In this illuminating and wide-ranging study, Gregory F. Tague returns to a familiar chapter of English literary history in order to give it an evolutionary twist. His erudite account of morality in science, philosophy and the eighteenth-century novel hinges on the proposition that human beings are equipped with an inborn but culturally coded moral sense whose real-life manifestations have also had a bearing on the stories told by people since time immemorial. Typically providing a narrative of self in relation to others, the early English novel is a strikingly prescient medium for the imaginative reflection of how the social nature of Homo sapiens gives form to moral sentiments; prescient because it seems to anticipate what science has taught us about human nature in recent years. Tague argues this point persuasively by enriching his astute analysis of literature, especially Richardson's Clarissa, with an impressive array of extradisciplinary research. 'Making mind' is a significant addition to the growing field of evolutionary literary criticism, illustrating not only the by now remarkable scope of this line of inquiry but also the fundamental applicability of evolutionary psychology to the study of literature.
Art and Adaptation presents a comprehensive survey and discussion of the dominant ideas by leading thinkers on why we make art. Approaches that examine the evolution of art behavior embrace natural selection, sexual selection, social selection, and cognition. Art behavior is intimately entwined in our evolution and prehistory and helped solve problems and issues related to kin or group identification, attracting mates, and cultural transmission.
Gregory F. Tague’s An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth’s biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great apes and synthesizes past and current understanding of the similarities in cognition, social behavior, and culture found in apes. Importantly, this book proposes that differences between humans and apes provide the foundation for the call to recognize forest personhood in the great apes. While all ape species are alike in terms of cognition, intelligence, and behaviors, there is a vital contrast: unlike humans, great apes are efficient ecological engineers. Therefore, simian forest sovereignty is critical to conservation efforts in controlling global warming, and apes should be granted dominion over their tropical forests. Weaving together philosophy, biology, socioecology, and elements from eco-psychology, this book provides a glimmer of hope for future acknowledgment of the inherent ethic that ape species embody in their eco-centered existence on this planet.
Evolution and Human Culturesurveys disciplines of evolutionary studies to posit that hominin evolved moral sentiments have been integral to the development of artistic culture.
Arguing for a vegan economy, this book explains how we can and should alter our eating habits away from meat and dairy through sociocultural evolution. Using the latest research and ideas about the cultural ecology of food, this book makes the case that through biological and, especially, cultural evolution, the human diet can gravitate away from farmed meat and dairy products. The thrust of the writing demonstrates that because humans are a cultural species, and since we are evolving more culturally than biologically, it stands to reason for health and environmental reasons that we develop a vegan economy. The book shows that for many good reasons we don’t need a diet of meat and dairy and a call is made to legislative leaders, policy makers, and educators to shift away from animal farming and inform people about the advantages of a vegan culture. The bottom line is that we have to start thinking collectively about smarter ways of growing and processing plant foods, not farming animals as food, to generate good consequences for health, the environment, and, therefore, animals. This is an attainable and worthy goal given the mental and physical plasticity of humans through cooperative cultural evolution. This book is essential reading for all interested in veganism, whether for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, and those studying the human diet from a range of disciplines, including cultural evolution, food ecology, animal ethics, food and nutrition, and evolutionary studies.
Arguing for a vegan economy, this book explains how we can and should alter our eating habits away from meat and dairy through sociocultural evolution. Using the latest research and ideas about the cultural ecology of food, this book makes the case that through biological and, especially, cultural evolution, the human diet can gravitate away from farmed meat and dairy products. The thrust of the writing demonstrates that because humans are a cultural species, and since we are evolving more culturally than biologically, it stands to reason for health and environmental reasons that we develop a vegan economy. The book shows that for many good reasons we don’t need a diet of meat and dairy and a call is made to legislative leaders, policy makers, and educators to shift away from animal farming and inform people about the advantages of a vegan culture. The bottom line is that we have to start thinking collectively about smarter ways of growing and processing plant foods, not farming animals as food, to generate good consequences for health, the environment, and, therefore, animals. This is an attainable and worthy goal given the mental and physical plasticity of humans through cooperative cultural evolution. This book is essential reading for all interested in veganism, whether for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, and those studying the human diet from a range of disciplines, including cultural evolution, food ecology, animal ethics, food and nutrition, and evolutionary studies.
