Some things I spotted today..
It's Alfred Russel Wallace's birthday. Mike Dunford has a post card. I always think that if Wallace had recognised that selection is not all about survival, he could have come up with an account of social selection causing big brains (the so-called Machiavelli hypothesis) instead of Spirit.
The Environmental Action blog is calling for the resignation of the head of the EPA for refusing to allow California to regulate emissions. See also Effect Measure.
Two really good Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles have been just published:
Animal Cognition by Kristin Andrews. Having just taught this stuff, I can say this is an excellent roundup.
Axiom of Choice by John L. Bell. One of those basic concepts in set theory I never quite understood.
The Open Paleontologist is a new blog on open source and open publications in that field.
Savage Minds points out that Obama's mum was a field anthropologist who graduated from the University of Hawai'i.
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About animal cognition: I just want to let everyone know, that one of my three dogs, female, 16 years old, has been trying to speak most of her life. She has problems articulating, but she looks at one with intent and tries to form "words" or "meaningful sounds". The most distinct "meaningful sounds" come when she wants to complain about something. At least towards me she manages to transmit plenty of information. She is not a "trained dog" in the systematic sense, by the way. Just for the record. I am not sure how good science looks into this. Anthropomorphism on my part? Should I take it as "signalling" and not as "communication"?
Part of the problem is that dogs have been selected for compatibility with human social structures, so it's unclear if they are symbolically thinking. However, I think it likely that most complex social animals have some degree of symbolic thinking. At the very least they can associate words with behaviours, which is a form of symbolic expression. They use signals to represent states of affairs that way. I have a very old cat who, before she went deaf, could recognise words in ordinary spoken conversation and react accordingly. I reckon she got to 15 or 20 words in her vocabulary.
I have a cat that thinks I'm an idiot. You can tell from the disdain it shows me and how it lavishes attention on other humans. Many humans have thought the same thing (that I'm an idiot). Thus the cat must be as intelligent as some humans or I'm an idiot I guess.
Wallace broke with Darwin on natural selection in humans because he thought it could not explain the size and function of the human brain. Wallace thought, contrary to the general opinion, that tribal folks were just as smart as upper crust Brits. He thought, however, that tribal people lived simple lives which would not select for them being all that smart. However, a quote from a cultural antrophology class back in the 50's. "A tribal witchdoctor has as much knowledge as a modern MD." A little shift in cultural perspective between the 1850's and 1950's.