Chapter 9 - Synthesis: Human Universals and Human Sciences -- Bibliography -- Index.

Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of humanuniversals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. Ifthe same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have goodreason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper Ipropose an alternative explanation for the existence of humanuniversals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuiltpsychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggestthat if a particular convention possesses even a very small advantageover (...) competitors, whatever the reason for that advantage, we shouldexpect it to become the norm almost everywhere. Tiny advantages aretranslated into very large basins of attraction, in the language of gametheory. If this is so, universal norms are not evidence for innatepsychological adaptations at all. Having shown that the existence ofuniversals is consistent with the so-called Standard Social ScienceModel, I turn to a consideration of the evidence, to show that thisstyle of explanation is preferable to the evolutionary explanation, atleast with regard to patterns of gender inequality. (shrink)

In search of human uniqueness Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9472-6 Authors Elsa Addessi, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Via Ulisse Aldrovandi, 16/b, 00197 Rome, Italy Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This book was originally published in 1981 and the theme of universals attracted a great deal of attention in the decade preceding publication.

Once a vocation, being an intellectual today has become a profession. Like day traders or divorce lawyers, “public intellectuals” pack their briefcases in the morning and off they go to make a living in “the public sphere.” Unlike day-traders and divorce lawyers, however, who at least have no illusions as to who they are and what they do, public intellectuals still pretend to follow a higher calling. They like to see themselves as the theoretical vanguard of an otherwise inarticulate and (...) unsophisticated mass in need of guidance. Of course, this is nothing new. As in the dark ages of “pre-modernity,”…. (shrink)

Universals have traditionally thought to obey the identity of indiscernibles, that is, it has traditionally been thought that there can be no perfectly similar universals. But at least in the conception of universals as immanent, there is nothing that rules out there being indiscernible universals. In this paper, I shall argue that there is useful work indiscernible universals can do, and so there might be reason to postulate indiscernible universals. In particular, I shall argue (...) that postulating indiscernible universals can allow a theory of universals to identify particulars with bundles of universals, and that postulating indiscernible universals can allow a theory of universals to develop an account of the resemblance of quantitative universals that avoids the objections that Armstrong’s account faces. Finally, I shall respond to some objections and I shall undermine the criterion of distinction between particulars and universals that says that the distinction between particulars and universals lies in that while there can be indiscernible particulars, there cannot be indiscernible universals. (shrink)

This collection of articles and review essays, including many hard to find pieces, comprises the most important and fundamental studies of Indian logic and linguistics ever undertaken. Frits Staal is concerned with four basic questions: Are there universals of logic that transcend culture and time? Are there universals of language and linguistics? What is the nature of Indian logic? And what is the nature of Indian linguistics? By addressing these questions, Staal demonstrates that, contrary to the general assumption (...) among Western philosophers, the classical philosophers of India were rationalists, attentive to arguments. They were in this respect unlike contemporary Western thinkers inspired by existentialism or hermeneutics, and like the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and many medieval European schoolmen, only--as Staal says--more so. Universals establishes that Asia's contributions are not only compatible with what has been produced in the West, but a necessary ingredient and an essential component of any future human science. (shrink)

The problem of universals is one of the oldest problems in philosophy. One of the oddities of Spinoza's view of universals is that he endorses both Realism and Nominalism. An analogous Realist account can be given for all thinking things: all ideas, really do have something in common, intrinsically, constitutively, and mind‐independently: namely, thought as a determinable, qualitative, essential substantial nature. Spinoza's accounts of the nature of the human mind and of human emotions both can be (...) read as accounts of such relative common properties. Spinoza's most detailed case study of a mind‐dependent universal whose idea is constructed through abstraction and comparison can be found in his account of the will. Spinoza also often implies that ideas of universals and abstractions have a lower epistemic value than thought that deals with particulars alone. (shrink)

Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) major point is that human languages are intriguingly diverse rather than (like animal communication systems) uniform within the species. This does not establish a about language universals, or advance the ill-framed pseudo-debate over universal grammar. The target article does, however, repeat a troublesome myth about Fitch and Hauser's (2004) work on pattern learning in cotton-top tamarins.