Art and Adaptability argues for a co-evolution of theory of mind and material/art culture. The book covers relevant areas from great ape intelligence, hominin evolution, Stone Age tools, Paleolithic culture and art forms, to neurobiology. We use material and art objects, whether painting or sculpture, to modify our own and other people's thoughts so as to affect behavior. We don't just make judgments about mental states; we create objects about which we make judgments in which mental states are inherent. Moreover, we make judgments about these objects to facilitate how we explore the minds and feelings of others. The argument is that it's not so much art because of theory of mind but art as theory of mind.
Gregory F. Tague’s An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth’s biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great apes and synthesizes past and current understanding of the similarities in cognition, social behavior, and culture found in apes. Importantly, this book proposes that differences between humans and apes provide the foundation for the call to recognize forest personhood in the great apes. While all ape species are alike in terms of cognition, intelligence, and behaviors, there is a vital contrast: unlike humans, great apes are efficient ecological engineers. Therefore, simian forest sovereignty is critical to conservation efforts in controlling global warming, and apes should be granted dominion over their tropical forests. Weaving together philosophy, biology, socioecology, and elements from eco-psychology, this book provides a glimmer of hope for future acknowledgment of the inherent ethic that ape species embody in their eco-centered existence on this planet.
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature posits the genesis of narrative as an adaptive function stemming from consciousness and moral sense. The book is unique with its idea of the individual character evolving narrative in relation to the group. Central to the argument is the claim that prehistorically, consciousness and moral sense intersected to form narrative. More than addressing the origin of story, the book examines and explains the evolution of narrative. The book is an interesting study of how our species-inherited moral sense can differ dramatically from one individual to another. While mores pertain to a group, narrative comes from and is processed by the individual and reaches its high point in the novel. We see how the moral sense works in characters as a monitor, and we feel it operating in us as readers in terms of approval, or not.
Evolution and Human Culture argues that values, beliefs, and practices are expressions of individual and shared moral sentiments. Much of our cultural production stems from what in early hominins was a caring tendency, both the care to share and a self-care to challenge others. Topics cover prehistory, mind, biology, morality, comparative primatology, art, and aesthetics. The book is valuable to students and scholars in the arts, including moral philosophers, who would benefit from reading about scientific developments that impact their fields. For biologists and social scientists the book provides a window into how scientific research contributes to understanding the arts and humanities. The take-home point is that culture does not transcend nature; rather, culture is an evolved moral behavior.
Art and Adaptability argues for a co-evolution of theory of mind and material/art culture. The book covers relevant areas from great ape intelligence, hominin evolution, Stone Age tools, Paleolithic culture and art forms, to neurobiology. We use material and art objects, whether painting or sculpture, to modify our own and other people’s thoughts so as to affect behavior. We don’t just make judgments about mental states; we create objects about which we make judgments in which mental states are inherent. Moreover, we make judgments about these objects to facilitate how we explore the minds and feelings of others. The argument is that it’s not so much art because of theory of mind but art as theory of mind.
From the Preface by Publisher FREDERICKA A. JACKS: "COMMON BOUNDARY includes many varieties of immigration stories. A culture is a country's language, its customs, and the collective thinking or attitude of the people . . . The shifting attitude . . . experienced over . . . English acquisition . . . represents a paradox: on the one hand, there is an attempt to accommodate someone from another country; on the other hand, the immigrant person is always perceived as something foreign. There's a common boundary - being part of and yet being apart from others." From the Foreword by JASON DUBOW: ". . . this book is really an anthology of anthologies: a collection of stories in which the old inextricably blends with the new, in which the tensions between what has been lost and what can be gained are grappled with (but, inevitably, not resolved), and in which the human capacity to imagine a future and make it real (more or less) is explored from a variety of different perspectives. Here's the essential question: now that I am no longer there but here, Who am I? The answers, the stories - various, contingent, authentic - have made me, in a Whitman-esque sense, 'larger, ' and they will you too. And so, when you're done reading, ask yourself: Who now am I?" COMMON BOUNDARY, list of Contributors: Patty Somlo; Cassandra Lewis; George Rabasa; Rivka Keren; Janice Eidus; Mitch Levenberg; Ruth Sabath Rosenthal; John Guzlowski; Dagmara J. Kurcz; Rewa Zeinati; Roy Jacobstein; Ruth Knafo Setton; Eva Konstantopoulos; Nahid Rachlin; M. Neelika Jayawardane; Omer Hadziselimovic; Muriel Nelson; Azarin A. Sadegh; Tim Nees.
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