scholarly journals The Role of Canalization and Plasticity in the Evolution of Musical Creativity

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Podlipniak
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Genetic Perturbations ◽  
Musical Creativity ◽  
The One

Creativity is defined as the ability to generate something new and valuable. From a biological point of view this can be seen as an adaptation in response to environmental challenges. Although music is such a diverse phenomenon, all people possess a set of abilities that are claimed to be the products of biological evolution, which allow us to produce and listen to music according to both universal and culture-specific rules. On the one hand, musical creativity is restricted by the tacit rules that reflect the developmental interplay between genetic, epigenetic and cultural information. On the other hand, musical innovations seem to be desirable elements present in every musical culture which suggests some biological importance. If our musical activity is driven by biological needs, then it is important for us to understand the function of musical creativity in satisfying those needs, and also how human beings have become so creative in the domain of music. The aim of this paper is to propose that musical creativity has become an indispensable part of the gene-culture coevolution of our musicality. It is suggested that the two main forces of canalization and plasticity have been crucial in this process. Canalization is an evolutionary process in which phenotypes take relatively constant forms regardless of environmental and genetic perturbations. Plasticity is defined as the ability of a phenotype to generate an adaptive response to environmental challenges. It is proposed that human musicality is composed of evolutionary innovations generated by the gradual canalization of developmental pathways leading to musical behavior. Within this process, the unstable cultural environment serves as the selective pressure for musical creativity. It is hypothesized that the connections between cortical and subcortical areas, which constitute cortico-subcortical circuits involved in music processing, are the products of canalization, whereas plasticity is achieved by the means of neurological variability. This variability is present both at the level of an individual structure’s enlargement in response to practicing (e.g., the planum temporale) and within the involvement of neurological structures that are not music-specific (e.g., the default mode network) in music processing.

scholarly journals Vormt moderne antropologie een probleem voor het Christelijk geloof?

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luco J. Van den Brom
Keyword(s):  
Social Insects ◽  
Physiological State ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Communion Of Saints ◽  
Theory Of Everything

Does modern anthropology pose a problem to the Christian faith? Contemporary scientific anthropology proposes a naturalistic conception of human personhood because of humankind’s place somewhere in the larger evolutionary process of life. Some authors use the theory of biological evolution to explain phenomena in other areas as well, and due to its success suggest it has universal application in cultural and religious studies too, as if it were a theory of everything. Darwin’s idea of a common origin of all life undermined a supposed superiority of humankind. It signalled the end of an Aristotelian metaphysical notion of classification and constituted a real blow for classical individualistic anthropology. Dawkins explains religion in terms of empirical immanent biological processes in the human brain. He views religious ideas as ‘memes’ that act like an infectious virus in mental processes. His hypothesis seems to be a relapse into the old Aristotelian pattern. Michael Persinger interprets religion as an internal physiological state of an individual brain and reduces the language of mental concepts to physiological states of a material brain. Persinger’s, and also Dennett’s, materialistic view presupposes a God’s Eye Point of View as an Archimedian perspective outside the world. If a God exists, the neurologists Newberg and d’Aquili argue that he needs a point of contact within our brain: the God spot. Sociobiologists Edward Wilson and David Wilson consider religion a form of group adaptation, because cooperating individuals show the primary benefits of cooperation and altruistic behaviour, just as social insects. Religion is an evolutionary support of altruistic instincts and creates a social infrastructure to benefit a cooperative society. However, social insects merely act on their instincts whereas human beings can act intentionally even against their primary instincts, because of motives for altruist practices inspired, for example, by the narratives and concepts of a Christian tradition. The communion of saints does not take place merely because of a social instinct, but because of the shared motive of the community as a whole, that is, the body of Christ, which acts altruistically irrespective of persons, including outsiders!

El Protagonismo Dialéctico-Social del Ser Humano en el Desarrollo Intelectual de Rodolfo Mondolfo

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Jesús Víctor Alfredo Contreras Ugarte
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Descriptive Method

Summary: Reflecting on the role humans take into nowadays society, should be of interest in all our social reflections, even for those that refer to the field of law. Any human indifferent and unconscious of the social role that he ought to play within society, as a member of it, is an irresponsible human detached from everything that surrounds him, regarding matters and other humans. Trying to isolate in an irresponsible, passive and comfortable attitude, means, after all, denying oneself, denying our nature, as the social being every human is. This is the reflection that this academic work entitles, the one made from the point of view of the Italian philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo. From a descriptive development, starting from this renowned author, I will develop ideas that will warn the importance that human protagonism have, in this human product so call society. From a descriptive development, from this well-known author, I will be prescribing ideas that will warn the importance of the protagonism that all human beings have, in that human product that we call society. I have used the descriptive method to approach the positions of the Italian humanist philosopher and, for my assessments, I have used the prescriptive method from an eminently critical and deductive procedural position. My goal is to demonstrate, from the humanist postulates of Rodolfo Mondolfo, the hypothesis about the leading, decision-making and determining role that the human being has within society. I understand, to have reached the demonstration of the aforementioned hypothesis, because, after the analyzed, there is no doubt, that the human being is not one more existence in the development of societies; its role is decisive in determining the human present and the future that will house the next societies and generations of our historical future.

