Conclusion

The final chapter takes stock of the limited conclusions of this study of the varieties of intelligence and the possibilities for mutual intelligibility. We can, it is argued, appreciate some cross-cultural human universals (language and sociability), yet we must be continually alert to the diversity of human experience and the dangers of imposing Western categories. But the chief lesson to be learned is that when we encounter beliefs and practices that diverge sharply from what we are used to, we should see this as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. The lack of common ground should not be treated as tantamount to denying the possibility of any understanding whatsoever, though such understanding as we can reach will often involve the revision of our own initial assumptions and categories.

Test Case 3

A sense of the difference between right and wrong and a corresponding recognition of a concept of morality can be widely, maybe even universally, attested, as has been suggested for the Golden Rule (treat others as you would have them treat you). But how far does the great variety of explicit codified legal systems that can be attested across the world and over time undermine any possibility of treating law or even ‘custom’ as a robust cross-cultural category? This chapter investigates the similarities and differences in those systems in ancient societies (Greece, China) and in modern ones (e.g. Papua New Guinea) to throw light on the one hand on the importance of law for social order but on the other on the difficulties facing any programme to secure lasting justice.

Test Case 4: Aesthetics

Our notions of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’ have undergone several transformations in recent years. When we apply such ideas to the products of indigenous craftsmen (e.g. those studied by Gell or Scoditti on the island of Kitawa) we are liable to misrepresent their original aims and criteria which may relate to ‘efficacy’ rather than (just) to ‘beauty’ or ‘felicity’. The divergences in musical appreciation across the world tell a similar story where links to notions of morality are common. The ambitious correlation of artistic objects with underlying ontologies proposed by Descola underlines the difficulty of cross-cultural generalizations in this domain, though that is not to claim that we are quite at a loss to arrive at any understanding of others’ experience.

The Argument from Sociability

Humans are all social animals, yet we live in societies of strikingly different kinds. This chapter examines what the development of human reasoning in all its diversity owes to our sociability. Taking examples from ethnography and more particularly from ancient Greece and China, it investigates critically the ways in which different social and political arrangements may foster or impede different modes of communicative exchanges. It considers how such arrangements may favour different core values and understandings of what it is to be human, including in particular the tension between more inclusive and more restricted views on that question. Recognizing that mutual misunderstandings may and do continue, it reflects on how and within what limits they may nevertheless be overcome.

The Argument from Language

Although other living beings can communicate with one another using sounds and gestures, the range of the messages that humans can convey is far greater. But if language is a capacity that all normal humans possess, the variety of different natural languages poses severe problems for translation and mutual intelligibility. However, to argue that the obstacles to communication across languages and even within them are insurmountable is to underestimate where it is still possible to reach some provisional understanding. How far do different natural languages constrain what can be expressed or understood within them? Taking Chinese as one example, this chapter argues against linguistic determinism and stresses the possibilities of mutual intelligibility even while recognizing its limits

Test Case 2

Is ‘religion’ a Western category imposed artificially on the experience, beliefs and practices of non-Western peoples? Or does religion correspond to some underlying universal biological, psychological or social human need? This chapter reviews some current theories on the definitional problems (Geertz, Boyer). It considers the evidence from ethnography and from ancient peoples to express scepticism about most universalist claims. There are thus problems in using this category across populations, although that is not to say that others’ behaviour and beliefs are totally beyond our reach. However, all the outsider comprehends about the mystic’s experience is that some exceptional event has occurred, not any of the content of that experience.

The Evolutionary Issues

What conclusions should be drawn about human intelligence from the study of biological and cultural evolution? This chapter examines critically theories of some historical Great Divide among human populations, for instance Damasio’s Grand Synoptic Theory focussing on homeostasis or self-regulation, or Axial Age hypotheses stemming from Jaspers, that conjecture a radical break-through in the development of reflexive thought across Eurasia. Attempts to draw a line between more advanced societies and others considered primitive tend to oversimplify by underestimating our and their common cognitive capacities. The case of differences in spatial cognition is used to show how different cognitive capacities are in play but to argue for mutual intelligibility even across divergent paradigms.

Turning the Tables

This chapter considers what we can learn about mutual intelligibility from instances where it meets obstacles. That may happen not just where there is no desire to understand others, even no willingness to do so, where transparency is not the aim, but rather a deliberate cultivation of opacity. Difficulties may also arise because of perceived or imagined differences between human groups, including in their core values. It examines critically anthropological and philosophical theses to do with the radical differences in the ontologies presupposed or assumed by different human groups. The opacity of many communicative acts should not mislead us into taking the obstacles to mutual understanding to be always insurmountable.

Test Case 1

Do all humans engaged in ‘mathematics’? That is, can mathematics be considered a viable category of intelligent activity that can be applied cross-culturally? That question must be raised because of the evident diversity in the practices and ideas that have some claim to be thought of as relating to that category. This chapter considers the evidence from modern indigenous societies, such as the Wari’, and from ancient ones such as the Greeks and Chinese, to investigate the different notions that have been entertained (sometimes even with a single ‘culture’) and the various practices that have been cultivated and often highly prized, in relation to the key notions of quantity, number, shapes, and forms. It concludes that it is possible, within limits, to compare and contrast such ideas and activities.

Magic

This chapter discusses the interpretation of what are commonly labelled magical acts or irrational beliefs, which earlier commentators (Frazer, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard) often dismissed as failed technology or failed science, if not just superstitious rubbish. Following Tambiah, it introduces the contrast between the goals of ‘efficacy’ and that of ‘felicity’. In many cases the apparent aim is not causal efficacy, i.e. to achieve a particular effect or result, but felicity, where the criterion is rather what is appropriate to the occasion. It takes examples from ancient Greece and China to illustrate how these two criteria may differ and how they play out in the context of medicine, where rival styles of treatment have different aims in their attempts to heal or to secure well-being.