a mean grilled cheese sandwich) but to draw out Heidegger's main point—human life is defined by the huge array of projects, equipment, and skills that underpin everything we do.

When Caesar corrects Charles, he demonstrates this practical understanding, and Heidegger claims that this sort of understanding is what distinguishes humans from other animals. Although other animals might use sticks to get termites from a mound, humans have constructed millions of tools, including tool-making-tools, which pervade every part of our lives: from breakfast table to bathroom, tools are involved in even our most basic bodily functions.

Returning to the example of Caesar correcting Charles's use of the fork, what does it mean to use a fork ‘correctly'? Growing up in England I was taught to hold the fork in my left hand, but if I'd been raised in Boston I might have been taught the opposite. As an adult, I don't often get told off for using the fork incorrectly, but I do sometimes have the embarrassment of asking for a fork in a sushi restaurant because I suck at using chopsticks. Different cultures have different rules about what, where, and how you should eat but there aren't any human cultures that have no rules about eating. The chimp, by contrast, doesn't keep hold of the stick long enough to develop rules about how to use it—as far as we know, no chimp has been shouted at by his mother for fishing for termites using the wrong hand.

When Caesar corrects Charles's use of a fork, he demonstrates that he knows the rules we are taught as we grow up, a knowledge that isn't found in other animals. These rules are what distinguishes a human sitting at the table from a parrot being in the same place. Like ‘being-in-the-world', sitting at the table means more than being in a particular physical space—it requires a certain skill-set and an understanding of the rules and norms surrounding the equipment that we use. Although
most of these rules are unspoken we usually know when we have broken them from the tuts and glares we get from other people. (The fact that they are now largely unspoken is probably a sign of progress—in the 1950s, English schoolchildren were frequently beaten for writing with their left hand!)

When we arrive at the ape civilization in the original Charlton Heston movie, we find the apes living in a world as complex as ours. They have an operating table that they use to treat Heston's character, Taylor, and they have a range of surgical equipment that they use with precision. As with human doctors, the apes that use the scalpel have trained for several years before wielding it, something for which there isn't any equivalent in the rest of the animal kingdom.

All of this might seem to be stating something trivial or obvious, but for Heidegger this means that the understanding that humans, Caesar, and the other ‘worldly' apes have is completely different from the sort of understanding most animals have of objects. For us, the chair is understood as ‘to be sat on' and the table is ‘to be sat at'; the scissors are ‘grippable' and ‘to be used for cutting paper'. All of this is governed by (mostly) unsaid rules which keep everything going smoothly. In physical anthropology, it's often said that what distinguishes us from other primates is our opposable thumbs, meaning that we can form a range of grips that no other animal can. The fact that we're in a world with millions of man-made tools which we can grip easily and without thinking means that we are the ‘handy animal'. But this isn't the only difference between us and other animals, another obvious one being language.

In both the original movie and the recent prequel, the iconic phrase “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape” is prominent. In the first movie, the apes react with shock as Taylor uses something that they thought was unique to their species, language. In
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
, we see a reversal of that—the phrase is uttered by Dodge Landon, a cruel caretaker who's being dominated by Caesar, and Caesar surprises him with a cry of ‘No!'.

It's not an accident that language is so prominent in both movies—often language is said to be the distinguishing feature
of human life. A fantastic documentary that explores just this is
Project Nim
, which was released a week after
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
. This film follows a research project at Columbia University that attempted to raise a chimp, dubbed Nim Chimpsky as a cheeky nod to the linguist Noam Chomsky, in a human environment in which he learned American Sign Language.

The success of the project is hotly debated, with the project's leader eventually declaring that he thought it was unsuccessful. One of the main things that came out of the experiment is that Nim was unable to learn what's known as ‘syntax'—the change of meaning created by word order. So, for Nim there is no distinction made between “Nim eat banana” and “banana eat Nim.” For us and the apes in the
Planet of the Apes
series, there is.

In the tribunal where Taylor is tried, Dr. Zaius states that “The Almighty created the ape in his own image,” echoing the well-known Christian doctrine. Here, syntax is really important—claiming that ‘the ape created the Almighty' means the exact reverse of what is being argued. Dr. Zaius demonstrates a grasp of language far more sophisticated than what Nim or any other chimp we've studied is capable of.

In a rather mystical manner, Heidegger claims that if we want to say that the lizard lies on the rock, the word ‘rock' ought to be crossed out, as it smuggles in too much of our human understanding. What he means by this is that the words that we use are deeply tangled with our practical use of things. As I mentioned earlier, we understand scissors primarily as ‘grippable' and ‘to be used for cutting paper', and when we use the word ‘scissors', its use and handiness is what we're referring to.

