Language Is Not an Instinct
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Outline of Michael Tomasello, a Natural History of Human Morality (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)
Outline of Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). John Protevi LSU HNRS 2030.2: “Evolution and Biology of Morality” I Chapter 1: The Interdependence Hypothesis A) Parallels of natural and moral cooperation 1) Natural cooperation (a) Altruistic helping (b) Mutualist collaboration 2) Human morality (a) Parallel human morality types: (i) Altruistic helping via compassion, concern, benevolence: ethic of the good / sympathy (ii) Mutualist collaboration via fairness: ethic of right / justice (b) Simplicity vs complexity (i) Sympathetic altruism is simpler and more basic: (i) Pure cooperation (ii) Proximate mechanisms: based in mammalian parental care / kin selection (ii) Fair collaboration is more complex: interactions of multiple individuals w/ different interests (i) “cooperativization of competition” (ii) Proximate mechanisms: moral emotions / judgments 1. Deservingness 2. Punishment: feelings of resentment / indignation toWard Wrong-doers 3. Accountability: judgments of responsibility, obligation, etc B) Goal of the book: evolutionary account of emergence of human morality of sympathy and fairness 1) Morality is “form of cooperation” (a) Emerging via human adaptation to neW social forms required by neW ecological / economic needs (b) Bringing With it “species-unique proximate mechanisms” or psychological processes (i) cognition (ii) social interaction (iii) self-regulation 2) Based on these assumptions, tWo goals: (a) Specify hoW human cooperation differs from other primates -
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. -
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. -
Empathy and Altruism. the Hypothesis of Somasia
A Clinical Perspective on “Theory of Mind”, Empathy and Altruism The Hypothesis of Somasia Jean-Michel Le Bot PhD, University Rennes 2, Rennes doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-lebo [email protected] ABSTRACT The article starts by recalling the results of recent experiments that have revealed that, to a certain extent, the “ability to simultaneously distinguish between different possible perspec- tives on the same situation” (Decety and Lamm 2007) exists in chimpanzees. It then describes a case study of spatial and temporal disorientation in a young man following a cerebral lesion in order to introduce the hypothesis that this ability is based on a specific process of somasia. By permitting self-other awareness, this process also provides subjects with anchor points in time and space from which they can perform the mental decentring that enables them to adopt various perspectives. This process seems to be shared by humans and certain animal species and appears to be subdivided into the processing of the identity of experienced situa- tions, on the one hand, and of their unity on the other. The article concludes with a critique of overly reflexive and “representational” conceptions of theory of mind which do not distin- guish adequately between the ability to “theorise” about the mental states of others and the self-other awareness ability (which is automatic and non-reflexive). Keywords: Social cognition, theory of mind, empathy, altruism, neuropsychology, somasia, humans, animals, mental states, decentring. 1. INTRODUCTION In their seminal paper published in 1978, Premack and Woodruff stated that “an individual has a theory of mind [ToM] if he imputes mental states to himself and others” (Premack and Woodruff 1978). -
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. -
Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems
UC Riverside Cliodynamics Title Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/981121t8 Journal Cliodynamics, 3(1) Authors Richerson, Peter Henrich, Joe Publication Date 2012 DOI 10.21237/C7clio3112453 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Cliodynamics: the Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems Peter Richerson University of California-Davis Joseph Henrich University of British Columbia Human social life is uniquely complex and diverse. Much of that complexity and diversity arises from culturally transmitted ideas, values and skills that underpin the operation of social norms and institutions that structure our social life. Considerable theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to the role of cultural evolutionary processes in the evolution of social norms and institutions. The most persistent controversy has been over the role of cultural group selection and gene- culture coevolution in early human populations during Pleistocene. We argue that cultural group selection and related cultural evolutionary processes had an important role in shaping the innate components of our social psychology. By the Upper Paleolithic humans seem to have lived in societies structured by institutions, as do modern populations living in small-scale societies. The most ambitious attempts to test these ideas have been the use of experimental games in field settings to document human similarities and differences on theoretically interesting dimensions. These studies have documented a huge range of behavior across populations, although no societies so far examined follow the expectations of selfish rationality. -
Michael Tomasello [March, 2020]
CURRICULUM VITAE MICHAEL TOMASELLO [MARCH, 2020] Department of Psychology & Neuroscience Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Duke University; Durham, NC; 27708; USA Deutscher Platz 6; D-04103 Leipzig, GERMANY E-MAIL: [email protected] E-MAIL: [email protected] EDUCATION: DUKE UNIVERSITY B.A. Psychology, 1972 UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA Ph.D. Experimental Psychology, 1980 UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG Doctorate, honoris causa, 2016 EMPLOYMENT: 1980 - 1998 Assistant-Associate-Full Professor of Psychology; Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, EMORY UNIVERSITY 1982 - 1998 Affiliate Scientist, Psychobiology, YERKES PRIMATE CENTER 1998 - 2018 Co-Director, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY 1999 - 2018 Honorary Professor, Dept of Psychology, University of Leipzig 2001 - 2018 Co-Director, WOLFGANG KÖHLER PRIMATE RESEARCH CENTER 2016 - James Bonk Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, DUKE UNIVERSITY - Director of Developmental Psychology Program - Secondary App’ts: Philosophy, Evol. Anthropology, Linguistics 2016 - Faculty of Center for Developmental Science, UNC AD HOC: 1987 - 1988 Visiting Scholar, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1994 (summer) Instructor, INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE INSTITUTE 1994 (summer) Visiting Fellow, BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1995 (spring) Visiting Professor, UNIVERSITY OF ROME 1996 (spring) Visiting Professor, THE BRITISH ACADEMY 1998 (spring) Visiting Scholar, MPI FOR PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 1999 (summer) Instructor, INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE INSTITUTE 2001 (winter) Instructor, LOT (DUTCH GRADUATE -
