http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture

Wikipedia: culture is a process which  '' involves the social transmittance of a novel behavior, both among peers and between generations.[1] This behavior is shared by a group of animals, but not necessarily between separate groups of the same species.''

If one accept  the above definition of culture then many animals have cultures. Aristotle was the first to provide evidence of social learning in the songs of birds.  Darwin was also the first to suggest what became known as social learning in attempting to explain the transmission of an adaptive pattern of behavior through a population of honey bees. 

'' In 1948, Imanishi and his colleagues began studying macaques across Japan, and began to notice differences among the different groups of primates, both in social patterns and feeding behavior.[20] In one area, paternal care was the social norm, while this behavior was absent elsewhere. One of the groups commonly dug up and ate the tubers and bulbs of several plants, while monkeys from other groups would not even put these in their mouths. Imanishi had reasoned that, "if one defines culture as learned by offspring from parents, then differences in the way of life of members of the same species belonging to different social groups could be attributed to culture."[20] Following this logic, the differences Imanishi and his colleagues observed among the different groups of macaques may suggest that they had arisen as a part of the groups' unique cultures. The most famous of these eating behaviors was observed on the island of Koshima, where one young female was observed carrying soiled sweet potatoes to a small stream, where she proceeded to wash off all of the sand and dirt before eating. This behavior was then observed in one of the monkey's playmates, then her mother and a few other playmates. The potato-washing eventually spread throughout the whole macaque colony''

'' Many insects, for example have been observed demonstrating various forms of teaching in order to obtain food. Ants, for example, will guide each other to food sources through a process called "tandem running," in which an ant will guide a companion ant to a source of food.[15] It has been suggested that the "pupil" ant is able to learn this route in order to obtain food in the future or teach the route to other ants.[15] There have been various recent studies that show that cetaceans are able to transmit culture through teaching as well. Killer whales are known to "intentionally beach" themselves in order to catch and eat pinnipeds who are breeding on the shore.[16] Mother killer whales teach their young to catch pinnipeds by pushing them onto the shore and encouraging them to attack and eat the prey.[16] Because the mother killer whale is altering her behavior in order to help her offspring learn to catch prey, this is evidence of teaching and cultural learning.[16] The intentional beaching of the killer whales, along with other cetacean behaviors such as the variations of songs among humpback whales and the sponging technique used by the bottlenose dolphin to obtain food, provide substantial support for the idea of cetacean cultural transmission.''

I agree in this examples, and this seems to me a non refutable proof of animal culture, but I was looking for a step further than the knowledge transmision...

In the last days I have found a very interesting definition of culture , by Charles Herrman:

"Culture is the totality of acts and usages that suggest or reveal to a current or future audience what the actor(s) believe constitutes a meaningful expression of, or addition to, a shared heritage with respect to one or more constituent traditions."

This particular one has the important word "believe".... This does not make a necesary fact for the culture member to be aware of his own membership status, (many humans don´t), but it does imply what in my point of view is more important:  Awareness of being an actor, and showing others.

Can we say that animals fullfill this?

And if we cannot say so, for the moment, with a solid base:

How can we investigate on this path?

( I upload file with the analitic overview of the definition above, by the same author. For what respects the following discussion, may we take it as the "definition of culture" to avoid lack of precission in arguments and make it easy to understand each other )

It obviously depends on your definition of culture. While it seems undeniable to me that animals have some kind of culture (following the basic definitions that handles anthropology), the concept of culture itself serves in the first place to distinguish nature (as something not-human) from culture (as the product of human work). Of course, this distinction as such would be completely meaningless (as it only designates that humans are human and their direct environment product of their work) - so the next step is more interesting: the distinction nature-culture is reproduced inside the "sphere of culture", relegating certain human groups (barbarians, children, women...) to a position closer to nature in order to make them subjects of a task of civilization that would pull them closer to culture (which, of course, is impossible - therefore the very human need to kill people because of some socially constructed category that applies to them). This would be my short and flawed reading of Horkheimer and Adorno - and an interesting discussion that was going on within feminist anthropology in the 70s.

You should see the interesting little book by John T Bonner, "The Evolution of Cuture in Animals." Published by Princeton University Press in 1983.

It seems most people are addressing the definitional issue and debate on whether nonhuman animal culture exists and if so what is it. However, one part of your question interests me more - culture as a mediating factor inter-species communication. As my main focus is human-primate interaction, I'd argue that yes culture (if a shared set of environments, experiences, and knowledge can constitute culture) can serve as a bridge for inter-species communication BUT ONLY IF it is shared, which requires in-depth experience of one species with and IN the "culture" of the other. This can primarily be seen in work with human-enculturated apes. This moves beyond questions of what is culture & do animals have it to questions such as how is culture used/shared.

Re: definitions such as the one you note above, by referring to concepts such as belief that really require language to express (or are at best extremely difficult to explore and measure without language) these definitions a priori limit culture to beings with language to assess and describe the internal mental states of others (i.e., humans).

