[Applause]
well good afternoon when you want to
understand something it helps to try to
figure out what was it designed for what
purpose was it made to serve now with
this particular tool it may merit a
short amount of thinking but the human
mind is somewhat more of a puzzle and
I’ve spent much of my career performing
that exercise what is the human mind for
know the evolutionary people will tell
us obviously it’s to facilitate survival
and reproduction ok that’s probably true
but it doesn’t get as very far after all
it explains just about every functioning
part and every living thing so if we
want to understand something special
about the human mind we have to dig a
little deeper in evolutionary
perspective we are animals and okay we
certainly are animals with birth death
hunger sleep all the rest but we are
also supposed to be more than animals I
mean when someone tells you you’re
acting like an animal they’re not
stating a basic indisputable scientific
fact we’re all animals but usually it’s
a reproach they’re saying you are
somehow failing to be more than an
animal which is what is expected of a
civilized human being
so this civilized human being thing I
mean as I said we’re all animals all
animals solve the problems of survival
and reproduction in one way or another
but the way we solve it is a somewhat
unusual strategy we work together in
groups that share information and create
a common body of knowledge develop
cooperation by interactive social
complementary roles collective planning
and so forth in a word culture um and a
culture then is is our strategy for
solving these things and it’s been very
effective in that our population
continues to increase even while the
population of whom most other mammals on
the planet has been going down
cockroaches are doing ok but that’s a
different different game
and likewise life expectancy continues
to rise I mean we’ve tripled our average
life expectancy
by virtue of research and policy show me
another species that’s done that so
culture has worked pretty well for us
that’s our strategy so what’s really set
us off on the path toward being able to
create culture this this new kind of
social life the standard answer is all
along been in terms of the first
psychological trait intelligence the
idea was we evolved these big brains cuz
it helped us figure stuff out and then
we started walking upright so we
wouldn’t bonk our big brains into stuff
and that freed up the hands for making
tools and pretty soon we had the
electric guitar and the iPhone and all
the rest was a good theory but it was
upended a while ago when they discovered
Australopithecus who walked upright but
still had a tiny little pea brain so it
suggested that maybe we’re the first
human trait was was something else and
there a couple of theories but the one I
find most compelling is that our
ancestors began using their hands to
communicate to share information with
each other it’s a pretty good case that
communication by gesture was much
earlier than a vocal speech and so the
hands may have been useful for that and
this is an important point because it
suggests that the original basic human
trait was communication the social
sharing of information that the brain
evolved not just for figuring stuff out
but for interacting with others and this
not incidentally would also explain why
the intelligence actually increased why
the brain evolved because once we
started sharing information then the
environment contains more information
and there’s a lot more for the brain to
do and more advantage for bigger and
bigger brains now and by way of analogy
back before there was the internet
people still bought computers even
personal computers they were handy to
have they did make some tasks easier and
they work better but a computer that can
connect to the Internet is vastly more
powerful can do a lot more in the same
way a human brain would be a nice thing
to have in isolation but the brain
really comes into its own and achieves
its power by interacting
with groups of other brains that it can
share information and compare and
criticize and argue and so forth so this
social sharing this brings up the idea
that humans are social animals this is
something of a cliche in my field of
social psychology yes people are social
animals but again we are not this
doesn’t capture what’s special or unique
about us we are not the only social
animal by far we’re not even the most
social of animals so that isn’t what’s
special even though it’s undoubtedly
true
what does set us apart is being cultural
animals that we have used the idea of
creating culture this better kind of
social life to maximize the success of
our species by far the most cultural
animals if you use a loose definition of
culture there are several dozen other
species that have a little bit of
culture but it’s mostly a fairly
peripheral thing whereas culture is a
major part of just about everything we
do including all of this but you want
something more basic I think again for a
moment about eating all animals have to
eat obviously it’s the only way to
survive and yet none of them have come
up with grocery stores or restaurants or
room service they don’t even have pizza
delivery service we have all this stuff
in much more my point is even in
something as basic a biological function
as eating it’s utterly transformed by
culture and rather for the better I’d
say so
why what are the advantages of culture
let me give a couple bright away a first
one is language itself language not only
helps communication it improves thinking
you can remember better you can analyze
logically and reason and and so forth
you couldn’t develop a language by your
own you need a group indeed a group has
to work many generations to develop a
language so that’s one obvious one a
second is that because we share
information information is stored in the
group not in the individual mind and it
outlives the individual animals can
figure out stuff and solve problems but
