Remarks on Lorenz and Piaget. How
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Modularity As a Concept Modern Ideas About Mental Modularity Typically Use Fodor (1983) As a Key Touchstone
COGNITIVE PROCESSING International Quarterly of Cognitive Science Mental modularity, metaphors, and the marriage of evolutionary and cognitive sciences GARY L. BRASE University of Missouri – Columbia Abstract - As evolutionary approaches in the behavioral sciences become increasingly prominent, issues arising from the proposition that the mind is a collection of modular adaptations (the multi-modular mind thesis) become even more pressing. One purpose of this paper is to help clarify some valid issues raised by this thesis and clarify why other issues are not as critical. An aspect of the cognitive sciences that appears to both promote and impair progress on this issue (in different ways) is the use of metaphors for understand- ing the mind. Utilizing different metaphors can yield different perspectives and advancement in our understanding of the nature of the human mind. A second purpose of this paper is to outline the kindred natures of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, both of which cut across traditional academic divisions and engage in functional analyses of problems. Key words: Evolutionary Theory, Cognitive Science, Modularity, Metaphors Evolutionary approaches in the behavioral sciences have begun to influence a wide range of fields, from cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Gazzaniga, 1998), to clini- cal psychology (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1997; McGuire and Troisi, 1998), to literary theory (e.g., Carroll, 1999). At the same time, however, there are ongoing debates about the details of what exactly an evolutionary approach – often called evolu- tionary psychology— entails (Holcomb, 2001). Some of these debates are based on confusions of terminology, implicit arguments, or misunderstandings – things that can in principle be resolved by clarifying current ideas. -
In Defense of Massive Modularity
3 In Defense of Massive Modularity Dan Sperber In October 1990, a psychologist, Susan Gelman, and three anthropolo- gists whose interest in cognition had been guided and encouraged by Jacques Mehler, Scott Atran, Larry Hirschfeld, and myself, organized a conference on “Cultural Knowledge and Domain Specificity” (see Hirsch- feld and Gelman, 1994). Jacques advised us in the preparation of the conference, and while we failed to convince him to write a paper, he did play a major role in the discussions. A main issue at stake was the degree to which cognitive development, everyday cognition, and cultural knowledge are based on dedicated do- main-specific mechanisms, as opposed to a domain-general intelligence and learning capacity. Thanks in particular to the work of developmental psychologists such as Susan Carey, Rochel Gelman, Susan Gelman, Frank Keil, Alan Leslie, Jacques Mehler, Elizabeth Spelke (who were all there), the issue of domain-specificity—which, of course, Noam Chomsky had been the first to raise—was becoming a central one in cognitive psychol- ogy. Evolutionary psychology, represented at the conference by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, was putting forward new arguments for seeing human cognition as involving mostly domain- or task-specific evolved adaptations. We were a few anthropologists, far from the main- stream of our discipline, who also saw domain-specific cognitive pro- cesses as both constraining and contributing to cultural development. Taking for granted that domain-specific dispositions are an important feature of human cognition, three questions arise: 1. To what extent are these domain-specific dispositions based on truly autonomous mental mechanisms or “modules,” as opposed to being 48 D. -
Reframing Sacred Values
In Theory Reframing Sacred Values Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod Sacred values differ from material or instrumental values in that they incorporate moral beliefs that drive action in ways dissociated from prospects for success. Across the world, people believe that devotion to essential or core values — such as the welfare of their family and country, or their commitment to religion, honor, and justice — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Counterintuitively, understanding an opponent’s sacred values, we believe, offers surprising opportunities for breakthroughs to peace. Because of the emotional unwillingness of those in conflict situations to negotiate sacred values, conventional wisdom suggests that nego- tiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotia- tions or should try to bypass them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conven- tional wisdom is wrong.In fact, offering to provide material benefits in exchange for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. But we also found that making symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit might open the way to resolving seem- ingly irresolvable conflicts. Scott Atran is research director in anthropology at CNRS — Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, a presidential scholar in sociology at the John Jay College of the City University of New York, and a visiting professor of psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Robert Axelrod is Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding in the department of political science and in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. -