Rafael,

There are certainly uniquely human type of cultures and I also agree that the difference between non-human and human culture is that human consciousness is a mammalian consciousness which is splitted between a regular mammalian awareness of the here and now and theatrical narrative consciousness. An human can immediatly distinguish when another human act for doing actions or act as an actor, a play intended for an audience.  I think this capacity is the critical capacity that lauch a particular tribe of primate on the cultural path towards the human tribe.   I follow Mithen in the Singing Neanthertal, that it began with a new type of leadership in some primate tribed based on a singing dancing practices for emotional control.  I think that this cultural leadership practice has allowed a conscious access to what I call the self-enact control room which existed in mammals and more developed in primates but which is mostly unconsciously access for sensory-motor integration of the mammalian action control in the here and now.  What was implicitly used could then be used to access to the fundamental narrative decomposition of behavior in order to culturally construct behavior in narrative world.  I can elaborate but I will stop the story there.  

In de oratio to the dignity of Man, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola said:

At last, the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom He could give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate image, He set him in the middle of the world and thus spoke to him:

``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.''

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/

Dear Rafael, here is an attachment please go through it. It will help.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/animal-culture-list-130425.htm

We can safely claim in favor of culture(s) among animals with one proviso: not anthropologizing"the concept of culture.  Quite on the contrary (I have a couple of papers on this issue), consists rather, in naturalizing the very concept of culture.

As Rafael rightly says, there are a few important scientific trends working in this question.

Can you cite them Carlos eduardo? This lines are of my interest.

if you can post the papers youre talking about maybe we can discuss further on it!

Thanks

Dear Rafael, this is one of the articles:

I apologize because it is in Spanish (particularly for those friends here in RG who do not read Spanish).

The other one is:

I love the issue raised by you! 

http://critica.cl/filosofia/la-cultura-no-es-humana

http://critica.cl/reflexion/¿como-puede-ser-la-biologia-la-nueva-base-de-la-ciencia

Ok, lets move forward.

How it is  possible to asses conscious agency in non human animals?

For example cheney and seyfarth (1990 how monkeys see the world) seem to get a lot of information about what ´appears to happen´ studying the utterances of the monkeys, but it seems to me that it is only an external inference. The key point is to (as Joshua suggests) share some of this potential culture with the subject of study so they can "tell us" what´s their point of view. From this starting point, we should assume that we can only know cultures that can be, in some way, correlated with ours....

This is a fact in anthropology, where the scientist has to asume some emic behavior to at least establish a minimun contact, necesary to extract the desired information, and give an etic explanation. So for the moment we don´t need more (nor less) than what we need to study i.e. Kwakiutl people to have success in our animal culture research.

The job starts from investigating the animal simbolic interests to be able to use them as a way of comunicating

I dont know if I am making myself clear... Am I talking about impossible things?

The second order emergence concept is important to give the next step , and I have real doubts about some of its assesments about the limits of animal societies, based on the idea that "they are just not conscious". What do you think about wether or not can we test the animal mind in a way that we can prove that they are (or not) self and other conscious? (speaking in a secondary level)

We are the only animal which can build models of the world.  This special capacity we have to create and communicate such models is built upon our other animal mechanisms which we share with other animals.  Our consciousness is primarily the same as that of our primate ancestor and secondarily uniquely human.  The mechanisms allowing me to sense pains when my joints are too constrainted, or my skin is scratch or burn are exactly the same as those of my mammals ancestors and there is no reason to suspect that the consciousness of pain of humans should be different than the consciousness of pain of these animals.   We have to always remember that science can study these mechanisms but cannot find any reasons within itself why an experience of pain be associated with these mechanisms.  The experience of pain is part of what it is to be an animal and it is not part of the mecanisms sustaining the life of an animal.  Our science exists as part of the human experience but human expereience cannot be formaly explained within our science.  We can explain all that is related to the mechanisms allowing the experience of pain without saying anything about this experience.  Consciousness is the sum of experience of an animal and absolutely none of that can be undertand by science.  All that science can analysed are what can be externally observed.  When I observe another human being screaming from pain, I know and assume that this human being is like me and so can enact by sympathy a feeling of pain based on the outer expression of pain.  But this is not science.   Science is a method of producing models of relations between observables.  The mechanisms sustaining pain can be expressed using such models but the experience of pain is not what can be externally observed but what it is to be such body with such mechanism.   It is entirely different domain of existences: the model exist into a scientific world of communication about observable relations and the second is not knowledge  but a form of existence.  So trying to test the existence of consciousness from the observations of whatever can be observed is not going to work: neither for animals nor humans.  It is the simplest and most natural capacity we have to detect pain in other but it is totally impossible to scientifically test this.

So you mean that is not posible to prove that we have consciousness, we just feel it in ourselves and we infer it in the other humans because they are similar to us.

I understood you well?... It sounds like a kind of cognitive nihilism!!!!

So how can we say that human secondary level is unique?... we just feel it? we infere it from the results of this secondaryness (institutions, countries, complex societies)?

