Grupo de Investigação Filosofia das Ciências da Vida

CFCUL: International Colloquium From Grooming to Speaking

Recent trends in social primatology and human ethology

---

10/09/2012

CFCUL, 3-day International Colloquium, September 10-12, 2012, University of Lisbon

See Program here.

The field of ethology arose in the 1930s, in Europe, as an outgrowth of both naturalized epistemology and comparative zoology. Inspired by early scholars such as Oskar Heinroth and Julian Huxley - Konrad Lorenz took on the study of imprinting and fixed action patterns; and Niko Tinbergen defined what became known as the 4 questions of ethology. Both would greatly enhance studies on the evolutionary origins of primate and animal behavior.

At around the same time, modern comparative psychology would, especially in America, turn behaviorism into a school. With their focus on learning and conditioning, scholars such as Edward Thorndike, John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner introduced the empirical and experimental study of behavioral development.

Both comparative psychology as well as ethology would lay the foundations for primatology and sociobiology. They would introduce cross-fostering experiments where they taught nonhuman primates to speak, sign or learn artificial languages such as Yerkes; and they took on the study of human and nonhuman primate behavior under experimental and artificial conditions. By the 1960s, pioneers such Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall would found modern primatology, that as a field, would take on the study of primate behavior in the wild.

Sociobiologists would criticize the early ethologists and comparative psychologists' exclusive focus on visible behavior. The deciphering of the genetic code in the 1950s provided them with the hope that soon, the genetic basis of primate and animal behavior would be discovered. In order to understand nurture, we need to understand nature, and early sociobiologists synthesized selection theory with the data provided by fieldwork and the outcomes of behaviorist experiments, and developed the first theories on the evolution of human and non-human primate behavior and cognition. Scholars from the classic humanity fields, such as Piaget and Chomsky, would also criticize the tenets of behaviorism and induce what is now called, the cognitive revolution. Advances made in the cognitive and neurological sciences allowed for research into the development of cognition and language. An important outcome of the cognitive revolution was the rise of the field of biolinguistics, as well as research on Theory of Mind.

By the beginning of the 1990s however, also the cognitive turn became partly criticized and partly expanded, by the "social turn" and "adaptationist turn". Evolutionary psychologists such as Cosmides and Tooby, and Pinker and Bloom, criticized all former approaches and argued that human behavior primarily needs to be understood from within evolutionary theory. The study of human behavior or language needs to be understood by making use of natural selection theory, and by studying our hominin past, much more than by studying behavior or cognition as it unfolds in modern human and non-human primates. Rather than focus on the proximate causes of behavior, evolutionary psychologists tackle the ultimate causes of behavior: how did behavior and cognition evolve? What are the adaptive benefits? Evolutionary linguistics and evolutionary anthropology are direct outgrowths of evolutionary psychology, and both fields examine how especially natural selection theory can provide theories on the rise of human sociocultural behavior.

The above described paradigm shifts have often been characterized as transitions from instructionism to cognitivism to selectionism. But the fact of the matter is that today, scholars remain active in all these fields, and all continue to provide valuable insights into the origin, development and evolution of human and nonhuman cognition and behavior. With this conference, we aim to bring together scholars who are active within all these fields. We will provide a platform where experts are able to reflect and discuss the pros and cons of their approach, and how their experiments, methodologies and theories enable insight into the origin and evolution of communication and human language. The conference will therefore focus on theoretical and methodological issues, much more than that it will focus on the dissemination of new results.

 

PLENARY SPEAKERS



Johan Bolhuis 

Constança Carvalho 

Augusta Gaspar 

Nathalie Gontier

Mary Lee Jensvold

Simone Pika

Tim Racine

Jeroen Stevens

Jordan Zlatev 

 

Organização

Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Data Final do Evento

12/09/2012

Contacto

Ricardo Santos: rssantos@fc.ul.pt | Nathalie Gontier: nathalie.Gontier@vub.ac.be

Website

http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/linhas_investigacao/Philosophy%20of%20Life%20Sciences/int_col/index.htm

Localização

Auditorium of the FFCUL | Edifício C1 - Piso3

Horário

10h00-19h00