Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (The University Center for Human Values Series)

Average customer rating:

Plausible
Welcome new perspectives on moral theorizing
Critically Important Research
Excellent
Our hertitage deepens

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (The University Center for Human Values Series)
Frans de Waal
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Social Psychology & Interactions | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0691124477

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.

In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes. Science has thus exacerbated our reciprocal habits of blaming nature when we act badly and labeling the good things we do as "humane." Seeking the origin of human morality not in evolution but in human culture, science insists that we are moral by choice, not by nature.

Citing remarkable evidence based on his extensive research of primate behavior, de Waal attacks "Veneer Theory," which posits morality as a thin overlay on an otherwise nasty nature. He explains how we evolved from a long line of animals that care for the weak and build cooperation with reciprocal transactions. Drawing on both Darwin and recent scientific advances, de Waal demonstrates a strong continuity between human and animal behavior. In the process, he also probes issues such as anthropomorphism and human responsibilities toward animals.

Based on the Tanner Lectures de Waal delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2004, Primates and Philosophers includes responses by the philosophers Peter Singer, Christine M. Korsgaard, and Philip Kitcher and the science writer Robert Wright. They press de Waal to clarify the differences between humans and other animals, yielding a lively debate that will fascinate all those who wonder about the origins and reach of human goodness.

Great summary/introduction to "brain size vs. organization" debate.......2006-05-01

Cheney and Seyfarth enter the minds of vervet monkeys and other primates to explore the nature of primate intelligence and the evolution of cognition.

"This reviewer had to be restrained from stopping people in the street to urge them to read it: They would learn something of the way science is done, something about how monkeys see their world, and something about themselves, the mental models they inhabit."—Roger Lewin, Washington Post Book World

"A fascinating intellectual odyssey and a superb summary of where science stands."—Geoffrey Cowley, Newsweek

"A once-in-the-history-of-science enterprise."—Duane M. Rumbaugh, Quarterly Review of Biology

I think that these are questions that fascinate almost all of us. What would it be like to be very nearly as intelligent as a human being, but to lack language (not merely a means of communication but also a way of formulating knowledge -- therefore a modality of knowing)? It is, of course, impossible ever to understand as a monkey understands or to feel as a monkey feels, but there is no better way to learn what a monkey can know or feel than Cheney and Seyfarth's engaging book.

Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

Average customer rating:

Interesting and Partly Convincing
Thought provoking and charming
This book should create earthquakes
Important but Defensive
Outstanding glimpse into the mind of our closest relative.

Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh , and Roger Lewin
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0471585912

Though he cannot physically speak, Kanzi understands an impressive amount of spoken English and communicates by punching symbols on a special keyboard. This book tells Kanzi's incredible story and explores its intriguing ramifications.

SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH (Decatur, Georgia) is one of the world's leading ape-language researchers. ROGER LEWIN (Cambridge, Massachusetts) is the author of 12 books, including co-authorship of the best-selling Origins with Richard Leakey.

Since the 1960s, primatologists have recognized the impact of predation on the evolution of morphology, the social systems and cognitive behavior of monkeys and apes, but few studies considered its impact on the prosimians - lemurs, lorises, galagos and tarsiers. This comprehensive volume, written by experts in the field, narrows this gap by highlighting the effect of predation on the order Primates in general. Theoretical approaches to understanding how primates perceive predation threat, as well as proximate and ultimate causes to address threat and attack, are considered across the primate order. Although this volume concentrates on the least known group in this theoretical area - the prosimians - contributions by researchers on numerous primate taxa across four major geographical regions make this a novel and exciting contribution to students interested in primate evolution and ecology.

Recent studies of vocal development in infants have shed new light on old questions of how the speech capacity is founded and how it may have evolved in the human species. Vocalizations in the very first months of life appear to provide previously unrecognized clues to the earliest steps in the process by which language came to exist and the processes by which communicative disorders arise.

Perhaps the most interesting sounds made by infants are the uniquely human 'protophones' (loosely, 'babbling'), the precursors to speech. Kimbrough Oller argues that these are most profitably interpreted in the context of a new infrastructural model of speech. The model details the manner in which well-formed speech units are constructed, and it reveals how infant vocalizations mature through the first months of life by increasingly adhering to the rules of well-formed speech.

He lays out many advantages of an infrastructural approach. Infrastructural interpretation illuminates the significance of vocal stages, and highlights clinically significant deviations, such as the previously unnoticed delays in vocal development that occur in deaf infants. An infrastructural approach also specifies potential paths of evolution for vocal communicative systems. Infrastructural properties and principles of potential communicative systems prove to be organized according to a natural logic--some properties and principles naturally presuppose others. Consequently some paths of evolution are likely while others can be ruled out. An infrastructural analysis also provides a stable basis for comparisons across species, comparisons that show how human vocal capabilities outstrip those of their primate relatives even during the first months of human infancy.

The Emergence of the Speech Capacity will challenge psychologists, linguists, speech pathologists, and primatologists alike to rethink the ways they categorize and describe communication. Oller's infraphonological model permits provocative reconceptualizations of the ways infant vocalizations progress systematically toward speech, insightful comparisons between speech and the vocal systems of other species, and fruitful speculations about the origins of language.