then the solutions die with them and the
next generation has to start over and
figure it
again whereas human generations can
build on what the other the previous
generation did can start where the
previous generation left off compare for
example wolves wolves extremely social
animals but a pack of wolves living out
in the forest today lives pretty much
the same as a would of ten thousand
years ago they have not discovered
democracy has not developed any
technology that they have not created a
market economy they have no movements to
reevaluate the social roles of
she-wolves none of that is has happened
for wolves you took a wolf magically
from 10,000 years ago unreleased it out
into wolf country today it would
probably do pretty fine whereas a human
from 10,000 years ago would be utterly
lost trying to make its way in modern
social life um a couple other advantages
one is division of labor that we divide
up tasks into different things and then
we specialize in them and because of
specialization we get really good at
what we do so that every task gets done
by an expert and and the total quality
is done I mean I’m a professor if I had
to catch my own food at each night and
build my own shelter I’d live very
poorly and I wouldn’t get much
psychology done either so a division of
labor really works and a related
phenomenon is economic trade that by
exchanging surplus products of our labor
it enriches both parties I’m going to
the details but economic history is very
clear societies that engaged in trade
prospered and flourished much more than
others and there are even arguments that
these kinds of social systems enable our
ancestors to prevail over the rivals the
other rough drafts of humankind a dozen
or more that there were when the and
atolls are the most famous consider them
for a moment they they were there first
so they had home-field advantage which
is important in war they had more muscle
mass than our ancestors I had a brain
equal size or maybe bigger so one on one
there were certainly a match for our
people but they didn’t create the social
systems with division of labor and
economic trade and so our ancestors
moved into their neighborhood and ate
lunch and the Nando’s went extinct and
our ancestors populated the world we
defeated them the same way we defeated
the lions and tigers not by naked
one-on-one combat but by developing
better social systems that could
outperform theirs so before I finish I
want to explain why I think this is such
a powerful idea that the human mind
evolved in order to participate in
culture it enables us to look at
specific human traits and understand why
humans are this way is it because of
their their their contribution to
culture we start with an obvious one
their intelligence sounds funny to say
intelligence is a no-brainer here but
but by definition a cultural group has
more information than a group without
culture and so there’s a lot more for
the brain to do and hence the
intelligence has a lot more utility in a
cultural group slow maturation humans
grow up more slowly than others and even
our oldsters look a lot more like our
youngsters than in other species why is
that well in nature learning is
associated with being young a lot of
animals they reach a point in adulthood
where they’re just not learning anymore
but humans have to keep on learning and
so nature adjusted us we never entirely
outgrow adolescence or at least the
learning power aspect of adolescence and
the self there’s nothing like the human
self and other species intensely aware
of itself aware of how its perceived by
others able to play and juggle multiple
roles on and on and on and so again why
do we have this well the cultural
systems require these complex
interacting roles in order to be
maximally effective and so they need
selves to be up to the task
for being able to look to perform them
theory of mind is a clunky term for
being able to think what other people
are thinking in other words to mentally
represent the mental states of others so
for example I might know that you know
that I don’t know something that you do
know and I can use that information to
prevent you from tricking me or maybe I
can hope to get you to teach it to me
and
teaching is particularly relevant
because teaching effective teaching
depends on theory of mine the teacher
has to understand that the student knows
this but doesn’t know that and so I seek
to convey that information connect with
what the student does know that’s
probably why a recent review concluded
that intentional teaching is found in
all known human societies and with a
couple borderline questionable
exceptions nowhere else in nature no
other species really does teaching and
course teaching extremely important for
culture in terms of as we build up this
collective body of knowledge being able
to pass it on to future generations
self-control
means changing yourself changing your
behaviors and responses to fit with the
requirements of the situation which
might be your role or other people’s
expectations or laws or other sorts of
things again really important for
culture it’s something that’s a
self-control much more advanced in
humans than in others our culture
consists in large part of rules and
people have to obey the rules most of
the time in order for the system to work
so that it can create more resources and
raise the overall quality of life so and
evidence again it’s very clear that even
among different humans those with more
self-control are more successful and
contribute more to culture the moral
sense again morality much more advanced
in humans than in others moral rules
mostly tell you not to do some selfish
impulsive thing but rather to do what’s
best for the group so rules that enable
people to live together so morality very
important for culture again something we
had to evolve the capacity for in order
to get the most out of our cultural
systems freewill I know that term for
health is somewhat controversial and
contentious and sorry about that I get