Review of Sperber & Wilson 1986. Relevance: Communication And
Review of Sperber & Wilson 1986. Relevance : Communication and Cognition Daniel Hirst To cite this version: Daniel Hirst. Review of Sperber & Wilson 1986. Relevance : Communication and Cognition. Mind and Language, Wiley, 1989, 4 (1/2), pp.138-146. hal-02552695 HAL Id: hal-02552695 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02552695 Submitted on 23 Apr 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Review of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1986) Relevance : Communication and Cognition. (Blackwell's, Oxford) Daniel Hirst - CNRS Parole et Langage, Université de Provence. One of the examples Sperber & Wilson ask us to consider is the sentence : "It took us a long time to write this book" (p 122) In case the reader misses the point, they explain in the preface that the book developped out of a project begun over ten years ago to write "in a few months" a joint essay on semantics, pragmatics and rhetoric. The resulting book has been long awaited, having been announced as "forthcoming" since at least 1979 under various provisional titles ranging from The Interpretation of Utterances : Semantics, Pragmatics & Rhetoric (Wilson & Sperber 1979) through Foundations of Pragmatic Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1981) to Language and Relevance (Wilson & Sperber 1985). -
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival the Conversation Continues
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival The Conversation Continues Criticism of Beyond Belief by RP Bird It deeply annoys me when the Big Guns of science spout off about protecting science. Like the rest of us have our thumbs up our asses? I'm one of the thousands of Kansans who wrote to the state board of education complaining about the pseudo-science of Intelligent Design. I'm always short of money, but I gave a little to SEA when they started up operations. I've written letters to my state representatives and my congressmen on the subject of science and keeping religious ideas out of science education. So imagine my dismay when I read the NY Times account of the La Jolla meeting. Remember just before the Iraq war, when Middle Eastern experts warned Bush and the rest of us that invading Iraq would be confirmation of the worst fantasies of the jihadist movement? Congratulations, you've just done for science what Bush did for the USA in the Middle East. I can already hear the Christian Right: "We told you, they're out to get us!" Not only that, but you and others want to hurt the cause of science by adopting the methods of the Right? Are you nuts? If you adopt the methods of a religion, you make science into a religion. Also, what's with this "loyalty oath" everyone at the conference had to spout before being heard? No one will listen to them unless they declare the aren't religious? Isn't that what the Christian Right does? You of all people should know that the best defense of science is to do science and teach what you have learned. -
Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science Page 1 of 41
Folk biology and the anthropology of science Page 1 of 41 Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars Scott Atran Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CREA - Ecole Polytechnique) 1 rue Descartes 75005 Paris FRANCE and Institute for Social Research The University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI48106-1248 USA [email protected] Keywords Folk biology, taxonomy, cognitive universals, modularity, evolution, culture, Maya, anthropology Abstract This essay in the "anthropology of science" is about how cognition constrains culture in producing science. The example is folk biology, whose cultural recurrence issues from the very same domain- specific cognitive universals that provide the historical backbone of systematic biology. Humans everywhere think about plants and animals in highly structured ways. People have similar folk- biological taxonomies composed of essence-based species-like groups and the ranking of species into lower- and higher-order groups. Such taxonomies are not as arbitrary in structure and content, nor as variable across cultures, as the assembly of entities into cosmologies, materials or social groups. These structures are routine products of our "habits of mind," which may be in part naturally selected to grasp relevant and recurrent "habits of the world." An experiment illustrates that the same taxonomic rank is preferred for making biological inferences in two diverse populations: Lowland Maya and Midwest Americans. These findings cannot be explained by domain-general models of similarity because such models cannot account for why both cultures prefer species-like groups, despite the fact that Americans have relatively little actual knowledge or experience at this level. This supports a modular view of folk biology as a core domain of human knowledge and as a special player, or "core meme," in the selection processes by which cultures evolve. -
Counting Casualties: a Framework for Respectful, Useful Records
