The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

In this paper, we aim to trace the origin of the systematic cross-cultural variations in referential intuitions by investigating the effects of perspective taking on people’s responses in the Gödel-style probes through two novel experiments. Here is how we will proceed. In section 2, we first briefly introduce the MMNS (2004) study, and then critically review the two relevant studies conducted by Sytsma and colleagues (i.e., Sytsma and Livengood 2011; Sytsma et al. 2015). In section 3, we introduce the (...) literature on cross-cultural variation in perspective taking in cultural psychology, which together with the conjecture of perspectival ambiguity leads to the hypothesis of our current study. In sections 4 and 5, two new experiments on how perspective taking affects people’s responses in hypothetical stories modelled on the Gödel thought experiment will be reported. Based on the empirical findings, in section 6 we argue that the robust cross-cultural variations thus far observed in people’s responses to the Gödel cases are largely attributable to culturally specific perspective-taking strategies, which provides new support for the proposal previously made by Sytsma and Livengood (2011). The implications of the experimental results for the ongoing work of testing the theories of refence of names and for the current metaphilosophical debate on the robustness of philosopher’s intuitions are also drawn in this section. Finally, the major conclusions and contributions of the current study are highlighted in section 7. (shrink)

A Letter to the Editor about the origin of "gender identity" and deficiencies in its current definition.

The arguments usually propounded to show that the Greater Alcibiades was not written by Plato seem to me, by themselves, inconclusive. I believe that it would be better to begin by arguing that we are given a suggestion of a generic or universal likeness between one innermost ‘self’ and another, and a method of acquiring wisdom and of apprehending God that are hardly in keeping with Plato's dialogues. My present purpose, however, is to draw attention to a striking parallelism between (...) the Alcibiades and early works of Aristotle, as well as certain other compositions that probably belong to the same period as the latter. (shrink)

Vocal theories of the origin of language rarely make a case for the precursor functions that underlay the evolution of speech. The vocal expression of emotion is unquestionably the best candidate for such a precursor, although most evolutionary models of both language and speech ignore emotion and prosody altogether. I present here a model for a joint prosodic precursor of language and music in which ritualized group-level vocalizations served as the ancestral state. This precursor combined not only affective and (...) intonational aspects of prosody, but also holistic and combinatorial mechanisms of phrase generation. From this common stage, there was a bifurcation to form language and music as separate, though homologous, specializations. This separation of language and music was accompanied by their (re)unification in songs with words. (shrink)

First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Henri Bergson has increased both recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy and attention to his relationship to phenomenology. Until now, the question of Martin Heidegger’s debt to Bergson has remained largely unanswered. Heidegger’s brief discussion of Bergson in Being and Time is geared toward explaining why he fails in his attempts to think more radically about time. Despite this dismissal, a close look at Heidegger’s early works dealing with temporality reveals (...) a sustained engagement with Bergson’s thought. In The Origin of Time, Heath Massey evaluates Heidegger’s critique of Bergson and examines how Bergson’s efforts to rethink time in terms of duration anticipate Heidegger’s own interpretation of temporality. Massey demonstrates how Heidegger follows Bergson in seeking to uncover “primordial time” by disentangling temporality from spatiality, how he associates Bergson with the tradition of philosophy that covers up this phenomenon, and how he overlooks Bergson’s ontological turn in Matter and Memory. Through close readings of early major works by both thinkers, Massey argues that Bergson is a much more radical thinker with respect to time than Heidegger allows. (shrink)

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us... are ... constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey...

Most of the biological and earth sciences are concerned with finding the differences between things and the magnitude of those differences, while science is occupied exploring these spaces and changes, religion is looking for a way to establish a unity of the parts. An interesting and valid question can be formulated by synthesizing the dedication to detail of the one with the great encompassing cohesiveness of the other. What is there to be seen if the form, material, structure, function and (...) size of objects and organisms were to be investigated with the overview sought by religion? ;Our world is comprised of a diversity of form; trees, clouds, bicycles, washsinks. These forms have a programmed series of causes and events that lead them to assume their shapes. The separation between the man-made and the natural becomes unimportant in this scheme, but because of complex inter-relations, correlations begin to emerge that relate seemingly diverse elements, dragonfly wings - veins, and sidewalk cracks, seed pods and machines. ;In words and photographs I have examined the primary physical causes of form diversity and similarity. Sometimes totally different objects and organisms appear very similar to one another and take on definite and like patterns as they respond to a spectrum of influences such as structure, the laws governing the subdivisions of space or the legacy of inheritance. In other circumstances the shape of both the living and non-living are made very different by such effects as size and material composition. ;It should be noted that this study is by no means a catalog of all that is possible in the determination of form; the information gathered here is a sampling of some of the simpler aspects of the physical world. Even with this necessary limiting of scope, it can be possible to give insight to that intricate, incredibly complex and beautiful series of interrelationships that exists about us. Those among us who affect the environment to a greater degree---builders, architects, artists and designers---might, with this understanding, approach their work with more compassion and sensitivity. This study is intended to be the outline for a book to be used as a text, but not in the sense that the reader can absorb, memorize and apply a quotient of facts to a given problem. But instead, it is thought that through a few examples the reader will gain the insight for an intuitive and knowing approach to the change of his physical environment. (shrink)