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and (...) unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of “universal,” we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills. (shrink)

The essay constructs an ontological theory designed to capture the categories instantiated in those portions or levels of reality which are captured in our common sense conceptual scheme. It takes as its starting point an Aristotelian ontology of “substances” and “accidents”, which are treated via the instruments of mereology and topology. The theory recognizes not only individual parts of substances and accidents, including the internal and external boundaries of these, but also universal parts, such as the “humanity” which is an (...) essential part of both Tom and Dick, and also “individual relations”, such as Tom’s promise to Dick, or their current handshake. (shrink)

Psychological universals and nomothetic aspirations of social psychology The experimental social psychology basically rejects idiographism, though its nomothetism is only sometimes similar to the one that dominates in natural traditions. This is illustrated in the paper on instances of the selected theories. They often differ from their equivalents in the natural sciences because they describe the instruments of human psychological functioning which either are non-universal or appear with various frequency in different cultural and/or historical contexts, fulfill diverse functions (...) there, and even sometimes have a different meanings. (shrink)

Emerging cybertechnologies, such as social digibots, bend epistemological conventions of life and culture already complicated by human and animal relationships. Virtually-augmented niches of machines and organic life promise new free-energy-governed selection of intelligent digital life. These provocative eco-evolutionary contexts demand a theory of (natural and artificial) minds to characterize and validate the immersive social phenomena universally-shaping cultural affordances.

This writing is part of a body of reflections about the ‘researching programs’ and ‘categories’ used in philosophy, philology and linguistics to explain human language. Within this framework, several categories like Modell, Vorbild and Paradigm are covered from a descriptive sense according to the ‘Wittgenstein’ research program. From Russell’s conception of language, there is a treatment to the prescriptive aspects of Plato’s ideas and their relation to universals. Then, the universal category in the predicament act and the denotation (...) act are linked proposing their relation with notions such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’. Therefore some concerns, shared by Russell and Wittgenstein about a philosophical grammar, are pointed out for the expression of human understanding. (shrink)

Scotus contended that the humanity of Socrates has less than a numerical unity. But what does that claim come to? And how does Scotus’s position relate to familiar debates concerning the existence of universals and/or tropes? This paper provides a detailed sketch of Scotus’s view, arguing that it is not intrinsic to Socrates’s nature that it has numerical unity. The paper goes on to explain why Ockham’s attack on the coherence of Scotus’s argument does not succeed. What initially looks (...) like a successful master argument against Scotus’s view is ultimately a failure on account of its neglect of the role of intrinsic determination. (shrink)

Are there universal properties grounding our sense of resemblance or qualitative identity among a number of distinct things or events which appear to form a class, a type or a kind of some other sort? Do universals such as humanness, triangularity, or being an Oak exist? Is being a laptop computer a universal, which has only recently come into existence? Do predicate expressions, adjectives or abstract nouns refer to objective properties or cognitive contents called concepts? The problem of (...) class='Hi'>universals has been at the centre of ancient, medieval, Western, and Indian metaphysics. After the logico-linguistic turn in philosophy, this problem re-surfaced in the discourse on the meaning of predicate expressions on the one hand and in the theories of concepts on the other. (shrink)

It has been widely assumed that all languages share some structural features; language universals. Evans and Levinson challenge this assumption and provide a wealth of empirical evidence supporting their claim that linguistic diversity is the most remarkable characteristic of human languages. The response to their paper reveals fundamental disagreements, indicating that different authors rely on substantially different definitions of key terms such as ‘language’ and ‘language universal’. In this paper I will not take sides but discuss the implications (...) of these different definitions on the debate and suggest that conceptual precision is essential for the success of the discipline-crossing collaboration that is needed in language evolution research. Insights gained from other debates in evolutionary theorizing should inform language evolution debates. (shrink)

This article looks at how religious fundamentalism is aiming at influencing the international discourse on women's rights, especially reproductive rights. Simultaneously, we are witnessing the rise of something we could call transnational feminism(s). Much of the recent academic discussion on universalism, anti-universalism and cultural relativism is centered on Islam, but this discussion has larger relevance, for example in Latin America and in the context of Catholicism, which provide the concrete examples in the article. Feminist critique of religion is central in (...) the deconstruction of religious fundamentalism, but is not usually very well known by feminist social scientists. Transnational feminism(s), as a wide political movement, is developing new approaches to formulating intercultural criteria for human rights, especially women's rights, and for the truth claims these are based on. (shrink)