J Risk Uncertainty DOI 10.1007/s11166-006-9001-6 Counting casualties: A framework for respectful, useful records Baruch Fischhoff · Scott Atran · Noam Fischhoff C Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract Counting casualties in conflict zones faces both practical and ethical concerns. Drawing on procedures from risk analysis, we propose a general approach. It represents each death by standard features, having either essential value, for capturing the social and cultural meaning of individual casualties, or instrumental value, for relating patterns of casualties to possible causes and effects. We illustrate the approach with the choices involved in attempts to record casualties in Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and with natural disasters, as exemplified by Hurricane Katrina. We advocate institutionalizing the approach, so that recording casualties increases understanding, rather than suspicion. Keywords Risk analysis . Risk characterization . Casualties . Conflict . Forensics JEL Classification D74 . D78 . D81 . F51 . H56 . I18 . N40 . Q54 Counting casualties is part of any conflict. The parties must do it both to monitor the conflict’s progress and to give it meaning (Department of Defense, 2005; Graham, 2005; Holt, 2006). Without accurate counts, the situation is obscured and the fallen are dishonored. If these failures appear deliberate, then they may aggravate the conflict, by adding insult to injury. Political scientists need these counts for their own reasons: creating narrative accounts, providing policy advice, and testing theories of conflict and reconciliation (e.g., Daponte, 2003; Epstein, 2002; Peterson, 2002; Walzer, 1992). The work is grim and challenging. The recorders face not only the risks of work in a conflict zone, but also the wrath of those who want the story told a particular way or not told at all. -
The Trouble with Memes: Inference Versus Imitation in Cultural Creation Scott Atran
The Trouble with Memes: Inference versus Imitation in Cultural Creation Scott Atran To cite this version: Scott Atran. The Trouble with Memes: Inference versus Imitation in Cultural Creation. Human Nature, Springer Verlag, 2001, 12 (4), pp.351-381. ijn_00000123 HAL Id: ijn_00000123 https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000123 Submitted on 3 Sep 2002 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 Appeared in: Human Nature 12(4):351-381, 2001 THE TROUBLE WITH MEMES : INFERENCE VERSUS IMITATION IN CULTURAL CREATION Scott Atran CNRS – Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Address for correspondence: CNRS, 9 rampe de l‟observatoire, 66660 Port Vendres, France Email: [email protected] 2 ABSTRACT (Word Count: 100) Memes are hypothetical cultural units passed on by imitation; although non-biological, they undergo Darwinian selection like genes. Cognitive study of multimodular human minds undermines memetics: unlike genetic replication, high fidelity transmission of cultural information is the exception, not the rule. Constant, rapid “mutation” of information during communication generates endlessly varied creations that nevertheless adhere to modular input conditions. The sort of cultural information most susceptible to modular processing is that most readily acquired by children, most easily transmitted across individuals, most apt to survive within a culture, most likely to recur in different cultures, and most disposed to cultural variation and elaboration. -
Suicide Terrorism As Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers Party
Suicide Terrorism as Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers Party Strategic Insights, Volume IV, Issue 7 (July 2005) by Ali Wyne Strategic Insights is a monthly electronic journal produced by the Center for Contemporary Conflict at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The views expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of NPS, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. For a PDF version of this article, click here. Introduction Why is it that certain terrorist organizations employ suicide terrorism to advance their objectives, while others do not? In order to answer this question, I will examine why Hamas, the central terrorist organization operating within the Occupied Territories, has gradually escalated its employment of suicide terrorism; and why the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group operating in Turkey, gradually abandoned it as a component of its broader strategy. I will discuss the activities of these groups within the context of two competing explanations of suicide terrorism: those which focus on religious motivations, and those which focus on strategic motivations. I argue that while the first set of explanations is meritorious in some instances, the latter set of explanations is much more broadly applicable, and, as such, more legitimate. Suicide Terrorism as Strategy Hamas’ official charter, made public on August 18, 1988, articulates a harrowing commitment to the complete destruction of Israel: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”[1] The charter’s most striking features lie not in its body, but, rather, in its opening and closing statements. -
Mishandling Suicide Terrorism
