On the Human: Rethinking the natural selection of human language

by: Terrence W. Deacon

Introduction

Since Darwin’s time, the human language capacity has been a perennially cited paragon of extreme complexity that defies the explanatory powers of natural selection. And it is not just critics of Darwinism who have argued that this most distinctive human capacity is problematic. Alfred Russel Wallace—the co-discoverer of natural selection theory and

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Narrative and Personal Good

by: Connie S. Rosati
University of Arizona [1]

It is now something of a commonplace that we think about our lives in story form. According to a recent article in the New York Times, psychological research into the personal narratives we tell supports the idea that we are natural storytellers. [2] “The human brain,” the article reports,

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Does Culture Prevent or Drive Human Evolution?

by Mark Stoneking

As a molecular anthropologist, my research involves using genetic data to address questions of anthropological interest about the origins, history, migration, structure, and relationships of human populations.  I frequently am asked to give lectures to nonspecialist audiences on insights from genetics into human evolution, and invariably during the ensuing discussion period the viewpoint

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Qualitative experience in machines

by William G. Lycan

Abstracted from ‘Qualitative experience in machines,’ The Digital Phoenix: How computers are changing philosophy.

1. Many people, perhaps most people, have the idea that, however problematic qualitative experience is for the case of human beings, it is a lot more so for that of machines constructed by human beings.  Few philosophers doubt that

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Does Evolution Explain Our Behaviour?

by Raymond Tallis

Does evolution explain our behaviour? The short answer is: No. And you may well concur with that answer but ‘out there’ there is an increasing constituency of thinkers claiming quite otherwise. Along with the claims that the brain explains the mind and activity in one bit of brain or another corresponds

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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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The Scope of Human Thought

© Mark Turner, 2009
http://markturner.org
Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University

Biologically, we resemble other animals, but mentally, we leave them in the dust. The scope of human thought is vast. Why are we so different?

Animals—including us—live, think, and feel in the here and now. Living, thinking, and feeling are

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Contemplating Singularity

by: Timothy Lenoir

Most researchers agree that there is no reason in principle why we will not eventually develop conscious machines that rival or surpass human intelligence. If we are crossing to a new era of the posthuman, how have we gotten here? And how should we understand the process?

Cultural theorists have addressed the topic

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On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature: Preliminary Reflections

by Joseph Tabbi

In a panel discussion at the 1998 “Bookends” conference at SUNY Albany, Jacques Derrida spoke of Internet initiatives under way by his younger colleagues in France at the time. The first thing they would do, he said, is set up editorial boards, appoint in-house grant writers, and establish closed review processes – effectively

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Biopower, Dignity, Synthetic Anthropos

by Paul Rabinow

Whatever the terms “biopower” and “biopolitics” might mean, and they are being used in a growing number of simplistic ways, most of which bear scant relation to how Michel Foucault deployed them. Foucault’s genealogical elaboration of these terms had been conceptual, historical and non-totalizing. Above all, Foucault deployed concepts like “biopower” or “governmentality”

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