We investigate whether age profiles of ethnobiological knowledge development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Life history models predict complementary knowledge profiles developing across the lifespan for women and men as they experience changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring. We evaluate these predictions using an ethnobiological knowledge assessment tool developed for an off-grid pastoralist population known as Choyeros, from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results indicate that (...) while individuals acquire knowledge of most dangerous items and edible resources by early adulthood, knowledge of plants and animals relevant to the age and sex divided labor domains and ecologies (e.g., women’s house gardens, men’s herding activities in the wilderness) continues to develop into middle adulthood but to different degrees and at different rates for men and women. As the demands of offspring on parents accumulate with age, reproductive-aged adults continue to develop their knowledge to meet their children’s needs. After controlling for vision, our analysis indicates that many post-reproductive adults show the greatest ethnobiological knowledge. These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of men’s and women’s ethnobiological knowledge across the lifespan. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09399-4.

En antropología uno de los aspectos que más son sometidos a estudio dado la vasta influencia que tiene sobre los procesos humanos en relación con su entorno es el de la productividad y el trabajo. Karl Marx fue posiblemente quien más incidió en las actividades materiales humanas, básicamente porque su concepción antropológica del hombre, es la del homo economicus, que transforma las condiciones materiales de la existencia mediante su trabajo. El hombre es una parte esencial del mundo que se ve (...) abocado a enfrentarse con él, haciendo patente ese enfrentamiento con la puesta en práctica de la tecnología y la organización. Precisamente esta organización social es condicionante a la hora de plantear las formas de producción, ya que la naturaleza condiciona a su vez al hombre a que busque formas de resolver las restricciones que la propia naturaleza le impone. Los estudios realizados por el antropólogo Eric Wolf nos serán de gran ayuda para exponer esta reflexión. (shrink)

We propose four policies of ethical design of human-grade Artificial Intelligence. Two of our policies are precautionary. Given substantial uncertainty both about ethical theory and about the conditions under which AI would have conscious experiences, we should be cautious in our handling of cases where different moral theories or different theories of consciousness would produce very different ethical recommendations. Two of our policies concern respect and freedom. If we design AI that deserves moral consideration equivalent to that of human beings, (...) that AI should be designed with self-respect and with the freedom to explore values other than those we might impose. We are especially concerned about the temptation to create human-grade AI pre-installed with the desire to cheerfully sacrifice itself for its creators’ benefit. (shrink)

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

The mainstream tradition in recent Anglophone Zhuangzi interpretation treats spontaneous skillful responsiveness – similar to the spontaneous responsiveness of a skilled artisan, athlete, or musician – as a, or the, Zhuangzian ideal. However, this interpretation is poorly grounded in the Inner Chapters. On the contrary, in the Inner Chapters, this sort of skillfulness is at least as commonly criticized as celebrated. Even the famous passage about the ox-carving cook might be interpreted more as a celebration of the knife’s passivity than (...) as a celebration of the cook’s skillfulness. (shrink)

In _Civilization and Its Discontents_, Freud made abundantly clear what he thought about the biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and then elaborated in Christian teachings, to love one's neighbor as oneself. "Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it," he proposed, "as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment." After the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, Stalinism, and Yugoslavia, Leviticus 19:18 seems (...) even less conceivable—but all the more urgent now—than Freud imagined. In _The Neighbor_, three of the most significant intellectuals working in psychoanalysis and critical theory collaborate to show how this problem of neighbor-love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and that suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In "Towards a Political Theology of the Neighbor," Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl Schmitt's political theology of the enemy and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In "Miracles Happen," Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor-love through a bracing reassessment of Benjamin and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical violence, Slavoj Žižek's "Neighbors and Other Monsters" reconsiders the idea of excess to rehabilitate a positive sense of the inhuman and challenge the influence of Levinas on contemporary ethical thought. A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and hate, self and other, personal and political, _The Neighbor_ will prove to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial text for understanding the persistence of political theology in secular modernity. (shrink)

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived from (...) a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources. (shrink)

The law of desire has been proposed in several forms, but its essential claim is that agents always act on their strongest proximal action motivation. This law has threatening consequences for human freedom, insofar as it greatly limits agents’ ability to do otherwise given their motivational state. It has proven difficult to formulate a version that escapes counterexamples and some categorically deny its truth. Noticeable by its absence in the literature is any attempt to provide an argument for the law (...) of desire – I propose such an argument here. It is noted that Sripada's “divided mind” theory of willpower provides a counterexample to the version of the law of desire my argument defends, but I note that a reformulated version of the law of desire survives this critique. I conclude that there is a serious case for the law of desire, and note the broader implications of this. (shrink)

To date, emotion research has primarily focused on the experience and display of the emoter. However, of equal, if not more, importance is how such displays impact and guide the behavior of an observer. We incorporate a functionalist framework of emotion to examine the development of differential responding to discrete emotion, theorize on what may facilitate its development, and hypothesize the functions that may underlie such behavioral responses. Although our review is focused primarily on development, the theoretical and methodological ideas (...) laid out are relevant for researchers of emotion at all ages. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo pretende abordar aspectos esenciales del pensamiento de Henri Bergson en la dimensión de las prácticas políticas. Específicamente, esta indagación se centrará en un análisis del sentido de la democracia en Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, en las escuetas, pero decisivas porciones de texto donde esta es abordada. Bajo este objetivo, se podrá extender una discusión de fondo, de carácter ontológico, en torno al rendimiento de una noción de Acontecimiento que pretende servir de (...) reflexión basal en torno al dominio de un concepto de lo político atribuible a este filósofo francés.: This article aims to address essential aspects of Henri Bergson’s thought in the dimension of political practices. Specifically, this inquiry will focus on an analysis of the meaning of democracy in Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, in the succinct, but decisive portions of the text where it is focussed. Under this point, it will be possible to extend a substantive discussion, of an ontological nature, around the performance of a notion of Event that aims to serve as a basal reflection on the domain of a concept of the political attributable to this French philosopher. (shrink)

