Human language and human music are both unique communication systems that evolved in the human lineage. Here, I propose that they share the same root, they evolved from an ancestral communication system yet to be described in detail. I suggest that pre-hunt charade was this shared root, which helped organize and coordinate the hunt of early hominins.

In my general aim to probe a non-reductionist Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement, considering social self-other relations and the epistemic 2PP in social syn-aesthetic tuning-ins, synchronisations and tuning-outs, this paper amplifies the Aristotelian common sense concept κοινὴ αἲσθησις2 by analysing the concept and metaphor of “resonance”3 in contemporary debates on >resonance< as acoustic and multimodal figure of thought. Resonance as shown in scientific models derived from acoustics will be applied to an aesthetic comunity of sensing and making music together as explored (...) in Alfred Schütz, as well as in social relations in social psychology. Finally, this paper puts resonance to test as well in technical atunements of social relations and closes with the necessary resistance to imposition of social resonance, introduced in this paper as xenoresonance. (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate about behavioral modernity in our species, listing counterexamples to the thesis that there was a dramatic change to the minds of Cro-Magnon sapiens in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic. It is argued that we were probably behaviorally modern from about 150,000 years ago, and that aspects of this mentality were apparent in developments in tool technologies and hunting practices across the prior Homo lineage. Key behaviors expressive of behavioral modernity include practical reasoning about the past (...) and future and role-differentiated rights-based cooperation, which are more obvious in their effects than is the vague but much-used notion of symbolic thinking. Behavioral modernity leads to technological innovation but is not sufficient to maintain such innovations in face of population loss and environmental instability, which along with the vagaries of preservation explains why the archaeological record of behavioral modernity in our species is patchy until the Upper Paleolithic. (shrink)

Unlike birds and mammals, reptiles are commonly thought to possess only the most rudimentary means of interacting with their environments, reflexively responding to sensory information to the near exclusion of higher cognitive function. However, reptilian brains, though structurally somewhat different from those of mammals and birds, use many of the same cellular and molecular processes to support complex behaviors in homologous brain regions. Here, the neurological mechanisms supporting reptilian cognition are reviewed, focusing specifically on spatial cognition and the hippocampus. These (...) processes are compared to those seen in mammals and birds within an ecologically and evolutionarily relevant context. By viewing reptilian cognition through an integrative framework, a more robust understanding of reptile cognition is gleaned. Doing so yields a broader view of the evolutionarily conserved molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie cognitive function and a better understanding of the factors that led to the evolution of complex cognition. (shrink)

This paper grounds the theory of any type of firm in the science of control and communication described as cybernetics. It is also grounded in the physiological and neurological limitations of humans to receive, store, process and act upon data to coordinate their activities. To overcome limitations in the market failure theory of the firm identified by leading scholars, Transaction Byte Analysis is introduced. TBA is based on economising bytes rather than costs and is applicable to all types of organisations (...) of any specie. TBA is shown to subsume Transaction Cost Economics and explain why firms exist as hierarchies or in other forms. Inconsistent and contrary behaviour in humans are recognised. Cybernetic laws show how to minimise these problems and allow people with limited ability to transact bytes to improve their ability and reliability to manage complexity in social institutions. TBA is used to provide answers to questions raised by Zingales in his search for “new foundations” to explain how different types firms arise in the new economy. (shrink)

"Rationality: Contexts and Constraints" is an interdisciplinary reappraisal of the nature of rationality. In method, it is pluralistic, drawing upon the analytic approaches of philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and more. These methods guide exploration of the intersection between traditional scholarship and cutting-edge philosophical or scientific research. In this way, the book contributes to development of a suitably revised, comprehensive understanding of rationality, one that befits the 21st century, one that is adequately informed by recent investigations of science, pathology, non-human thought, emotion, (...) and even enigmatic Chinese texts that might previously have seemed to be expressions of irrationalism. Addresses recent challenges and Identifies a direction for future research on rationalityInvestigates the relationship between rationality and mental disorders, such as delusion and depressionAssesses reasoning in artificial intelligence and nonhuman animalsReflects on ancient Chinese Philosophy and possible cultural differences in human psychology Employs philosophical reflection, along with linguistic, probabilistic, and logical techniques. (shrink)

Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility (...) in someone else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can (reasonably be expected to) manage. (shrink)

Evolutionary epistemology (Lorenz, Vollmer) and value-driven decision theory (Pugh) are used to explain the fundamental properties of consciousness. It is shown that this approach is compatible with global workspace theory (Baars) and global neuronal workspace theory (De Haene). The emotions are, however, that what drives consciousness. A hypothetical evolutionary tree of the emotions is given – intended to show that consciousness evolves and is probably qualitatively different in different groups of animals.