This article looks at how religious fundamentalism is aiming at influencing the international discourse on women's rights, especially reproductive rights. Simultaneously, we are witnessing the rise of something we could call transnational feminism. Much of the recent academic discussion on universalism, anti-universalism and cultural relativism is centered on Islam, but this discussion has larger relevance, for example in Latin America and in the context of Catholicism, which provide the concrete examples in the article. Feminist critique of religion is central in (...) the deconstruction of religious fundamentalism, but is not usually very well known by feminist social scientists. Transnational feminism, as a wide political movement, is developing new approaches to formulating intercultural criteria for human rights, especially women's rights, and for the truth claims these are based on. (shrink)

Saunders and van Brakel's observation that “linguistic evidence provides no grounds for the universality of basic color categories” also applies to the concept of “colour” itself. The language of “seeing” is rooted in human experience, and its basic frame of reference is provided by the universal rhythm of “light” days and “dark” nights and by the fundamental and visually salient features of human environment: the sky, the sun, vegetation, fire, the sea, the naked earth.

Vico otorga a la fantasia un doble papel: creador y expresivo y reconocedor y reconstructivo , que tiene su significación viquiana en los "caracteres poéticos" y en la consideración de "naturaleza poética" del hombre primitivo, además, en su segundo sentido, en el carácter que posee la imaginación como "llave" de la misma Scienza nuova. En trabajos anteriormente publicados por el autor ya han sido desarrollados aspectos concretos de esta cuestión, destacando su importancia tanto para el pensamiento viquiano como para las (...) ciencias humanas. En el presente trabajo se considera la cuestión de la "fantasía" articulando las más interesantes perspectivas desde las que se ha revalorizado el tema .Vico confers on "fantasia" a double role: creating and expresing and recognising and reconstructing , which has its Vichian significance in the "poetic characters" and in the consideration of the "poetic nature" of primitive man, and furthermore, in a second sense in the characteristics that imagination possesses as a "Key" to the Scienza nuova itself. Concrete aspects of this question have been already developed by the author in earlier published works, emphasising its importance as much for Vichian thought as for the Human Sciences. In this present work the question of "fantasia" is considered, bringing together the most interesting perspectives through wich this topic has been re-evaluated. (shrink)

Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, “grammatical” communication active in language in general. Kin terms from two languages, English and Seneca, show how terminologies that look very different on the surface may result from (...) variation in the rankings of a universal set of constraints. Constraints on kin terms form a system: some are concerned with absolute features of kin (sex), others with the position (distance and direction) of kin in “kinship space,” others with groups and group boundaries (matrilines, patrilines, generations, etc.). Also, kin terms sometimes extend indefinitely via recursion, and recursion in kin terminology has parallels with recursion in other areas of language. Thus the study of kinship sheds light on two areas of cognition, and their phylogeny. The conceptual structure of kinship seems to borrow its organization from the conceptual structure of space, while being specialized for representing genealogy. And the grammar of kinship looks like the product of an evolved grammar faculty, opportunistically active across traditional domains of semantics, syntax, and phonology. Grammar is best understood as an offshoot of a uniquely human capacity for playing coordination games. (shrink)

There is a particular moral theory in which human rights are conceived as indestructible rights. Using Dworkin’s words we could say this is a good way of taking rights seriously. However, we may also ask whether there is another way of taking rights as seriously as Dworkin says without being a supporter of that theory. From this point of view, perhaps human rights cannot be considered neither as absolute ; nor universally valid ; and not even inalienable. Can (...) this proposal be seen as another way of taking rights seriously? (shrink)

This paper discusses the possibility of an ethics of difference. It begins with an introduction to current poststructural and critical theories in order to show their significance for transcultural politics and ethics. Its theme is formulated in terms of the debate between the affirmation of ethical cognitivism cast in the form of universalism and the advocacy of moral skepticism in the mode of communitarianism. Distancing itself from the idea of universal morality, this paper attempts to respond to the challenge of (...) both communitarians and deconstructionists in contemporary French poststructuralism. In the end, it argues for transversality in place of universality. (shrink)

We are witnessing and participating in a new “Querelle of Universals” which has indissoluble political and philosophical characters. It ranges from the incorporation of anthropological differences into the very definition of the “human” to the contemporary attempts at rethinking the diversity of histories within mankind as a multiverse of translations rather than a failed unity. The essay discusses a series of typical aporias that are relevant to this querelle and proposes a concept of subjectivity which elaborates their productivity.