scholarly journals Interaction of Traditional Musical Cultures and Their Adaptive Potential: Cultural and Pedagogical Aspects

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Alexander Bazikov
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Adaptive Potential ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Musical Cultures ◽  
The University ◽  
University Training

The author of the article considers the interaction of traditional musical cultures in Russia from a historical perspective and a philosophical point of view. The cultural approach allows us to consider traditional musical culture as a multi­level system, the musical and cultural tradition as part of the system and as a multi­component model. The pedagogical approach allows to justify the feasibility of introducing this issue into the content of the university training of future musicians and teachers in order to understand by them the mechanism of functioning of traditional musical cultures and to use their knowledge in their subsequent professional musical activity. The author pays special attention to the analysis of the possibilities of the musical and cultural tradition as a social and cultural phenomenon and the nature of its interaction with foreign cultures. It is shown that the musical and cultural tradition as a means of consolidating different nationalities is an effective way to unite all peoples not only of Russia, but also beyond its borders.

Hierarchic Interactions: The Evolutionary Process

1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niles Eldredge
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Unique Problem ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Present Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

Organisms—biology begins with organisms, and indeed a great deal of the history of biology is a trek through progressively finer subdivisions of organisms. When “forefronts” of biology are listed these days, nearly all concern the molecular biology of intracellular (and intraorganelle) physicochemical processes—and quite rightly so. But the ontology of units larger than organisms, while not wholly neglected, is at least as difficult a problem. Organisms are by far the easiest of biological units for us to see, to probe, to conceptualize as “individuals.” But, in the present context, organisms pose a unique problem all their own: they constitute the only class of individuals to be found in both the genealogical and ecological hierarchies. Consider the confusion that permeates even the recent explicitly hierarchical literature: ecology and evolution (as in the quote from Valentine that stands at this chapter’s head) are generally seen as separate areas of inquiry, but the choice of the higher-level individuals to be incorporated into one’s hierarchy very much depends upon one’s point of view. Below the organism level, of course, the distinction between the somatic and germ lines (i.e., in multicellular organisms) once again ensures a clean separation of the elements of the two hierarchies. Hence the conclusion (Eldredge and Salthe 1984) that there must in fact be two independent, yet parallel and interacting, process hierarchies that together combine to yield evolution. Organisms, as members of both hierarchies, threaten to muddy the picture. It is possible, of course, to distinguish between the economic and reproductive functions of organisms, as I have done at length in the preceding chapter. Physiologists, after all, have long been telling their students that reproduction is the one physiological process not essential to the survival of an organism; thus, it is no surprise that it is invariably the first such process to be dispensed with when the organism is stressed. It is easy to distinguish the economic from the reproductive functions of the vast majority of organisms, but in many vertebrates, most especially Homo sapiens, sexuality has clear economic implications, obscuring the distinction between the two hierarchies perhaps even more.

scholarly journals Is There a Purpose in the Biological Evolution of Living Beings?

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-413
Author(s):  
Justo Aznar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biological Question ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace

An unquestionably important biological question is whether human beings are the product of chance or of purpose in the evolutionary process. Charles Darwin did not accept purpose in biological evolution, a view not shared by his colleague Alfred Russel Wallace. The controversy has remained ever since, and while many experts argue against purpose in biological evolution, many others defend it. This paper reflects on this biological and ethical problem, relating it to the possible existence of a plan that governs and shapes the evolution of living beings and that is ultimately responsible for the development of Homo sapiens.

scholarly journals The Issues of Bio- and Psychopolitics in Pandemic Times as Reminiscences of the Romantic Glorification of Life

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Józef Bremer
Keyword(s):  
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Short Description ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Friedrich Schiller ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
The One

The present coronavirus pandemic has confronted each of us individually and our society at large with new existential and theoretical-practical challenges. In the following article I present a look at the pandemic from the point of view of biopolitics (Michael Foucault, Giorgio Agamben) and psychopolitics (Byung-Chul Han). The reflections on biopolitics and psychopolitics, on top of the terms they used, make us aware of the fragility of human life on the one hand, and on the other hand, they encourage us to look for historical equiva­lents to our current struggle with the pandemic. For me, such an equivalent would be the culture of Romanticism: for example, works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Juliusz Słowacki, and Friedrich von Schelling. Starting from a short description of the Romantic era, I proceed to my goal which is to show how, during the pandemic, fundamental questions asked by biotechnology and psychopolitics come to the fore as questions about us, human beings, and our individual and social survival.