Chapter 1 (To know in order to survive) & Chapter 2 (A critique of evolved reason) explain human knowledge and its limits from an evolutionary point of view. Chapter 3 (Captured in our Cockpits) explains the evolution of consciousness, using value driven decision theory. Chapter 4-6 (Chapter 4 Sociobiology, Chapter 5 Culture: the Human Arena), Chapter 6, Genes, Memes, and the Environment) show that to understand culture you have at least to deal with 4 levels: genes, brains, the environment, culture. (...) Chapter 7-8 (Why some apes became humans) give a model of human evolution in which Alexander's concept of 'ecological dominace' plays a crucial role. (shrink)

There are many in the social sciences and social philosophy who would aspire to overcome the ‘nature/culture binary’, including some who, with at least an implicit nod toward a putatively ‘anti-essentialist’ process ontology, have set out with an orientation toward a paradigm of ‘biosocial becoming’ (Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Such contemporary work, however, in areas such as social and cultural anthropology and sciences studies has often failed to clarify, let alone justify, the warrants of their most basic assumptions and assertions. (...) In what follows, adumbrations will be offered for a comprehensive metaphysics of ‘biosocial becoming’ that can stand accountable both to empirical/descriptive and to normative claims. (shrink)

The scientific investigation of music requires contributions from a diverse array of disciplines. Given the diverse methodologies, interests and research targets of the disciplines involved, we argue that there is a plurality of legitimate research questions about music, necessitating a focus on integration. In light of this we recommend a pluralistic conception of music—that there is no unitary definition divorced from some discipline, research question or context. This has important implications for how the scientific study of music ought to proceed: (...) we show that some definitions are complementary, that is, they reflect different research interests and ought to be retained and, where possible, integrated, while others are antagonistic, they represent real empirical disagreement about music’s nature and how to account for it. We illustrate this in discussion of two related issues: questions about the evolutionary function of music, and questions of the innateness of music. These debates have been, in light of pluralism, misconceived. We suggest that, in both cases, scientists ought to proceed by constructing integrated models which take into account the dynamic interaction between different aspects of music. (shrink)

Intentional change when viewed as making a risky or intertemporal choice with evolutionary relevance helps us understand its successes and its failures. To promote future-oriented ecological rationality requires establishing a linkage between nongenetic, cultural, and symbolic selections and genetic adaptations. Coupled with biophilic instinct, intentional conservation is more likely to prevail against evolved desires of environmental exploitation.

Wilkins & Wakefield's identification of anatomical features in the Koobi Fora endocast, which may be thought to carry some functional significance in relation to organization for language, raises fundamental problems of method: attention is drawn to some limitations of the evidence, of endocasts and of the neuroanatomical map used to interpret them.

Representation must be prior to communication in evolution. Wilkins & Wakefield's target article gives the impression that communicative pressures play a secondary role. We suggest that their evolutionary precursor is compatible with protolanguage rather than language itself. The difference between these two communicative systems should not be underestimated: only the former can be trivially reappropriated from a representational system.

ProbablyHomo habilisis two species not one; similarly for Pan troglodytes. Although amenable to training, in naturePan paniscusmay be a “specialized insular dwarf.” Language is uniquely human, but symbolic behavior and intelligence are widespread among animals with little respect for phylogenetic closeness toHomo sapiens.

The precise manner in which language serves its communicative function suggests that natural selection, rather than exaptation or reappropriation, played the major role in its evolution. Natural selection is more readily invoked, I suggest, if it is assumed that language originated as a system of manual gestures, and later switched to an oral mode.