We are witnessing and participating in a new “Querelle of Universals” which has indissoluble political and philosophical characters. It ranges from the incorporation of anthropological differences (of gender-sex, race-culture, normality and abnormality, etc.) into the very definition of the “human” to the contemporary attempts at rethinking the diversity of histories within mankind as a multiverse of translations rather than a failed unity. The essay discusses a series of typical aporias that are relevant to this querelle and proposes a (...) concept of subjectivity which elaborates their productivity. (shrink)

This book explores issues at the core of modern linguistics and cognitive science. Why are all languages similar in some ways and in others utterly different? Why do languages change and change variably? How did the human capacity for language evolve, and how far did it do so as an innate ability? Simon Kirby looks at these questions from a broad perspective, arguing that they can be studied together. The author begins by examining how far the universal properties of (...) language may be explained by examining the way it is used, and how far by the way it is structured. He then considers what insights may be gained by combining functional and formal approaches. In doing so he develops a way of treating language as an adaptive system, in which its communicative and formal roles are both crucial and complementary. In order to test the effectiveness of competing theories and explanations, Simon Kirby develops computational models to show what universals emerge given a particular theory of language use or acquisition. He presents here both the methodology and the results. Function, Selection, and Innateness is important for its argument, its methodology, and its conclusions. It is a powerful demonstration of the value of looking at language as an adaptive system and goes to the heart of current debates on the evolution and nature of language. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

What it was called “the anthropology of music” finds its roots in two founding papers: The Anthropology of Music by Alan Merriam and How Musicalis Man? by John Blacking. In these two books, the musical structures are designed as a product of the culture. The methodological consequence is: the ethnomusicological investigation should begin from the study of the cultural context. The consequence of this position, quite widely used in the field, was to emphasize the music environment, rather than analyse its (...) structure, with a few notable exceptions. A fortiori, the research of universals, considered ethnocentric, was regarded in the field as inadmissible. After having proposed a setting up of this situation, the author examines the manner in which the issue of Blacking approaches the link between culture and musical structures, then reconsiders his positions with regard to universals, and possible biological foundations of music. The article ends with a plea for reconciliation, with a view to the ethnomusicology of tomorrow, from the point of view of the anthropology, taking into account the cultural determinations, the comparative study of the musical structures, and the search for universal. (shrink)

Understanding the universal aspects of human language structure requires comparison at multiple levels of analysis. While Evans & Levinson (E&L) focus mostly on substantive variation in language, equally revealing insights can come from studying formal universals. I first discuss how Artificial Grammar Experiments can test universal preferences for certain types of abstract phonological generalizations over others. I then discuss moraic onsets in the language Arrernte, and how its apparent substantive variation ultimately rests on a formal universal regarding syllable-weight (...) sensitivity. (shrink)

The book offers an original defence of a new materialist thesis that focuses on the biological core of humans to develop a theory of human rights.

Summary Based on Max Weber's concept of Kulturnation and Hans Blumenberg's project of metaphorology, this essay argues that modern nations follow distinct cultural programmes that are inherent to their national ideas. Each national idea is propagated by a particular biopolitical metaphor, which performs a transfer from practical or scientific ideas about how nature structures and organises life to cultural ideas about how human lives should be socially and politically organised. The essay examines the emergence of the principal metaphors of (...) grafting in England (Great Britain), of regeneration and elective affinities in France, and of organic self-generation in Prussia (Germany). The fact that each nation claims for its particular national idea the status of a universal principle constitutes the intrinsic paradox of nationalism. (shrink)

The book offers an original defence of a new materialist thesis that focuses on the biological core of humans to develop a theory of human rights.