into the controversy the thing is the
arguments are usually about the
definitions and often both sides agree
on how human behavior is actually
produced and that’s what I want to point
where the emphasized the human behavior
is controlled by
processes that are qualitatively
different from what’s seen in other
creatures so that your morality is one
that we adjust our behavior based on
morality rational calculation economic
and financial calculations logical
reasoning many other things go into the
causation of human behavior I leave it
up to you whether you want to call that
free will or not but the point is there
is this new kind of action control
system and again it’s something that
enables us to function and thrive in
culture and one more stop and I’ve been
studying recently is planning again
something people do a lot more than
other sorts of creatures that we work
together forecast the future project
imagine how things will turn out I argue
about things and negotiate things a
cultural animal needs to plan a lot more
than others and collectively we can
construct agreed-upon structure for the
future anyway all these things I think I
could go on but I’ve just tried to
illustrate how you can use this idea to
understand many of the key psychological
traits that separate humans from other
creatures so to conclude I started with
the question of what is the human mind
designed for and the answer is culture
or more precisely nature created natural
evolution created brains that were
capable of working with other brains to
create this new kind of social system
that would bring immense benefits to all
of them and I’m not just saying that the
brain or the mind is a product of both
nature and culture everybody says that
but nature and culture work together
they shape each other in producing this
marvelous new kind of kind of mind
that’s the basic starting point for I
think understanding everything that’s
special about the human mind is the
conceptual key to our understanding what
makes us human thank you
[Applause]
well good afternoon when you want to
understand something it helps to try to
figure out what was it designed for what
purpose was it made to serve now with
this particular tool it may merit a
short amount of thinking but the human
mind is somewhat more of a puzzle and
I’ve spent much of my career performing
that exercise what is the human mind for
know the evolutionary people will tell
us obviously it’s to facilitate survival
and reproduction ok that’s probably true
but it doesn’t get as very far after all
it explains just about every functioning
part and every living thing so if we
want to understand something special
about the human mind we have to dig a
little deeper in evolutionary
perspective we are animals and okay we
certainly are animals with birth death
hunger sleep all the rest but we are
also supposed to be more than animals I
mean when someone tells you you’re
acting like an animal they’re not
stating a basic indisputable scientific
fact we’re all animals but usually it’s
a reproach they’re saying you are
somehow failing to be more than an
animal which is what is expected of a
civilized human being
so this civilized human being thing I
mean as I said we’re all animals all
animals solve the problems of survival
and reproduction in one way or another
but the way we solve it is a somewhat
unusual strategy we work together in
groups that share information and create
a common body of knowledge develop
cooperation by interactive social
complementary roles collective planning
and so forth in a word culture um and a
culture then is is our strategy for
solving these things and it’s been very
effective in that our population
continues to increase even while the
population of whom most other mammals on
the planet has been going down
cockroaches are doing ok but that’s a
different different game
and likewise life expectancy continues
to rise I mean we’ve tripled our average
life expectancy
by virtue of research and policy show me
another species that’s done that so
culture has worked pretty well for us
that’s our strategy so what’s really set
us off on the path toward being able to
create culture this this new kind of
social life the standard answer is all
along been in terms of the first
psychological trait intelligence the
idea was we evolved these big brains cuz
it helped us figure stuff out and then
we started walking upright so we
wouldn’t bonk our big brains into stuff
and that freed up the hands for making
tools and pretty soon we had the
electric guitar and the iPhone and all
the rest was a good theory but it was
upended a while ago when they discovered
Australopithecus who walked upright but
still had a tiny little pea brain so it
suggested that maybe we’re the first
human trait was was something else and
there a couple of theories but the one I
find most compelling is that our
ancestors began using their hands to
communicate to share information with
each other it’s a pretty good case that
communication by gesture was much
earlier than a vocal speech and so the
hands may have been useful for that and
this is an important point because it
suggests that the original basic human
trait was communication the social
sharing of information that the brain
evolved not just for figuring stuff out
but for interacting with others and this
not incidentally would also explain why
the intelligence actually increased why
the brain evolved because once we
started sharing information then the
environment contains more information
and there’s a lot more for the brain to
do and more advantage for bigger and
bigger brains now and by way of analogy
back before there was the internet
people still bought computers even
personal computers they were handy to
have they did make some tasks easier and
they work better but a computer that can
connect to the Internet is vastly more
powerful can do a lot more in the same
way a human brain would be a nice thing
to have in isolation but the brain
