At the bottom of all human activities are “values,” the conviction that some things “ought to be” and others not. Science, however, with its immense interest in mere facts seems to lack all understanding of such‘requiredness.’… A science … which would seriously admit nothing but indifferent facts … could not fail to destroy itself.

A problem for natural scientific accounts, psychology in particular, is the existence of value. An ecological account of values is reviewed and illustrated in three domains of research: carrying differing loads; negotiating social dilemmas involving agreement and disagreement; and timing the exposure of various visual presentations. Then it is applied in greater depth to the nature of language. As described and illustrated, values are ontological relationships that are neither subjective nor objective, but which constrain and obligate all significant animate activity (...) physically, socially, and morally. As an embodied social activity, conversational dialogue is characterized in terms of values, pragmatics, and presence rather than in terms of syntactic and semantic rules. In particular the nature of dialogical arrays is explored, and the hypothesis that language is an action system, a perceptual system, and a caring system is explored. Language expands horizons and makes it possible for humans to realize their calling as culture makers and caretakers. (shrink)

Values will be central to developing a more balanced social psychology. A nonconformist account of Asch's (1956) experiments is used to illustrate the role of multiple values and to support and extend Krueger & Funder's (K&F's) claims. A balance of values, one that goes beyond accuracy and truth, and that avoids absolutism and relativism, is needed.

Social and ecological research and theory are used to elaborate and enrich two important sets of accounts of language origins. One is the interdependence and shared intentionality hypothesis of the ways in which humans became cooperative and conforming in ways that other apes did not, eventually leading to language. A second set of accounts addresses the emergence of bipedalism and its connections to language and to many other anatomical, cognitive, and social features that are distinctive in humans. Particular attention is (...) given to the carrying and caretaking of infants. Research and theory challenging common assumptions about the role of conformity in cooperation and conversation are reviewed and integrated into these accounts. Together these varying perspectives point toward a more dialogical, dynamic, and distributed understanding of social interactions and the values that motivate and constrain humans’ social and linguistic skills. (shrink)