Through a collaboration with the Lichtenberg-Kolleg and with funding from the University of Göttingen, a junior research group on philosophical aspects of primate cognition was established in 2015. For a period of two years, the fellows will study primate cognition from the perspective of the humanities and work on bridging the gaps between the disciplines and different lines of thought.

The complex social environments of human and nonhuman primates have long been a focus of the natural sciences. Its cognitive underpinnings and the consequences for human evolution have gained traction through the advent of the fields of Animal Cognition and Cognitive Neurosciences.  Likewise, in the past years we have seen a surge in interest in Animal Studies in the humanities (“animal turn”), which will feed back on the discourse in the natural sciences. Furthermore, many of the themes presently addressed in the cognitive sciences effectively constitute old philosophical questions, with important implications for ethical considerations in primate research.

Teaming up with the researchers of the Leibniz ScienceCampus, the fellows of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg junior research group Primate Cognition will take an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective to contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of intelligence. The questions posed and the answers collected by this kind of research will have strong repercussions for the way we conceive the differences between human and nonhuman primates, and ultimately, what it means to be human.

Due to the general relevance of this research and to forge ties between the disciplines, the fellows organize a number of events targeted at an interdisciplinary as well as general audience.