This book provides an analysis of the debate surrounding cultural diversity, and attempts to reconcile the seemingly opposing views of "ethical imperialism," the belief that each individual is entitled to fundamental human rights, and cultural relativism, the belief that ethics must be relative to particular cultures and societies. The author examines the role of cultural tradition, often used as a defense against critical ethical judgments. Key issues in health and medicine are explored in the context of cultural diversity: the (...) physician-patient relationship, disclosing a diagnosis of a fatal illness, informed consent, brain death and organ transplantation, rituals surrounding birth and death, female genital mutilation, sex selection of offspring, fertility regulation, and biomedical research involving human subjects. Among the conclusions the author reaches are that ethical universals exist, but must not be confused with ethical absolutes. The existence of ethical universals is compatible with a variety of culturally relative interpretations, and some rights related to medicine and health care should be considered human rights. Illustrative examples are drawn from the author's experiences serving on international ethical review committees and her travels to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where she conducted educational workshops and carried out out her own research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Of Literary Universals:Ninety-Five ThesesPatrick Colm Hogan1. There is no such thing as human culture or human cultural difference without human universality.1 (A parallel point about understanding human cultural difference was made by Donald Davidson.2) Alternatively, cultural difference is variation on human universality.2. It follows that every area of a culture manifests human universality. (Otherwise, those cultural areas would not exist.) It does (...) not follow that all areas of culture are found in all cultures. The empirical study of literature, an area of some cultures, would not exist if it did not manifest human universality. It does not follow that the empirical study of literature exists in all cultures.3. The presence of verbal art in any given culture—thus the determination of whether verbal art is found in all cultures—is dependent on the investigator's definition of the term "verbal art," not on the presence or absence of a parallel term in the culture being investigated. "Verbal art" is no different from any other term or phrase in this respect. We would not conclude that there is no color orange in a place that does not have a word parallel to "orange" or that there is no astigmatism in societies without ophthalmology—or that the English do not experience ennui or Schadenfreude.On Communicative Speech4. To understand or even isolate verbal art, we must first understand the general purposes and properties of communicative speech.5. Communicative speech aims at producing some mental alteration in an addressee. That change commonly has some direct or indirect action as its desired outcome. For example, suppose I am building [End Page 145] a house with Wittgenstein and I say "Plank!" My aim is to produce a mental change in Wittgenstein that will result in him retrieving a plank and bringing it to me.6. Action commonly involves a set of generative principles for bodily motion or mental deliberation, a set of regulative principles for adjusting the motion or deliberation, and a set of motives for initiating the motion or deliberation.7. Communicative speech, then, commonly aims at fostering emotions and ideas or representations that, in combination, activate and specify generative principles for action in an addressee. (The emotion may be very weak—for example, a mild aversion to being uncooperative.) It may involve regulative principles as well.8. Verbal art—as I am using the phrase—also aims at producing a mental alteration in an addressee. However, that mental alteration is not, in the first place, governed by the overarching goal of effecting a particular actional outcome. Thus it is not designed to engage generative rules for action or to trigger emotions that motivate such action.9. Rather, verbal art is commonly designed to communicate regulative principles for action and to inspire emotions that do not have direct actional outcomes in the case at hand.10. There are two sorts of regulative principles that figure prominently in both ordinary life and verbal art—ethical and prudential. They constitute the thematic or didactic aspect of verbal art, an aspect noted in every major tradition of literary theory—European, South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern/North African.311. Here and in other cases, individual works of verbal art need not share all universal properties or share them all in the same degree.Rather, all cultural traditions have a body of works of verbal art that, as a whole, have these properties.On Emotion12. Any sort of emotion may occur in verbal art. Indeed, verbal art involves all varieties of emotion.13. However, verbal art is not about the addressee himself or herself. Therefore a literary work does not inspire narrowly egocentric emotions in its audience. It inspires empathic emotions.14. Empathic emotion may be a function of situational particularity or of group identity. In situational empathy, we share a person's or character's emotion insofar as we have been in a parallel situation. [End Page 146] The shared feeling is based on emotional memories. In group-identity empathy, we share a person's or character's feelings because we tacitly understand him or her as sharing our identity. This shared feeling is, then... (shrink)

This paper discusses the possibility of an ethics of difference. It begins with an introduction to current poststructural and critical theories in order to show their significance for transcultural politics and ethics. Its theme is formulated in terms of the debate between the affirmation of ethical cognitivism cast in the form of universalism and the advocacy of moral skepticism in the mode of communitarianism. Distancing itself from the idea of universal morality, this paper attempts to respond to the challenge of (...) both communitarians and deconstructionists in contemporary French poststructuralism. In the end, it argues for transversality in place of universality. (shrink)