This article provides the first detailed modern examination of Julia Wedgwood’s interventions in the Victorian debate about the origin of language. Wedgwood wanted to understand language, consistently with Darwin’s theory of evolution, as having evolved gradually out of other forms of animal behaviour. She focused specifically on imitative behaviours, siding with the imitative or “bow-wow” theory of language which her father Hensleigh Wedgwood also championed. She opposed the conceptualist or “ding-dong” theory of Max Müller, on which language is the (...) “Rubicon” that radically separates humans from animals. I argue that Julia Wedgwood was right to emphasise that the human capacity for language is continuous with animal behaviours, though she was wrong to reduce this continuity to a single behaviour, imitation. Nevertheless, her language essays remain significant as an early attempt to forge a Darwinian account of language, and they illuminate the fact that women were able to take part in Victorian philosophical debates, including on an abstract topic such as philosophy of language. The essays also provide entry into Wedgwood’s thought and work more broadly, which are unjustly neglected and deserve to be recovered. (shrink)

Spelke's sweeping proposal requires greater precision in specifying the place of language in early cognition. We now know by 3 months of age, infants have already begun to forge a link between language and core cognition. This precocious link, which unfolds dynamically over development, may indeed offer an entry point for acquiring higher-order, abstract conceptual and representational capacities.

By the 1840s and 1850s biogeographical theory had polarized into two opposing views — both of which had their origins in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. At issue in this polarization was the question of God's involvement with His creation. At one end of the spectrum were Sclater, Agassiz, Kirby, and others who saw a neatly designed world in which geographical distributions were planned and executed by the hand of God at creation. For most of these naturalists, organisms were created (...) en masse within the regions they now occupy. Disjunct distributions were proof to them that God had indeed created species in situ as many individuals. These naturalists hoped to reveal God's biogeographical plan by discovering His regions of creation. They had hoped to demonstrate a neatly devised set of regions of creation which might be applicable to all creatures, but in attempting to do so, they arrived at conflicting sets of delineations — thus helping to undermine their conceptions of nature in which design (both idealist and utilitarian) played an important part.93At the other end of the biogeographical spectrum were the theoretical ideas of Prichard and Lyell, who viewed a more remote God — one who allowed His creation to be shaped and modified by secondary laws. Lyell in particular wished to leave considerations of design aside, hoping to demonstrate that the shape of the present creation is due to natural laws. Prichard and Lyell saw God's role in the creation of species (and distributions) as being extremely limited. In fact, the regions of creation seen today are in actuality only natural artifacts produced by migrations and barriers. They saw distributions being in constant flux, as was the rest of nature.Those supporting the views of Prichard and Lyell spent a great deal of effort in attempting to remove a major obstacle in their paths — disjunct distributions. If disjunct distributions were indeed the products of separate creative acts, as Sclater and others claimed, then the arguments of Prichard and Lyell would be negated. For if the creation of a species was shown to be the product of multiple creations, then what was the need of migrations and dispersal mechanisms? Also at stake, of course, was the concept of species based upon generation. Darwin was well aware that if the supernatural implications of disjunct distributions could not be refuted, then his evolutionary system — founded upon a species concept based on descent — would be in peril.94A further barrier to the acceptance of the Prichard/Lyell view was the fact that those sympathetic to a nonsupernatural explanation of disjunct distributions could not agree upon a natural explanation for those anomalies, and an internal debate between naturalists within this group raged for decades.95By 1859 a biogeographical stalemate had occurred. Sclater and others, supporting their static view of nature, continued to look for regions of creation, pointing to disjunct distributions in support of their arguments, while those favorable to the views of Prichard and Lyell continued to search for natural explanations for such biogeographical anomalies.The key needed to resolve the biogeographical debate was a credible theory for species origins. By 1858 there were essentially three options for British naturalists: supernatural creation, Lamarckian transmutation, or natural creation. A few British naturalists grasped at these straws, but most workers preferred the option of remaining silent until a more viable explanation for the origin and distribution of species could be advanced.96 And not until the publication of Darwin's theory did that explanation become available. (shrink)

This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have (...) been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved. (shrink)

Both advocates and critics of experimental philosophy often describe it in narrow terms as being the empirical study of people’s intuitions about philosophical cases. This conception corresponds with a narrow origin story for the field—it grew out of a dissatisfaction with the uncritical use of philosophers’ own intuitions as evidence for philosophical claims. In contrast, a growing number of experimental philosophers have explicitly embraced a broad conception of the sub-discipline, which treats it as simply the use of empirical methods (...) to inform philosophical problems. And this conception has a corresponding broad origin story—the field grew out of a recognition that philosophers often make empirical claims and that empirical claims call for empirical support. In this paper, I argue that the broad conception should be accepted, offering support for the broad origin story. (shrink)

An attempt to discover the origin or basis of human speech is considered, by many, to be a fruitless effort, a question that can never be satisfactorily answered. None of the many ideas suggested up until today regarding the origin of language have actually managed to significantly contribute to or advance our understanding of the comprehensive, many?faceted differential structures of today's modern languages. This work is based on ?data? taken from a source which is quite different from that (...) of most accepted scientific works?the literary novel. Within the pages of this novel resides a new perspective regarding the origin of language (that is taken in by the senses, particularly the sense of sight?and then translated into sound?words). Some claim that there is a deep connection between the origin of language and the languages spoken today. It appears too, that many subjects at the forefront of technology, such as artificial intelligence, may be enriched by an understanding the origins of human speech and its presence in the structure of human speech and thought. (shrink)

In this short piece, I acknowledge that there are two main hypotheses regarding the origin of Sars-Cov2: the zoonotic jump hypothesis defended by the scientific establishment, and the lab leak hypothesis defended by a minority of scientists. Despite the new evidence supporting the zoonotic jump hypothesis, I contend that the minority’s view still seems more reasonable to accept at this time than the majority’s view regarding the origin of the virus. I will try to justify the plausibility of (...) the minority’s hypothesis by deductive reasoning first and then by inductive reasoning appealing to the notion of Inference to the Best Explanation (aka, I2BE). (shrink)