The cognitive, psychological and sociological mechanisms underpinning complex social relationships among small groups are a part of our primate heritage. However, among human groups, relationships persist over much greater temporal and spatial scales, often in the physical absence of one or other of the individuals themselves. This chapter examines how such individual face-to-face social interactions were ‘scaled up’ during human evolution to the regional and global networks characteristic of modern societies. One recent suggestion has been that a radical change in (...) human sociality occurred with the shift to sedentary and agricultural societies in the early Neolithic. The discussion presents the results of a focused study of the long-term development of regional social networks in the Near East, using the distribution of different forms of material culture as a proxy for the social relationships that underpinned processes of trade, exchange and the dissemination of material culture practices. (shrink)

Human societies are examined as distinct and coherent groups. This trait is most parsimoniously considered a deeply rooted part of our ancestry rather than a recent cultural invention. Our species is the only vertebrate with society memberships of significantly more than 200. We accomplish this by using society-specific labels to identify members, in what I call an anonymous society. I propose that the human brain has evolved to permit not only the close relationships described by the social brain hypothesis, but (...) also, at little mental cost, the anonymous societies within which such alliances are built. The human compulsion to discover or invent labels to “mark” group memberships may originally have been expressed in hominins as vocally learned greetings only slightly different in function from chimpanzee pant hoots (now known to be society-specific). The weight of evidence suggests that at some point, conceivably early in the hominin line, the distinct groups composed of several bands that were typical of our ancestors came to be distinguished by their members on the basis of multiple labels that were socially acquired in this way, the earliest of which would leave no trace in the archaeological record. Often overlooked as research subjects, these sizable fission-fusion communities, in recent egalitarian hunter-gatherers sometimes 2,000 strong, should consistently be accorded the status of societies, in the same sense that this word is used to describe tribes, chiefdoms, and other cultures arising later in our history. The capacity of hunter-gatherer societies to grow sufficiently populous that not all members necessarily recognize one another would make the transition to larger agricultural societies straightforward. Humans differ from chimpanzees in that societal labels are essential to the maintenance of societies and the processes giving birth to new ones. I propose that anonymous societies of all kinds can expand only so far as their labels can remain sufficiently stable. (shrink)

Male provisioning ability may have evolved as a “good dad” indicator through sexual selection, whereas male creativity may have evolved partly as a “good genes” indicator. If so, women near peak fertility (midcycle) should prefer creativity over wealth, especially in short-term mating. Forty-one normally cycling women read vignettes describing creative but poor men vs. uncreative but rich men. Women’s estimated fertility predicted their short-term (but not long-term) preference for creativity over wealth, in both their desirability ratings of individual men (r=.40, (...) p<.01) and their forced-choice decisions between men (r=.46, p<.01). These preliminary results are consistent with the view that creativity evolved at least partly as a good genes indicator through mate choice. (shrink)

This paper examines social network size in contemporary Western society based on the exchange of Christmas cards. Maximum network size averaged 153.5 individuals, with a mean network size of 124.9 for those individuals explicitly contacted; these values are remarkably close to the group size of 150 predicted for humans on the basis of the size of their neocortex. Age, household type, and the relationship to the individual influence network structure, although the proportion of kin remained relatively constant at around 21%. (...) Frequency of contact between network members was primarily determined by two classes of variable: passive factors (distance, work colleague, overseas) and active factors (emotional closeness, genetic relatedness). Controlling for the influence of passive factors on contact rates allowed the hierarchical structure of human social groups to be delimited. These findings suggest that there may be cognitive constraints on network size. (shrink)

Clique sizes for chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) grooming and for human conversation are compared in order to test Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that human language is almost three times as efficient a bonding mechanism as primate grooming. Recalculation of the data provided by Dunbar et al. (1995) reveals that the average clique size for human conversation is 2.72 whereas that of chimpanzee grooming is shown to be 2.18. The efficiency of human conversation and actual chimpanzee grooming over Dunbar’s primate grooming model (always (...) one-to-one and a one-way interaction) is 1.27 and 1.25, respectively, when we take role alternation into account. Chimpanzees can obtain about the same efficiency as humans in terms of quantity of social interactions because their grooming is often mutual and polyadic. (shrink)