Scott Atran Mishandling Suicide Terrorism The past three years saw more suicide attacks than the last quar- ter century. Most of them were religiously motivated. Repeated suicide ac- tions show that massive counterforce alone does not diminish the frequency or intensity of suicide attack. Like pounding mercury with a hammer, this sort of top-heavy counterstrategy only seems to generate more varied and insidious forms of suicide terrorism. Even with many top Al Qaeda leaders now dead or in custody, the transnational jihadist fraternity is transforming into a hydra-headed network more difficult to fight than before. Poverty and lack of education per se are not root causes of suicide terror- ism. Nor do Muslims who have expressed support for martyr actions and trust in Osama bin Laden or the late Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin as a rule hate democratic freedoms or Western culture, although many of these Mus- lims do despise U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. Rising aspi- rations followed by dwindling expectations, particularly regarding civil liberties, are critical factors in generating support for suicide terrorism. The United States, Israel, Russia, and other nations on the frontline in the war on terrorism need to realize that military and counterinsurgency ac- tions are tactical, not strategic, responses to suicide terrorism—the most po- litically destabilizing and psychologically devastating form of terrorism. When these nations back oppressive and unpopular governments (even those deemed “partners in the war on terror”), this only generates popular resentment and support for terrorism against those governments as well as their backers. To attract potential recruits away from jihadist martyrdom— suicide terrorism’s most virulent strain—and to dry up its popular support Scott Atran is a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and an adjunct professor of psychology, anthropology, and natural resources at the University of Michigan. -
103-08Bookreview34-P
57 BOOK REVIEW 2010 - #1 Shennan, Stephen (Editor). Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution. 2009. viii + 341 pages; figures; tables; chapter references; index. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. ISBN 978-0-520-25599-9. Hard Cover. Price: $60.00. Available from: Uni- versity of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 The contributors to Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution endeavor to make the case that cultural change and biological evolution are sufficiently similar that theoretical and analytical concepts from evolutionary biology can productively be applied to cultural “evolution.” Their position justifies an evolutionary anthropology that can embrace a variety of approaches to the archaeological and ethnographic records. Some of the more theoretical pronouncements are problematic (see below), and some of the applications are a bit strange (e.g., the phylogenetic branching of European knives and forks). Collec- tively, however, the volume’s chapters clearly demonstrate the middle-range potential of evolutionary approaches for generating and testing hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying cultural change. Shennan’s introductory chapter makes clear that practitioners of evolutionary anthropol- ogy and archaeology are a diverse group and may sometimes disagree with each other about theory and method. For example, human behavioral ecology (HBE) is advanced by its advocates as the quintessential evolutionary approach to archaeology and ethnology (e.g. Kennett and Winterhalder, 2006) but is regarded by others (e.g. Fitzhugh and Trusler, chapter 14) as insensitive to creativity and social and technological innovation. These authors favor cultural transmission theory (CT) which focuses on how skills, atti- tudes and artifacts are passed between generations (vertical transmission) and across social boundaries (horizontal transmission). -
Can Fictional Superhuman Agents Have Mental States?
METHOD Method and Theory in the Study & THEORY in the STUDY OF of Religion 30 (�0�8) 4�5-448 RELIGION brill.com/mtsr Can Fictional Superhuman Agents have Mental States? Gabriel Levy Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway [email protected] Abstract According to Deborah Tollefsen, from the analytic perspective called “interpretivism”, there is a reasonable way in which groups can be said to have mental states. She bases her argument on the every-day use of language, where people speak as if groups have states such as intentions, desires and wishes. Such propositional attitudes form the basis of any account of truth-conditional semantics, the rules by which people grasp the conditions under which an utterance is true. If groups (abstract units of people) have mental states, perhaps superhuman agents have them too. One argument that may contradict this premise is one that says that, whereas groups exist, superhuman agents do not. However, if groups exist on the basis of normative narratives about them and the institutionalized actions they carry out in the world, the same can be said for superhuman agents. They are like legal fictions: fictional but real. Superhuman agents are fictional and real in a similar sense as groups.1 Keywords religion – semantics – Davidson – fiction – truth – falsity 1 Thanks to Miriam Kyselo, Lionel Sacks, Ulrika Mårtensson, Rene van Woudenberg, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NTNU, John McGraw, Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Terry Godlove, Scott Davis, Lars Albinus, Nancy Frankenberry, and especially Mark Gardiner.