Language As Instinct: a Socio-Cultural Perspective (A Review Essay) the Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
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Has the Decline of Violence Reversed Since the Better Angels of Our Nature Was Written?
Has the Decline of Violence Reversed since The Better Angels of Our Nature was Written? Steven Pinker Many journalists, citing recent violence in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, and Ukraine, have asked me whether the decline of violence has gone into reverse since The Better Angels of Our Nature was written. The question betrays the same statistical misconceptions that led me to write Better Angels in the first place. People always think that violence has increased because they reason from memorable examples rather than from global data. If at any time you cherry-pick the most violent place in the world, then you’ll discover that yes, it’s violent. That has nothing to do with overall rates or trends in violence. The basic problem is that journalism is a systematically misleading way to understand the world. News is about things that happen, not about things that don’t happen. You never see a reporter standing on the streets of Angola, Sri Lanka, or Vietnam saying “I’m here reporting that a war has not broken out today.” It’s only by looking at data on the world as a whole that you get an accurate picture of the trends. Objectively, there has indeed been an uptick in war deaths in 2013 compared to 2012 (it’s too early to have data for 2014), mostly due to the war in Syria. But the overall level of deaths is still far below those of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when the world was a far more dangerous place. Even putting aside the obvious examples (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 3- million-death war in Vietnam), one sees that the conflicts of today are far less damaging than those of past decades. -
Structures in the Mind: Chap18
© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa- tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected]. edu. This book was set in Times by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Structures in the mind : essays on language, music, and cognition in honor of Ray Jackendoff / edited by Ida Toivonen, Piroska Csúri, and Emile van der Zee. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-02942-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Cognitive science. 3. Neurolinguistics. 4. Cognition. I. Jackendoff, Ray, 1945- honoree. II. Toivonen, Ida. III. Csúri, Piroska. IV. Zee, Emile van der. P37.S846 2015 401 ′ .9–dc23 2015009287 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 The Friar’s Fringe of Consciousness Daniel Dennett Ray Jackendoff’s Consciousness and the Computational Mind (1987) was decades ahead of its time, even for his friends. Nick Humphrey, Marcel Kinsbourne, and I formed with Ray a group of four disparate thinkers about consciousness back around 1986, and, usually meeting at Ray’s house, we did our best to understand each other and help each other clarify the various difficult ideas we were trying to pin down. Ray’s book was one of our first topics, and while it definitely advanced our thinking on various lines, I now have to admit that we didn’t see the importance of much that was expressed therein. -
The Adaptive Significance of Human Language
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Senior Thesis Projects, 1993-2002 College Scholars 2000 The Adaptive Significance of Human Language Nathan Oesch Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_interstp2 Recommended Citation Oesch, Nathan, "The Adaptive Significance of Human Language" (2000). Senior Thesis Projects, 1993-2002. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_interstp2/52 This Project is brought to you for free and open access by the College Scholars at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Thesis Projects, 1993-2002 by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Adaptive Significance of Human Language Nathan Oesch Department of Psychology University of Tennessee, Knoxville noesch @ utk. edu Abstract Many experts have argued that human language is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory. According to conventional Darwinian explanations, specific traits evolved among species according to gradual and incremental genetic changes, each of which that were in some way so favorable to the survival and reproduction of ancestral generations that they were ultimately preserved within successive generations of those species. Human language, it has been said, is simply to complex to be explained as a result of Darwinian explanations, since each successive step in the evolution of language would confer no obvious survival benefits to its recipients. According to this idea, language is such an "all-or none system," that it could not possibly have existed in any immediately beneficial intermediate forms and thus could not have evolved according to conventional Darwinian modes of explanation. -
Balanced Biosocial Theory for the Social Sciences
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-2004 Balanced biosocial theory for the social sciences Michael A Restivo University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Restivo, Michael A, "Balanced biosocial theory for the social sciences" (2004). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 1635. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/5jp5-vy39 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BALANCED BIOSOCIAL THEORY FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES by Michael A. Restivo Bachelor of Arts IPIoridkijSjlarrhcIJiuAHsrsity 2001 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillm ent ofdœnxpnnnnenkfbrthe Master of Arts Degree in Sociology Departm ent of Sociology College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas M ay 2004 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1422154 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. -