When the social sciences parted company from evolutionary biology almost exactly a century ago, they did so at a time when evolutionary biology was still very much in its infancy and many key issues were unresolved. As a result, the social sciences took away with them an understanding of evolution that was in fact based on 18th- rather than 19th-century biology. I argue that contemporary evolutionary thinking has much more to offer the social sciences than most people have assumed. Contemporary (...) evolutionary research on human behaviour focuses on two main issues at the micro-social scale: understanding the trade-offs in individual decision-making and understanding the cognitive constraints that limit flexibility of decisions. I offer examples of both of these approaches. Finally, I consider the broader question of the macro-social scale. (shrink)

Dunbar (1993) emphasizes the role of cooperative language use in the evolution of human linguistic capacity and neglects to consider the role that manipulative language use would have played. I argue that as group size and neocortieal size increased during human evolution, the adaptive value of using language to benefit oneself at the expense of others would also have increased. I discuss how selection pressures for manipulative language use would have operated in the contexts of mating, status striving, and social (...) exchange. (shrink)

Preadaptation for language is an unnecessary assumption because intermediate stages of linguistic ability are possible and adaptive. Language could have evolved through gradual selection from structures exhibiting few features associated with modern structures. Without physical evidence pertaining to language ability in prehabilis hominids, it remains possible that selective pressures for language use preceded and necessitated modern neurolinguistic structures.

Despite some sound basic assumptions, Wilkins & Wakefield portray a Homo habilis too linguistically sophisticated to fit in with the subsequent fossil record and thereby lose a reasoned explanation for human innovativeness. They err, too, in accepting a single-level model of conceptual structure and in deriving initial linguistic units from calls, a process far more dubious than the derivation of home-sign from naive gesture.

Contra Wilkins & Wakefield, we argue that an evolutionarily inspired approach to language must consider different facets of language (i.e., more than syntax and semantics), and must explore the possibility of nonhuman precursors. Several examples are discussed, illustrating the power of the comparative approach in illuminating our understanding of language evolution.

If POT (parieto-occipital-temporal junction) reorganization came earlier in australopithecines than in Homo, it is likely that the selective pressures were different, and not necessarily directed toward language. The brain endocast evidence for the POT in A. afarensis is actually better than it is for early Homo.

This target article presents a plausible evolutionary scenario for the emergence of the neural preconditions for language in the hominid lineage. In pleistocene primate lineages there was a paired evolutionary expansion of frontal and parietal neocortex (through certain well-documented adaptive changes associated with manipulative behaviors) resulting, in ancestral hominids, in an incipient Broca's region and in a configurationally unique junction of the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes of the brain (the POT). On our view, the development of the POT in (...) our ancestors resulted in the neuroanatomical substrate consistent with the ability for representations in modality-neutral association cortex and, as a result of structure-imposing interaction with Broca's area, the hierarchically structured Evidence from paleoneurology and comparative primate neuroanatomy is used to argue that Homo habilis (2.5–2 million years ago) was the first hominid to have the appropriate gross neuroanatomical configuration to support conceptual structure. We thus suggest that the neural preconditions for language are met in H. habilis. Finally, we advocate a theory of language acquisition that uses conceptual structure as input to the learning procedures, thus bridging the gap between it and language. (shrink)

This response clarifies the nature of reappropriation and the definition of language. It explicates the relationship between neural systems and language and between homology and evolutionary gradualism. Through a review of ape capacities in the realms of language and tool use, it distinguishes human language acquisition from nonhuman learning. Finally, it suggests the appropriate sorts of evidence on which to base further evolutionary arguments relevant to the origins of language.

Many nonhuman animals produce facial expressions which sometimes bear clear resemblance to the facial expressions seen in humans. An understanding of this evolutionary continuity between species, and how this relates to social and ecological variables, can help elucidate the meaning, function, and evolution of facial expression. This aim, however, requires researchers to overcome the theoretical and methodological differences in how human and nonhuman facial expressions are approached. Here, we review the literature relating to nonhuman facial expressions and suggest future directions (...) that could facilitate a better understanding of facial expression within an evolutionary context. (shrink)

Our discussion of the commentaries begins, at the evolutionary level, with issues raised by our account of the evolution of morality in terms of partner-choice mutualism. We then turn to the cognitive level and the characterization and workings of fairness. In a final section, we discuss the degree to which our fairness-based approach to morality extends to norms that are commonly considered moral even though they are distinct from fairness.