quote:

Originally posted by Renegade Well you'd almost certainly know more about it than me, but aren't most theories of universal grammar based on cognitive rather than cultural explanations? I mean, a shared cultural origin would almost certainly explain more the superficial similarities between related languages (say, vocabulary or formal syntax) but it doesn't explain how it is that children, say, are able to grasp the rules behind the grammatical construction of sentences without any explicit instruction. I think you've tried to explain this to me once before, but feel free to take me through it again.

Yes, they are, but there's a reason why Universal Grammar is not exactly universally accepted: all proposed definitions are very inconsistent with one another and, whereas behaviourists over-emphasised experience, Generativists leave too little room for it. Chomsky's merit, without a shadow of doubt, was bringing our attention to the importance of the "black box", but that doesn't mean experience doesn't count. Should that be the case, you'd expect feral children to speak at some point. Apparently, the poverty of stimulus argument doesn't work if you're too poor.

Both in language, and in beliefs, if they're widespread, our ancestors most likely left Africa with the hardware to "get it" AND the software to "run it".

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade It's possible, but I'd still say that a purely cultural explanation fails to adequately explain things like the universal features of religion across widely disparate cultures, why religious beliefs hold an emotional salience that other kinds of beliefs do not, or why children are capable of the kind of thinking that makes religion possible (to use the jargon, they engage in "promiscuous teleology", "hyperactive agency detection" and so on) without explicit instruction. Something interesting that Boyer does in his book (while we're still talking about him) is list a set of propositions that are universally absent from just about any religious belief system you care to name, such as "gods exist, but only on certain days", "gods exist, but they are unaware that humans exist", or "gods exist, but they punish people who follow their commands". If religion were a largely arbitrary set of culturual propositions based on things unseen, then such universal absenses within religious traditions (when coupled with the universal features of religion - like ritual, the belief in miniminally counter intuitive agents with access to socially useful information etc.) would be, I would imagine, extremely difficult to explain.

I'm going to read Boyer's book in December and only then I can come up with a proper reply to you (whatever I say right now is unfair because I don't know how his whole argument goes). But, in any case, I wouldn't ever go for a purely cultural explanation... and I wouldn't ever rule culture out.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade But that of course raises the question as to why such animistic beliefs are so universal when - really - they needn't be. If we are cognitively predisposed to a kind of Aristotelian essentialism, which causes us to intuitively infer that a living thing has a living "essense" (the "spirit" that distinguishes animate beings from inanimate ones), then it's a short step to reifying this "essense" as being a fundamentally distinct substance from the body (perhaps we're predisposed to a kind of Cartesian dualism as well?) that can leave the body when we die or dream.

That's why "being a good idea" may come into play. Would you say we're predisposed to agriculture? It didn't appear till very recently in human history, and it popped up in different parts of the world where no technological exchange would be possible (at least, not all at once). We didn't need to come up with it, yet we did. Same goes to writing.

All these are cultural developments, much like religion. Certainly, a monkey is not likely to succeed at agriculture, so we need to thank our cognition. But, a sexy chunk of grey mass can only do so much.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade I agree that it's an "answer to a question" and predicated on "facts" in the sense that it's inferred from experiences that people have in their everyday lives, but the fact that such distinct cultures have arrived at such similar answers to the question probably tells us that the answer probably lies more in our shared cognitive evolution than out of some universally shared pragmatic need to answer questions about the world.

What would separate religion from agriculture, in this case? There are atheists just as there are hunter-gatherers, and both are widespread in the world today, so I think the analogy is not exactly a bad one.

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]