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How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes

by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

I am an anthropologist and primate sociobiologist who seeks to understand, step by Darwinian step, how apes could have evolved to imagine and care about what the lives of others might be like. I believe that such questing for inter-subjective engagement laid the foundations for significant later developments such as language and

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On the Human, in the blogosphere

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting this week’s thought-provoking piece by the anthropologist Paul Rabinow. His post should appear later today.

While you’re waiting, you can also take a quick look at what’s being said out in the blogosphere about this nascent blog. We are deeply enjoying the conversations that have already taken place

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Willard McCarty: Who am I computing?

by Willard McCarty

In Terrence’s Self-Tormentor the old man Chremes proclaims, “I am a human being. I consider nothing human alien to me” (homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto) – a proclamation of magnanimity that lept out of this 2nd-century B.C. play and took on a proud, expansive life of its own. But alongside

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Do You Know What You're Doing?: follow-up

Thanks to everyone for their challenging remarks. This post contains such responses as I’ve been able to make for the posted comments; I didn’t take them up in the order posted, so I’ve italicized author names to make them easier to find.

Bommarito (like Olin) seems to find the experimental results unsurprising, given the commonplace that

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Do strangers know better than we do what will make us happy? (Science)

“People believe that the best way to predict how happy they will be in the future is to know what their future holds, but what they should really want to know is how happy those who’ve been to the future actually turned out to be.” Daniel Gilbert, Science, Mar 2009

Humanities bridge the sciences (Nature)

“… journals in the humanities and social sciences … emerge as gateways between [scientific journal] clusters that are otherwise poorly connected, and so act as key bridges between disciplines.” Nature, 9 Mar 2009

Allo-mothers (NY Times)

Sarah Hrdy argues humans are distinct from other animals in that only we have “allo-mothers,” as-if mothers recruited by babies to help with child-rearing.

On the Human

How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes

On the Human, in the blogosphere

Willard McCarty: Who am I computing?

Do You Know What You're Doing?: follow-up

Do strangers know better than we do what will make us happy? (Science)

Humanities bridge the sciences (Nature)

Allo-mothers (NY Times)

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