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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 06 Aug 2019

Taken: 04 Aug 2019

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Excerpt •
A Natural History of Human Thinking •
Author •
Michael Tomasello •
Second excerpt •
Biophilia •
E.O. Wilson •

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From The Complete World of Human Evolution

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Early human being as obligate collaborative foragers would have become more deeply social in still another way. Although skills of joint intentionality are necessary for human-life collaborative foraging, they are not sufficient. One also has to find a good partner. This may not always be overly difficult, as even chimpanzees, after some experience, learn which partner are good (i.e., lead to success) and which are not. But in addition, in situations in which there is meaningful partner choice, one must be -- or at least appear to be -- a good collaborative partner oneself. To be an attractive partner for others, and so not to excluded from collaborative opportunities, one must not only have good collaborative skills, but also do one’s share of the work, help one’s partner when necessary, share the spoils at the end of the collaboration, and so forth.

And so early humans had to develop a concern for how other individuals in their group were evaluating them as potential collaborative partners, and then regulate their actions so as to affect these external social judgments in positive ways -- what we may call social self-monitoring. Other great apes do not appear to engage in such social self-monitoring. …. Page 46

A NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMAN THINKING
4 years ago. Edited 12 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
“Human hunters help no species.” that is a general truth and the key to the whole melancholy situation. As the human wave rolled over last of the virgin lands like a smothering blanket, Paleo-Indians throughout America, Polynesians across the Pacific, Indonesians into Madagascar, Dutch sailors ashore on Mauritius (to meet the extricate the dodo), they were constrained by neither knowledge or endemicity nor any ethic of conservation. For them the world must have seemed to stretch forever beyond the horizon. If fruit pigeons and giant tortoises disappear from this island, they will surely be found on the next one. What counts is food today, a healthy family, and tribute for the chief, victory celebrations, rites of passage, feasts. As the Mexican truck driver said who shot one of the last two imperial woodpeckers, the largest of all the world’s woodpeckers, “It was a great piece of meat.” ~ Page 394

Biophilia
4 years ago. Edited 12 months ago.

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