The morality behind our impulses
From where do our morals come? Psychologist from Harvard University, Marc D. Hauser discusses how the systems of the brain affect how we know what is right from what is wrong and what the link between judgement and behaviour is. Hauser analyzes if our moral helps as a limit to our impulses, for example when we wish to kiss someone different from our partner.
The Evolution of Communication
Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, The Evolution of Communication looks at species in their natural environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of analysis of communicating systems are.
A dissociation between moral judgments and justifications
To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web‐based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments.
People, Property, or Pets? (New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond)
A child can't be owned, but parents are legally responsible for their child's care. A painting and a dog can be owned; both fall under the jurisdiction of the law and in particular, property rights. But why should a dog, man's best friend, an animal with a mind and emotions, fall under the same category as a painting?
From Monkey Brain to Human Brain: A Fyssen Foundation Symposium
Leaders in cognitive psychology, comparative biology, and neuroscience discuss patterns of convergence and divergence seen in studies of human and nonhuman primate brains.
Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a nonhuman primate
The capacity to generate a limitless range of meaningful expressions from a finite set of elements differentiates human language from other animal communication systems. Rule systems capable of generating an infinite set of outputs (“grammars”) vary in generative power. The weakest possess only local organizational principles, with regularities limited to neighboring units. We used a familiarization/discrimination paradigm to demonstrate that monkeys can spontaneously master such grammars. However, human language entails more sophisticated grammars, incorporating hierarchical structure. Monkeys tested with the same methods, syllables, and sequence lengths were unable to master a grammar at this higher, “phrase structure grammar” level.
Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements
The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions,,, produce an abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives),. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas.
The Design of Animal Communication
Based on the approach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animal communication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.
The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of …
The evolution of communication
Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, The Evolution of Communication looks at species in their natural environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of analysis of communicating systems are, using arguments about design and function to illuminate both the origin and subsequent evolution of each system. It lights the way for a research program that seriously addresses the problem of how communication systems, including language, have been designed over the course of evolution.
Processing of complex sounds in the macaque…
Neurons in the superior temporal gyrus of anesthetized rhesus monkeys were exposed to complex acoustic stimuli. Bandpassed noise bursts with defined center frequencies evoked responses that were greatly enhanced over those evoked by pure tones. This finding led to the discovery of at least one new cochleotopic area in the lateral belt of the nonprimary auditory cortex. The best center frequencies of neurons varied along a rostrocaudal axis, and the best bandwidths of the noise bursts varied along a mediolateral axis. When digitized monkey calls were used as stimuli, many neurons showed a preference for some calls over others. Manipulation of the calls' frequency structure and playback of separate components revealed different types of spectral integration.
Is there teaching in nonhuman animals?
We derive a simple operational definition of teaching that distinguishes it from other forms of social learning where there is no active participation of instructors, and then discuss the constituent parts of the definition in detail. From a functional perspective, it is argued that the instructor's sensivity to the pupul's changing skills or knowledge, and the instructor's ability to attribute mental states to others, are not necessary conditions of teaching in nonhuman animals, as assumed by previous work, because guided instruction without these prerequisites could still be favored by natural selection. A number of cases of social interacion in several orders of mammals and birds that have been interpreted as evidence of teaching are then reviewed.