Evolutionary psychology and human sociobiology often reject the mere possibility of symbolic causality. Conversely, theories in which symbolic causality plays a central role tend to be both anti-nativist and anti-evolutionary. This article sketches how these apparent scientific rivals can be reconciled in the study of disgust. First, we argue that there are no good philosophical or evolutionary reasons to assume that symbolic causality is impossible. Then, we examine to what extent symbolic causality can be part of the theoretical toolbox of (...) the evolutionary social sciences. This examination leads to the conclusion that it is possible to make evolutionary sense of Mary Douglas’s theory of disgust, and that her view of symbolic causality can and should inform evolutionary theories of (sociocultural) disgust. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that mating games, a concept that denotes cultural practices characterized by a competitive element and an ornamental character, are essential drivers behind the emergence and maintenance of human cultural practices. In order to substantiate this claim, we sketch out the essential role of the game’s players and audience, as well as the ways in which games can mature and turn into relatively stable cultural practices. After outlining the life phase of mating games – their emergence, (...) rise, maturation, and possible eventual decline – we go on to argue that participation in these games (in each phase) does make sense from an adaptationist point of view. The strong version of our theory which proposes that all cultural practices are, or once were, mating games, allows us to derive a set of testable predictions for the fields of archaeology, economics, and psychology. (shrink)

This book studies education and curriculum from the perspective of the teacher’s stance in the classroom. Writing through the lenses offered by autobiography, a lifetime in the classroom serving as teacher, and drawing heavily on Jewish and secular scholarly texts, Block offers a vision of education that serves as an alternative to the increasingly instrumentalist, managerial, standards-driven impersonal nature of contemporary schools. He advocates not for a pedagogy of ethics, but for the original ethical stance every teacher already assumes by (...) entering into the classroom. It is from this stance in ethics, he argues, that all pedagogy derives. (shrink)

This new work from Alan Block explores the contemporary discourses of education, scholarship and learning. Pedagogy, Religion and Practice offers a strong argument for the centrality of ethics in curriculum, scholarship and the classroom, and presents a powerful argument against the present emphasis on standards and quantitative accountability.

In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situations, we do leave room for super-organismic (group based) or sub-organismic (meme-based) explanations of (...) some cultural phenomena. (shrink)