Tactical deception

In contrast to the uncertainty with respect to monkeys, the situation in respect of great apes (or at least chimpanzees) is more clear cut. Chimpanzees emerged as the most frequent users of tactical deception in Byrne s (1995) analysis. In addition, evidence from experimental studies by Povinelli et al. (1990) and O Connell (1996) provide convincing evidence that these great apes at least do possess formal theory of mind. Children are not born with a theory of mind ability, but acquire it at about the age of 4 years (Astington 1994). Some individuals (whom we label autistic) never develop this ability (Leslie 1987, Happe 1994). O Connell (1996) devised a mechanical analogue of the standard false belief test which she applied to chimpanzees as well as normal children and autistic adults. Her results demonstrate rather clearly that chimps do better than autistic adults and about as well as 4-year-old children on the same test. In other words, chimps perform about as well as children who have just acquired basic theory of mind. 

Whiten, A. Byrne, R. (1988). Tactical deception in primates. Behavioural Brain Sciences 11 233-244. 

Social sensitivity The Machiavellian monkey is competing in a world of other Machiavellian monkeys, and success may depend upon an astute and sensitive reading of others behaviour. For example, our corpus of tactical deception indicated that primates are often sensitive to the attentional focus of others, which they both monitor and manipulate, sometimes to the extent of temporarily inhibiting attention to a critical locus so that others will not become aware of this interest (Whiten Byrne 1988a). This capacity has recently been experimentally confirmed (Tomasello et al 1998). 

Whiten A, Byrne RW 1988a Tactical deception in primates. Behav Brain Sci 11 233-273... 

Uses class action litigation and public education to challenge what it calls illegal pricing tactics and deceptive marketing by drug companies and others in the pharmaceutical industry. 

Despite the continuities that I have underlined, there is another point at which Boyle s attitude to form is notably different from that of most alchemical writers, namely in his explicitly polemical use of the distinction between artificial and natural substances as a means of undermining the concept of the substantial form. The basic idea behind Boyle s approach capitalized on the fact that—as the Scholastics habitually put it—art alone could not impose a substantial form. Hence purely artificial bodies, in the Scholastic schema, had no substantial form, but only a superficial forma artificial—a deceptive external appearance of unity. What then if one could produce an artificial imitation of a natural body having all the known qualities of its natural exemplar Would it not follow that the substantial form was a purely otiose concept, since the ersatz product could not be distinguished from the natural except on the gratuitous hypothesis that it lacked the imperceptible substantial form of its natural model More than this, since the qualities of natural bodies were said to flow from the substantial form, how could a Scholastic opponent account for the existence of these very same qualities in a factitious (i.e., artificial) body, since it confessedly lacked a substantial form This approach was a key element to Boyle s assault on substantial forms and his concomitant attempt to demonstrate the mechanical production of forms. If one could eliminate the explanatory power of the substantial form, there was one less obstacle to Boyle s own explanation of qualities—that they derived from the shapes, sizes, and motions of individual corpuscles and from the textures supplied by corpuscular aggregates. Boyle s tactic is spelled out prominently at the very end of The Origin of Forms and Qualities ... 

Electronic countermeasures (ECM) or electronic attack (EA) are those actions taken to reduce the enemy s effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum. These actions may include jamming, electronic deception, false targets, chaff, flares, transmission disruption, and changing tactics. 

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