Knowledge of language: its elements and origins

1981 ◽  
Vol 295 (1077) ◽  
pp. 223-234 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Knowledge Of Language ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
Structural Descriptions

My approach to the study of language is based on the assumption that knowledge of language can be properly characterized by means of a generative grammar, i.e. a system of rules and principles that assigns structural descriptions to linguistic expressions. On this view, the basic concepts are those of ‘grammar’ and ‘knowledge of grammar’. The concepts of language’ and ‘knowledge of language’ are derivative: they involve a higher level of abstraction from psychological mechanisms and raise additional (though not necessarily important) problems. Of central concern, from this point of view, will be to determine the biological endowment that makes it possible for a grammar of the required sort to develop in human beings provided that they are exposed to some appropriate body of experience. This biological endowment may be regarded as a function that maps a body of experience into a particular grammar. The function itself is commonly referred to as universal grammar (u.g.) and can be expressed, in part, as a system of principles that determine the class of accessible particular grammars and their properties. Recent work suggests that u.g. consists, on the one hand, of a theory of so-called core grammar and, on the other, of a theory of permissible extensions and modifications of core grammar. Given the intricate internal structure of u.g., it can account for the superficially highly diverse grammars and languages that do in fact exist. Thus, what appear to be quite different systems of knowledge may arise from relatively little experience. A number of subsystems of u.g. have now been explored, each with its distinctive properties and possibilities of variation. Some current proposals concerning these systems are sketched, and some consequences considered with regard to the nature and acquisition of cognitive systems (including systems of knowledge) more generally.

The elusory kingdoms of the mind: Glosses on José Luis Caivano’s paper

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind

AbstractPeirce’s best idea, and the one least implemented by himself and his followers, is that of an ethics of terminology. Using this ethics as a tool, we suggest that many Peircean terms are in fact misleading, or, as he said himself at the end of his life, “injurious.” From the point of view of cognitive semiotics, there is no reason to abide by Peirce’s definition of semiosis, but, taking up the two quotes offered by Caivano, we demonstrate that they lead to different results, one being phenomenological and the other formalist. We go on to suggest that Peirce himself cannot have believed in the first definition, because then there could be no point in fallibilism and the community of scholars. In fact, we claim that what the different definitions of the “kingdoms” of nature show is precisely that human beings can liberate themselves from their

Understanding functional illiteracy from a policy, adult education, and cognition point of view: Towards a joint referent framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulajić ◽  
Miomir Despotović ◽  
Thomas Lachmann
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Functional Illiteracy ◽  
Scale Levels ◽  
Components Of Reading ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract. The article discusses the emergence of a functional literacy construct and the rediscovery of illiteracy in industrialized countries during the second half of the 20th century. It offers a short explanation of how the construct evolved over time. In addition, it explores how functional (il)literacy is conceived differently by research discourses of cognitive and neural studies, on the one hand, and by prescriptive and normative international policy documents and adult education, on the other hand. Furthermore, it analyses how literacy skills surveys such as the Level One Study (leo.) or the PIAAC may help to bridge the gap between cognitive and more practical and educational approaches to literacy, the goal being to place the functional illiteracy (FI) construct within its existing scale levels. It also sheds more light on the way in which FI can be perceived in terms of different cognitive processes and underlying components of reading. By building on the previous work of other authors and previous definitions, the article brings together different views of FI and offers a perspective for a needed operational definition of the concept, which would be an appropriate reference point for future educational, political, and scientific utilization.

Recommendations of The Ombudsman’s Dilemma: Between Law Enforcement Officials and Protection of Credibility

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Dyah Adriantini Sintha Dewi
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Oversight Body

The Ombudsman as an external oversight body for official performance, in Fikih Siyasah (constitutionality in Islam) is included in the supervision stipulated in legislation (al-musahabah al-qomariyah). Supervision is done so that public service delivery to the community is in accordance with the rights of the community. This is done because in carrying out its duties, officials are very likely to conduct mal administration, which is bad public services that cause harm to the community. The Ombudsman is an institution authorized to resolve the mal administration issue, in which one of its products is by issuing a recommendation. Although Law No. 37 of 2018 on the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia states that the recommendation is mandatory, theombudsman's recommendations have not been implemented. This is due to differences in point of view, ie on the one hand in the context of law enforcement, but on the other hand the implementation of the recommendation is considered as a means of opening the disgrace of officials. Recommendations are the last alternative of Ombudsman's efforts to resolve the mal administration case, given that a win-win solution is the goal, then mediation becomes the main effort. This is in accordance with the condition of the Muslim majority of Indonesian nation and prioritizes deliberation in resolving dispute. Therefore, it is necessary to educate the community and officials related to the implementation of the Ombudsman's recommendations in order to provide good public services for the community, which is the obligation of the government.

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