The aboutness of language and the evolution of the construction-ready brain

The chapter presents the hypothesis that early Homo sapiens were language-ready in the sense that they had brains that could have supported language had it already been developed, but were not yet language-using. Informed by data from comparative neuroprimatology, the approach sees protolanguage emerging from complex recognition and imitation of manual skills via biocultural evolution, while cultural evolution alone supported the emergence of language from protolanguage. This approach supports the view that the Homo sapiens language-ready brain had the more general property of being construction-ready, and that this made possible the emergence of drawing and painting through later cultural evolution.

Deception, Lying, and Lust

Primatologists have identified the apparent ability to deceive others in more dominant positions in order to gain sexual or other privileges. Evidence for the deliberative quality of deception in primates is much harder to assess. This chapter explores the biological capacity to deceive and shows how common it is among social animals even though relationships involving honest signalling are usually dominant. The chapter investigates the potential evolutionary roles for deception and how it plays out in the human sphere at different societal levels. Lying, however, which relies on language, brings in aspects to deception which are unique to our species. The human capacity for complex symbolic thought in which language emerges also influences the biocultural evolution of language and associated capacity for lying. Theological ethical debates about whether Thomas Aquinas ever permitted lying in situations where greater harm would ensue are worth considering in the light of the biological advantages of deception. Lust (illicit sexual desire) is another of the seven deadly sins and has been given perhaps greater pride of place in the Christian tradition because of a common interpretation of Augustine linking sex with original sin.

Paul and the Plea for Contingency in Contemporary Philosophy: A Philosophical and Anthropological Critique

Our purpose in this study – which stands at the crossroads of contemporary philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies – is to assess critically the plea for radical contingency in contemporary thought, with special attention to the work of Meillassoux, in light, among other things, of the symptomatic presence of Pauline motifs in the late twentieth to early twenty first-century philosophical arena, from Vattimo to Agamben and especially Badiou. Drawing on Aristotle’s treatment of τύχη and Hilan Bensusan’s neo-monadology (as well as on the network biology of David George Haskell, Scott Gilbert’s holobiont hypothesis, and Terrence Deacon’s teleo-dynamics), we ask what is missing in such plea, from a theoretical standpoint. Next, we examine the relation between radical contingency and worldlessness in dialogue with Leroi-Gourhan’s theory of biocultural evolution, Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, Pierre Clastres’s ethnography, Heidegger’s philosophy of language, and contemporary authors like Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Patrice Maniglier. These two parallel lines of inquiry help us explore what radical contingency, in turn, prevents us from thinking: the intersection of ontology, cosmopolitics, and modality.

Birth and the Big Bad Wolf: Biocultural Evolution and Human Childbirth, Part 2

In Part 2 of this two-part article, we further employ the lens of evolutionary medicine to explore similarities in premodern biocultural features of birth, arguing that these were an outgrowth of our common evolutionary heritage as bipedal primates. These practices grew out of the empiricism of millennia of trial and error and supported humans to give birth in closer alignment with our evolved biology. We argue that many common obstetric procedures today work against this evolved biology. In seeking to manage birth, we sometimes generate an obstetric paradox wherein we (over)intervene in human childbirth to try to keep it safe, yet thereby cause harm. We describe premodern birthing patterns in three sections: (a) eating and drinking at will and unrestrained movement in labor with upright pushing; (b) obligate midwifery and continuous labor support; and (c) the low-intervention birth/long-term breastfeeding/co-sleeping adaptive complex, and discuss how these are still relevant today. We conclude with a set of suggestions for improving the global technocratic treatment of birth and with a futuristic epilogue about a 7th, cyborgian pig that asks: What will become of birth as humans continue to coevolve with our technologies?

Birth and the Big Bad Wolf: Biocultural Evolution and Human Childbirth, Part 1

In this two-part article, we reflect on the evolution of human childbirth by combining our respective expertise in folklore and interpretive anthropology (Davis-Floyd) and physiologic birth (Cheyney). In Part 1, we follow six little folkloric pigs from the beginnings of human history through to the present, adapting the well-known tale of “The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.” Using this tale as a metaphorical device, we explore complex relationships between humans and nature, society, and childbirth through a description of the six basic subsistence strategies humans have developed over time—foraging, horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, industrialism, and the technocracy, reflecting on how these ways of life connect to birthing practices. We argue that despite vast cultural differences in the treatment of birth—including those few cultures where solitary birth is valued—premodern, pre-industrial birthways had much in common, such as labor accompaniment, upright positions, and freedom of movement during labor and birth. These similarities were supplanted during the Industrial Revolution with the subsequent growth of technocratic societies and replaced by an also very similar set of birthing practices. However, these technocratic approaches do very little to support, and often even undermine, our evolved birthing biologies. Throughout, we use the Big Bad Wolf as a metaphor for the wild, untamed, and sometimes intense power of nature (and also of unmedicated birth), and ask, what does the Big Bad Wolf have to teach us about how we support and perform childbirth today?