Understanding and Sharing Intentions: the Origins of Cultural Cognition
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2005) 28, 000–000 Printed in the United States of America Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike Moll Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with oth- ers and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children’s skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. -
Language Is Instinct: a New Paradigm in Linguistics
LANGUAGE IS INSTINCT: A NEW PARADIGM IN LINGUISTICS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph by ALAN BELK In partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September, 1998 O Alan Belk 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services seMces bibliographiques 39!5 WeUingtori Street 395. rue Wellington OttawaON K1AW Ottawa ON K1A ûN4 canada canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distn'bute or sell reproduire, prêter, disûi'buer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nIm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otheNVIse de celle-ci ne doivent Seimprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation, LANGUAGE IS INSTINCT: A NEW PARADIGM IN LINGUISTICS Alan Belk Advisor: University of Guelph 1998 Professor Michael Ruse If we can idencify a science, descnbe its paradigm, anomalies and research questions, recognize a cnsis or impending crisis and a cornpeting paradigm, then a revolution as described by Thomas Kuhn (1970) is taking place. Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creares Language is, according to its Preface, intended to explain the current state of knowledge about language. -
Beyond Grammar Linguistics in Language and Writing Courses
Access Provided by Queens College (CUNY) at 08/21/11 6:51PM GMT Beyond Grammar Linguistics in Language and Writing Courses Ann Evans Over the past half century, traditional rule- based prescriptive/proscriptive teaching methods have been largely discarded. Prescriptive pedagogy had seemed so simple — tell the students what to do and have them do it — but students found it boring, and researchers and teachers thought there could be a better way. Usage rules like “don’t split an infinitive” and “never say ‘ain’t’ ” ultimately lose their integrity anyway for two reasons: (1) language is always changing, and (2) commonly accepted usage often does not follow the rules. Certain prescriptive aids are still widely and justifiably used but are no longer the main emphasis in the classroom. Noam Chomsky revolutionized the way we look at language with his book Syntactic Structures (1957). Researchers have since enhanced, chal- lenged, and expanded upon Chomsky’s work in the area of syntax, and still others have advanced our knowledge in related fields such as sociolinguistics, semantics, psycholinguistics, and historical linguistics. The results of this extensive research have not been included in general curricula, nor have they become common knowledge within the larger population. In 1964, M. A. K. Halliday, Angus McIntosh, and Peter Strevens argued that the locus for a more ample, holistic study of language should be the secondary school: “Is our language so poor and uninteresting a thing that we put it in the school curriculum only in order to fight for its lost causes, to pass pathetic judgments on some of its marginal features? We should be Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture Volume 11, Number 2 doi 10.1215/15314200-1218067 © 2011 by Duke University Press 285 ashamed to let anyone leave our secondary schools knowing so little of how their language works and of the part it plays in our lives” (230). -
Five-Year-Olds Understand Fair As Equal in a Mini-Ultimatum Game
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116 (2013) 324–337 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp Five-year-olds understand fair as equal in a mini-ultimatum game ⇑ Martina Wittig a,b, Keith Jensen a,c, , Michael Tomasello a a Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany b Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute for Psychology, University of Kassel, D-34121 Kassel, Germany c School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK article info abstract Article history: In studies of children’s resource distribution, it is almost always the Received 14 February 2012 case that ‘‘fair’’ means an equal amount for all. In the mini-ultima- Revised 6 June 2013 tum game, players are confronted with situations in which fair does not always mean equal, and so the recipient of an offer needs to take into account the alternatives the proposer had available to her or Keywords: him. Because of its forced-choice design, the mini-ultimatum game Ultimatum game Fairness measures sensitivity to unfair intentions in addition to unfair out- Inequity aversion comes. In the current study, we gave a mini-ultimatum game to Punishment 5-year-old children, allowing us to determine the nature of fairness Moral development sensitivity at a period after false belief awareness is typically passed Social decision making and before formal schooling begins. The only situation in which Norms responders rejected offers was when the proposer could have made Sharing an equal offer. -
Is There a Law Instinct?
Washington University Law Review Volume 87 Issue 2 2009 Is There a Law Instinct? Michael D. Guttentag Loyola Law School Los Angeles Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview Part of the Jurisprudence Commons Recommended Citation Michael D. Guttentag, Is There a Law Instinct?, 87 WASH. U. L. REV. 269 (2009). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol87/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IS THERE A LAW INSTINCT? MICHAEL D. GUTTENTAG ABSTRACT The widely held view is that legal systems develop in response to purposeful efforts to achieve economic, political, or social objectives. An alternative view is that reliance on legal systems to organize social activity is an integral part of human nature, just as language and morality now appear to be directly shaped by innate predispositions. This Article formalizes and presents evidence in support of the claim that humans innately turn to legal systems to organize social behavior. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 270 I. THE LAW INSTINCT HYPOTHESIS ......................................................... 276 A. On the Three Essential Features of a Legal System ................ 277 1. Distinguishing Legal Systems from Other Types of Normative Behavior......................................................... 279 2. Distinguishing the Law Instinct Hypothesis from Related Claims ................................................................ 280 3. The Normativity of Law ................................................... 281 4. The Union of Primary Rules and Secondary Rules ......... 282 5.