This paper explores the significance of intelligent social behavior among non-human animals for philosophical theories of communication. Using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys as a case study, I argue that interpersonal communication (or what I call “minded communication”) can and does take place in the absence of the production and recognition of communicative intentions. More generally, I argue that evolutionary theory provides good reasons for maintaining that minded communication is both temporally and explanatorily prior to the use of communicative intentions. After developing these negative points about the place of communicative intentions in detail, I provide a novel alternative account according to which minded communication is characterized in terms of patterns of action and response that function to coordinate the representational mental states of agents. I show that an account which centers on patterns of representational coordination of this sort is well suited to capture the theoretical roles associated with minded communication and that it does so in a way that provides a good fit with comparative facts about the presence of minded communication among non-human animals.

中文翻译：

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先于交流意图的交流

本文探讨了非人类动物的智能社会行为对于传播哲学理论的意义。使用黑长尾猴的警报呼叫系统作为案例研究，我认为人际交流（或我所说的“有意识的交流”）可以并且确实在没有交流意图的产生和识别的情况下发生。更一般地说，我认为进化论提供了很好的理由来维持思想交流在时间上和解释上都先于使用交流意图。在详细阐述了这些关于交际意图位置的负面观点之后，我提供了一种新颖的替代解释，根据该解释，有意识的交流以行为模式和反应模式为特征，这些行为和反应的作用是协调代理人的表征心理状态。我表明，以此类表征协调模式为中心的说明非常适合捕捉与思想交流相关的理论作用，并且它以一种与关于思想交流存在于人与人之间的比较事实相吻合的方式进行非人类动物。