Throughout His Career, Whether Studying Language
Throughout his career, whether studying language, advocating a realistic biology of mind, or examining the human condition through the lens of humanistic Enlightenment ideas, psychologist Steven Pinker has embraced and championed a naturalistic understanding of the universe and the computational theory of mind. He is perhaps the first internationally recognized public intellectual whose recognition is based on the advocacy of empirically based thinking about language, mind, and human nature. “Just as Darwin made it possible for a thoughtful observer of the natural world to do without creationism,” he says, “Turing and others made it possible for a thoughtful observer of the cognitive world to do without spiritualism.” In the debate about AI risk, he argues against prophecies of doom and gloom, noting that they spring from the worst of our psychological biases—exemplified particularly by media reports: “Disaster scenarios are cheap to play out in the probability-free zone of our imaginations, and they can always find a worried, technophobic, or morbidly fascinated audience.” Hence, over the centuries: Pandora, Faust, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Frankenstein, the population bomb, resource depletion, HAL, suitcase nukes, the Y2K bug, and engulfment by nanotechnological grey goo. “A characteristic of AI dystopias,” he points out, “is that they project a parochial alpha-male psychology onto the concept of intelligence. History does turn up the occasional megalomaniacal despot or psychopathic serial killer, but these are products of a history of natural selection shaping testosterone-sensitive circuits in a certain species of primate, not an inevitable feature of intelligent systems.” In the present essay, he applauds Wiener’s belief in the strength of ideas vis-à-vis the encroachment of technology. -
The Strange Survival and Apparent Resurgence of Sociobiology
This is a repository copy of The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/118157/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Dennis, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-4625-1123 (2018) The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. History of the Human Sciences, 31 (1). pp. 19-35. ISSN 0952- 6951 https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695117735966 Dennis A. The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. History of the Human Sciences. 2018;31(1):19-35. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695117735966. Article available under the terms of the CC- BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology Abstract A recent dispute between Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson concerning fundamental concepts in sociobiology is examined. -
Richard Dawkins
RICHARD DAWKINS HOW A SCIENTIST CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK Reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers Edited by ALAN GRAFEN AND MARK RIDLEY 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2006 with the exception of To Rise Above © Marek Kohn 2006 and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude © Philip Pullman 2006 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should -
A Critical Review of Three Theories for Music's Origin a Thesis Presented
A Critical Review of Three Theories for Music’s Origin A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Kevin W. Kondik March 2010 © 2010 Kevin W. Kondik. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled A Critical Review of Three Theories for Music’s Origin by KEVIN W. KONDIK has been approved for the Department of Philosophy and the College of Arts and Sciences by Arthur Zucker Associate Professor of Philosophy Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT KONDIK, KEVIN, W.,, M.A., March 2010, Philosophy A Critical Review of Three Theories for Music’s Origin (82 pp.) Director of Thesis: Arthur Zucker This thesis compares three theories which debate whether or not the trait of music is constitutive of a biological adaptation. Steven Pinker advances a view that music cannot be an adaptation because making or responding to music utilizes faculties which evolved for other reasons. On the next view, Geoffrey Miller claims that music is a sexually selected trait which evolved primarily to seduce potential mates. Finally, Ian Cross argues that music can be seen as an extension of juvenile behaviors into adulthood and has efficacy in the consolidation of bonds within a group. I conclude that all three theories are insufficient as an explanation of why music evolved in the hominid lineage. The main reasons why these theories all fail is they all rely upon a speculative historical reconstructions and imprecise definitions of music. -
Biological Pluralism in Service of Biolinguistics
Biological pluralism in service of biolinguistics Pedro Tiago Martins1, Evelina Leivada2, Antonio Ben´ıtez-Burraco3, and Cedric Boeckx2,4 1Pompeu Fabra University 2University of Barcelona 3University of Huelva 4Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies Abstract The aim of this chapter is to offer a fresh perspective on what has come to be known as biolinguistics, a term which, in our view, encompasses all research and methods devoted to the unveiling of the biological foundations of human language. More specifically, our aim is twofold: first, we point out some of the shortcomings of the naive view of biology that has been in place in linguistics since the 1950s and 1960s, namely the notion of the faculty of language as a novelty and the sharp distinction between I- and E-language, which, we contend, has not provided any major insights into the biological nature of language; second, we offer some of the insights from biology, which may provide the theoretical and methodological framework which allows for a truly biological study of language, and thus for a re-hauled biolinguistics Chomsky (1957). 1 Introduction The first sign of a biological orientation for the study of language was the work of Noam Chomsky and Eric Lenneberg, among just a few others, who in the 1950s and 1960s rejected the structuralist linguistics of the time, believing instead that languages, despite meticulously described, were not explained as a natural phenomenon. The overarching assumption of their work is that 1 languages are not learned in the conventional sense of the term (i.e. the way one would learn a craft or how to play a musical instrument), but rather a product of a biologically determined and biologically constrained capacity of humans, located in the brain, which must be innate. -