When I say that Taylor holds the rifle, his holding it refers to more than just having it in his hands—it involves him understanding what it's for and how to use it. In
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
, Charles holds the fork incorrectly but Nim wouldn't ‘hold' it in the same way at all, as holding something involves a sense of how you ‘ought' to hold it and what you would normally use it for. So, if we say ‘the lizard sits on the desk', (crossing out the word ‘desk' as Heidegger insists that we should) what this means is that it sits on the thing that we call a desk, but it doesn't understand it as a ‘desk' because it doesn't know what it is for and how to use it.

What about the simplest example of language use—pointing and naming something? In
The Planet of the Apes
, Taylor points out where he landed on the map, but that involves a complex representation of geography. Instead, think of the simpler act of pointing at an object and giving it a name, such as ‘tree'. This act, called ‘ostensive definition' by some philosophers, is more complicated than it seems as it's actually quite ambiguous. If I'm sitting with my niece and point to a tree in the window, how can she be sure that the word ‘tree' refers to the object rather than the color or the way it sways in the wind? In fact, how does she know that I'm pointing at something beyond the pane of glass immediately in front of us? We can only make sense of such pointing because we are already in the world with each other—there's a sort of tissue of things that we both take for granted, including the practice of pointing (which, it should be noted, we aren't born with—we learn it like many other practices).

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that chimpanzees are unable to understand pointing, and although some researchers have suggested domesticated dogs can understand it, I think the jury is still out on that one (Raymond Tallis's book
Michelangelo's Finger
looks in depth at the act of pointing, and it's well worth a read if you're interested). Returning to Taylor pointing to the map, this is a practice that we acquire socially much like using a fork or learning to speak. Most of us have become so good at reading maps that we take map-reading skills for granted. It's important to remember that it is a practice that we each have to learn as individuals and developed collectively at some point in our history, and the same is true of pointing. Not wanting to belabor the point, it's a practice that we learn on the back of our already being in the world with others.

Now, it's probably worth adding that there are loads of philosophers who disagree with both me and Heidegger on many of these points. But I think one of the big advantages of Heidegger's view is that it avoids a common trap in discussing the difference between humans and other animals—trying to guess what other animals might be thinking. Precisely because we can't have a chat with them, we really can't know. Some philosophers, such as Descartes, have suggested that animals don't have minds at all, whereas others have just suggested
that we can't know if they do. I think the way around this is to focus almost entirely on observable practices out here in the world. Although both humans and Caesar are probably smarter than other animals, I think what's really important are the abilities that that leads to—using tools and sharing a language. These abilities allowed a cultural evolution which works much faster than a biological one, and I suspect that this explosion of culture is the real difference between us and other animals.

           
I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, “Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?” I replied, “Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long.

              
—S
TEVEN
W
RIGHT

Okay, so that joke had nothing to do with apes or language, but if you can think of a better segue into a discussion on time than a Steven Wright joke, then I'd like to hear it. Anyway, Heidegger's point about time is that just as we are in the world, we're in time. (Although, again, don't think of “in” the way you think of Jelly Beans in a jar). We have a grasp of our past and an eye on our future, and this is something that is shared by the apes in
Planet of the Apes
. Cornelius says to Zira, “We both have fine futures—marriage, stimulating careers. I'm up for a raise.”

This sort of ‘projecting' into the future is not found in other animals. My dog might expect me to come home tonight but he doesn't have plans for next Tuesday. All our lives are structured by time—I might commit several years of my life to getting a degree, or I might try to work my way up through the ranks at McDonald's, but either way this plan is structured by time. Although Caesar doesn't discuss the future as explicitly as Cornelius (after all, his language skills aren't as developed), I think that towards the end of the movie he does show similar abilities in forward-planning. When he escapes from the primate sanctuary, he goes to Will's house to steal some canisters of the new ‘smart drug', then returns to the sanctuary and releases it to increase the intelligence of the other apes. Only once they're as smart as him does he lead them all to freedom. This requires foresight that, as far as we know, no other animals possess and in
Rise of the Planet of
the Apes
, we see the other apes develop this previously uniquely human trait.

What about looking back in time? Returning to the dispute between Cornelius and Zira, the subject is whether or not Taylor provides proof of Cornelius's theory of evolution. The main conflict between the ape characters in that movie arises because Dr. Zaius insists that this theory of evolution is heresy, mirroring equally absurd creationist debates in some parts of the US and elsewhere.

Regardless of whether either is correct, we should note the remarkable fact that they are having such a dispute about their origins. Human societies have strong senses of their shared history and creation myths seem to be present in every culture we know about. This is simply not found in other animals—just as they don't make a five-year plan for the future, they don't have the animal equivalent of the Book of Genesis or Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Humans are born into a world which already has a history, a shared sense of ‘what we do' and what to use when doing it. The fact that we understand our past and plan for the future means that, unlike other animals, our lives are similar to the narratives that you find in books and movies. In fact, because we're aware of the stories that we're writing with our lives, we're uniquely able to decide what sort of story that should be. This is basically what Heidegger is getting at when he starts talking about ‘being authentic'.