Anecdotal evidence from many hunter-gatherer societies suggests that successful hunters experience higher prestige and greater reproductive success. Detailed quantitative data on these patterns are now available for five widely dispersed cases (Ache, Hadza, !Kung, Lamalera, and Meriam) and indicate that better hunters exhibit higher age-corrected reproductive success than other men in their social group. Leading explanations to account for this pattern are: (1) direct provisioning of hunters’ wives and offspring, (2) dyadic reciprocity, (3) indirect reciprocity, (4) costly signaling, and (5) (...) phenotypic correlation. I examine the qualitative and quantitative evidence bearing on these explanations and conclude that although none can be definitively rejected, extensive and apparently unconditional sharing of large game somewhat weakens the first three explanations. The costly signaling explanation has support in some cases, although the exact nature of the benefits gained from mating or allying with or deferring to better hunters needs further study. (shrink)

Buddhas, gods, prophets and oracles are often depicted as asking questions. But what are we to understand when Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”, or Mazu, the Classical Zen master asks, “Why do you seek outside?" Is their questioning a power or weakness? Is it something human beings are only capable of due to our finitude? Is there any kind of question that is a power? -/- Focusing on three case studies of questions in divine discourse on (...) the level of story - the god depicted in the Jewish Bible, the master Mazu in his recorded sayings literature, and Jesus as he is depicted in canonized Christian Gospels - Nathan Eric Dickman meditates on human responses to divine questions. He considers the purpose of interreligious dialogue and the provocative kind of questions that seem to purposefully decenter us, drawing on methods from confessionally-oriented hermeneutics and skills from critical thinking. -/- He allows us to see alternative ways of interpreting religious texts through approaches that look beyond reading a text for the improvement of our own religion or for access to some metaphysically transcendent reality. This is the first step in a phenomenology of religions that is inclusive, diverse, relevant and grounded in the world we live in. (shrink)

In this clear and comprehensive account of Merleau-Ponty's thought Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, Matthews examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human embodiment, being-in-the-world, and the understanding of human behaviour; his conception of (...) the self and its relation to other selves; and his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are of immensely important to the development of modern French philosophy. Matthews evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by analytic philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as all students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers, psychologists, economists and other social scientists continue to debate the nature of human well-being. We argue that this debate centers around five main conceptualizations of well-being: hedonic well-being, life satisfaction, desire fulfillment, eudaimonia, and non-eudaimonic objective-list well-being. Each type of well-being is conceptually different, but are they empirically distinguishable? To address this question, we first developed and validated a measure of desire fulfillment, as no measure existed, and then examined associations between this new measure and several other well-being measures. (...) In addition, we explored associations among all five types of well-being. We found high correlations among all measures of well-being, but generally correlations did not approach unity, even when correcting for unreliability. Furthermore, correlations between well-being and related constructs (e.g., demographics, personality) depended on the type of well-being measured. We conclude that empirical findings based on one type of well-being measure may not generalize to all types of well-being. (shrink)

In this introduction to the life and thought of one of the most important French thinkers of the twentieth-century Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the author examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human (...) embodiment, being-in-the-world, and his understanding of human behaviour; his conception of the self and its relation to other selves; and, his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are shown to be of immense importance to the development of French philosophy and the author evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which (...) versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies? (shrink)

The relationship between game play and naturalistic cooperation, generosity, or market involvement is ambiguous at best, making it difficult to link game results to preferences and beliefs guiding decision-making in daily life. Discounting reputation-based explanations because the games are anonymous, while arguing that game play is guided by motivational structures or framing effects reflecting daily life, is inconsistent.

El presente trabajo muestra un posible e inmediato ejemplo precursor del Patio de los Leones de la Alhambra de Granada. El monasterio de Santa Clara de Tordesillas fue un importante palacio construido por el rey de Castilla Pedro I en la década de los cincuenta del siglo xiv. En su interior existía un patio con pabellones adelantados de su eje principal. Al poco tiempo, Muhammad V, amigo del rey castellano, erigió después de 1362 el Palacio y el Patio de Los (...) Leones de la Alhambra. Mientras que en Tordesillas se dispuso una alberca en su centro, en Granada se optó por la solución del patio de crucero. La fórmula de los pabellones desplegada en el palacio de Pedro I tuvo que tomarse de los lavabos monumentales de los monasterios cistercienses cercanos. Gracias a las buenas relaciones existentes entre los dos monarcas, la solución pudo ser llevada de Tordesillas a Granada por artistas que estuvieran trabajando para los dos reinos. (shrink)

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable participation. (...) Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy. (shrink)

In my field, animal developmental biology, and in what could be regarded as its “deep time derivative,” the evolutionary biology of the animal body plan, there exist two kinds of experimentally supported causal explanation. These can be described as “rooted” and “unrooted.” Rooted causal explanation provides logical links to and from the genomic regulatory code, extending right into the genomic sequences that control regulatory gene expression. The genomic regulatory code ultimately determines the developmental process in a direct way, since subsequent (...) developmental events all depend directly and specifically on what regulatory genes are being expressed and where in the developing organism they are being expressed.. (shrink)