By the way, there is no prove wether or not other animals can do so (feel conscious or atribute consciousness to their relatives). Departing from there, we are in a tecnic draw with them. Or may be they could be in advantage, because they could also include us in their consciousness-holder beings sphere (i.e. pet dogs), in oposition with what we do. 

Im also interested in what you said: "The experience of pain is part of what it is to be an animal and it is not part of the mecanisms sustaining the life of an animal..."

The clear adaptative origin of feeling pain (to avoid damage) seems to me as "mecanism of sustaining life" as traits like  performing the ATP-routes in cells or having legs to move. 

There must be a perspective were we can study them all, or  maybe not?

Tough research!

Rafael,

You understood me well.  What I am saying is not complicated nor original.   Why do you think that some cognitive science are talking about ''the hard problem of consciousness'', of the ''subject object dichotomy'', the ''mind body problems'', the ''bifurcation of nature'' .  We think about the difficulties of these problems since the time the multi-facet of the same problem that was created by   Descartes by separating the world in what can be modeled (res extensia) and what cannot ''res cogito''.  Even though many later philosophers and scientists denied  this separation of the world but so far the separation is an absolute necessity of modeling because modeling is about relations among existing things and cannot deal with what is existence.  What is like to be me, you is not part of science and cannot be in principle by the limitation of what a model is.  

Asking for a proof, a test of consciousness as you did pre-supposed that consciousness can be modeled.  A test pre-supposed that a concept or model of what is going to be tested exist.  But it does not exist such a test, nor a model.  You might be convinced that such model may be discovered in the future.   

Yes it is evident that feeling pain is usefull so I am aware of my body and so control it so that it does not get damaged.  But the same argument could be provided for putting sensors in joints of a robot and feedback mechanisms.  You will notice that the robot feels no pain.  Equipped with these sensors and feedback loops, it simply avoid the position where too much strains/pressure are present in the joints.  And on the question of testing the consciousness of machines nobody so far came up with a test that we all agree.  Turing suggests a totally subjective test.  This machine is intelligent because it answer intelligently.  How do you determine this?  As you do with people, you ask questions and if you find the answers as pertinent then  you naturally infer that the person is intelligent.  The test tries to test intelligence without having to define what intelligence is and without defining how the human participant come up with such evaluation.  We are not in science anymore.  It is not to say that this approach might not be practical and effective but it is not science.  We are elsewhere.

How can you ,then, affirm that "Our consciousness is primarily the same as that of our primate ancestor and secondarily uniquely human."?

Dear Rafael,

Our consciousness is the way of being of our type of body and our body is 99% similar to our primate ancestor.  If a bonobo burn his hand the experience is probably very similar to our experience given that the body mechanism involves are more or less the same.  When the bonobo feel hungry it is probably a similar experience than our experience of feeling hungry.   Primatologists have studied in detail social life of primates and found similrities with our social life.  What is uniquely human experiences such as language communication, the high capacity to learn etc do not remove our primate experience of the here and now but add to it.  We are special type of primate but are primarily primate and so our experience is primarily primate and secondary humans.  THis is the order of evolution.  What come first is primary and what come later is secondary.

may be i didn´t express myself well, I started this interesting conversation with secondary emergence concept.... presumably an only human trait... and with your point of view, it seems to me  that this is not possible to verify or counter-verify.

Rafael,

I revisited all the posts.  On page 1, the conversation focused on what could be an appropriate animal culture concept then on page 2 you moved the discussion on the topic of consciousness and from there the discussion diverged from the topic of the thread.   I personally believe that the study of animal cultures , an animal anthropology is potentially conducive to a lot of insights about what it is it to be humans.  Like all anthropological study, it has to involve a degree of participation into the culture.  One area where this is possible for humans to participate into an animal culture is music.  A few researcher musicians have began to engage into animal music.  Music is a very important form of culture given that it is probably at the root of the primate human cultural transition.  Humans are probably the results of a long cultural journey that began with the leadership of a musical Eve.  A new form of dancing singing for emotional tribe control was probably the first form of religion , the first language and the road that has allowed the control conscious access to the mammalian self-enactment narrative capacities.  All mammals have these self-enactment capacities but they are used for sensory-motor learning and integration without any direct access to it.  The dancing singing social leadership hypothesis could be investigated through trying to engage bonobos through some forms of dancing singing practices.

 In Descent of Man Charles Darwin  wrote:

"When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,--would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,--and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_musicology

Also in Descent of Man, Darwin  suggested that modern music is a “fossil”

of a former adaptation: an earlier hominid communication

system or “musical protolanguage.” This is an

idea of considerable merit that has been rediscovered by

many subsequent authors (e.g., Brown, 2000; Jespersen,

1922; Livingstone, 1973; Mithen, 2005; Richman, 1993)

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Fitch2006MPBioMusic.pdf

A review of The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body by Steven Mithen.

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep03375380.pdf

Lots of new paths.... ill go through ... thanks for retaking the path of the question!