This Is a Review Article on Jackendoff's Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation (Henceforth, LM)
REVIEW ARTICLE Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation, by Ray Jackendoff, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992, ix+200pp. Reviewed by MITSUAKI YONEYAMA, Seikei University* 0. Introduction This is a review article on Jackendoff's Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation (henceforth, LM). LM is a collection of papers on semantics and cognition originally written independently within the framework of Conceptual Semantics. There is a certain amount of duplication in their contents, although we can see a consis- tent line of argument. And LM is not a book intended to present an alternative solution to a specific problem. In this paper, I will summa- rize the main points of LM and try to analyze verbs of motion within Conceptual Semantics. 1. Background LM is Jackendoff's fourth book on semantics and cognition. It is in order here to look back at his three previous books because most of the papers in LM are based on his previous books. In Semantics and Cognition (1983) (henceforth, SC), he regards semantics as independent of syntax. In his framework, syntax, seman- tics, and phonology each have their own structure and function. In SC, he mentions four requirements on semantic theory which have * This is a revised version of a paper read at the meeting of Tokyo University English Linguistic Circle in January 1994. Sections 4.1-4.3 are based on a part of a paper read at the symposium on lexical semantics in the 65th General Meeting of the English Literary Society of Japan held at the University of Tokyo in May 1993. -
The Language Instinct Steven Pinker June 18
The Language Instinct Steven Pinker June 18 - June 26, 2004 Mans uniqeuness in the universe has during recent history suffered many setbacks, the latest of them being the contention that not even his language ability sets him apart from his biological cousins - the Apes. Pinker easily debunks such claims as so much media- hype and wishful thinking. Clearly if the apes would have the potential for language, they would have discovered it and exploited it for their own purposes a long time ago. In fact in actual experiments deaf observers noted far fewer incidents of true handsigning then the more guillable normal-hearers, who charitably tended to interpret any movement of the hands as imbued with intentional symbolism. True, apes do communicate with each other, by sound as well as signs in the wild, but the purported incidents of language use, were invariably repetitive and shallow, no match to the sophistication of toddlers. Man learns to walk and talk without any explict instruction. So remarkable and so universal is the effortlessness of the acquisition that it is natural to consider it as instinctive. When it comes to locomotion such claims are uncontroversial, while when loquaciousness is concerned it is more disputable. Pinker presents as evidence for an innate language ability the phenomena of pidgin and creole. When people are thrown together with no common language, a pidgin inevitably emerges. This is a primitive and provisional language, using tidbits of vocabulary from ambient tongues pasted together using a rudimentary make- shift syntax. Young children exposed to pidgin instinctively make a real language out of it, imposing syntactic rules and thus rendering it expressive. -
May 2020 CURRICULUM VITAE Ray Jackendoff Center for Cognitive Studies Department of Philosophy Tufts University Medford, MA
May 2020 CURRICULUM VITAE Ray Jackendoff Center for Cognitive Studies Department of Philosophy Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 USA Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 Telephone: 617-484-5394 E-mail: ray (dot)jackendoff(at)tufts(dot)edu Born: Chicago, IL, 23 January 1945 Academic training 1961-65 Swarthmore College (mathematics honors) B.A. 1965 1965-69 M.I.T. (linguistics) Ph.D. 1969 Thesis advisor: Noam Chomsky Teaching 1969-70 UCLA Lecturer 1971-73 Brandeis University Assistant Professor 1973-78 Brandeis University Associate Professor 1978-2006 Brandeis University Professor (Chair of Linguistics Program, 1972-1981) (Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, 1981-1992, 2002-2006) 2006- Brandeis University Professor Emeritus 2005-2017 Tufts University Seth Merrin Professor of Humanities (Co-director, Center for Cognitive Studies) 2018- Tufts University Seth Merrin Professor Emeritus 1969 (summer) University of Illinois (LSA Linguistic Institute) 1974 (summer) University of Massachusetts, Amherst (LSA Linguistic Institute) 1980 (summer) University of New Mexico (LSA Linguistic Institute) 1987 University of Arizona (Visiting Professor) 1989 (summer) University of Arizona (LSA Linguistic Institute) 1996 (summer) Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania 1999 (summer) University of Illinois (LSA Linguistic Institute) 2003 (summer) Michigan State University (Sapir Professor, LSA Linguistic Institute) 1 Research 1966 (summer) Technical Operations,