really comes into its own and achieves
its power by interacting
with groups of other brains that it can
share information and compare and
criticize and argue and so forth so this
social sharing this brings up the idea
that humans are social animals this is
something of a cliche in my field of
social psychology yes people are social
animals but again we are not this
doesn’t capture what’s special or unique
about us we are not the only social
animal by far we’re not even the most
social of animals so that isn’t what’s
special even though it’s undoubtedly
true
what does set us apart is being cultural
animals that we have used the idea of
creating culture this better kind of
social life to maximize the success of
our species by far the most cultural
animals if you use a loose definition of
culture there are several dozen other
species that have a little bit of
culture but it’s mostly a fairly
peripheral thing whereas culture is a
major part of just about everything we
do including all of this but you want
something more basic I think again for a
moment about eating all animals have to
eat obviously it’s the only way to
survive and yet none of them have come
up with grocery stores or restaurants or
room service they don’t even have pizza
delivery service we have all this stuff
in much more my point is even in
something as basic a biological function
as eating it’s utterly transformed by
culture and rather for the better I’d
say so
why what are the advantages of culture
let me give a couple bright away a first
one is language itself language not only
helps communication it improves thinking
you can remember better you can analyze
logically and reason and and so forth
you couldn’t develop a language by your
own you need a group indeed a group has
to work many generations to develop a
language so that’s one obvious one a
second is that because we share
information information is stored in the
group not in the individual mind and it
outlives the individual animals can
figure out stuff and solve problems but
then the solutions die with them and the
next generation has to start over and
figure it
again whereas human generations can
build on what the other the previous
generation did can start where the
previous generation left off compare for
example wolves wolves extremely social
animals but a pack of wolves living out
in the forest today lives pretty much
the same as a would of ten thousand
years ago they have not discovered
democracy has not developed any
technology that they have not created a
market economy they have no movements to
reevaluate the social roles of
she-wolves none of that is has happened
for wolves you took a wolf magically
from 10,000 years ago unreleased it out
into wolf country today it would
probably do pretty fine whereas a human
from 10,000 years ago would be utterly
lost trying to make its way in modern
social life um a couple other advantages
one is division of labor that we divide
up tasks into different things and then
we specialize in them and because of
specialization we get really good at
what we do so that every task gets done
by an expert and and the total quality
is done I mean I’m a professor if I had
to catch my own food at each night and
build my own shelter I’d live very
poorly and I wouldn’t get much
psychology done either so a division of
labor really works and a related
phenomenon is economic trade that by
exchanging surplus products of our labor
it enriches both parties I’m going to
the details but economic history is very
clear societies that engaged in trade
prospered and flourished much more than
others and there are even arguments that
these kinds of social systems enable our
ancestors to prevail over the rivals the
other rough drafts of humankind a dozen
or more that there were when the and
atolls are the most famous consider them
for a moment they they were there first
so they had home-field advantage which
is important in war they had more muscle
mass than our ancestors I had a brain
equal size or maybe bigger so one on one
there were certainly a match for our
people but they didn’t create the social
systems with division of labor and
economic trade and so our ancestors
moved into their neighborhood and ate
lunch and the Nando’s went extinct and
our ancestors populated the world we
defeated them the same way we defeated
the lions and tigers not by naked
one-on-one combat but by developing
better social systems that could
outperform theirs so before I finish I
want to explain why I think this is such
a powerful idea that the human mind
evolved in order to participate in
culture it enables us to look at
specific human traits and understand why
humans are this way is it because of
their their their contribution to
culture we start with an obvious one
their intelligence sounds funny to say
intelligence is a no-brainer here but
but by definition a cultural group has
more information than a group without
culture and so there’s a lot more for
the brain to do and hence the
intelligence has a lot more utility in a
cultural group slow maturation humans
grow up more slowly than others and even
our oldsters look a lot more like our
youngsters than in other species why is
that well in nature learning is
associated with being young a lot of
animals they reach a point in adulthood
where they’re just not learning anymore
but humans have to keep on learning and
so nature adjusted us we never entirely
outgrow adolescence or at least the
learning power aspect of adolescence and
the self there’s nothing like the human
self and other species intensely aware
of itself aware of how its perceived by
others able to play and juggle multiple
roles on and on and on and so again why
do we have this well the cultural
systems require these complex
interacting roles in order to be
maximally effective and so they need
selves to be up to the task
for being able to look to perform them
theory of mind is a clunky term for
being able to think what other people
are thinking in other words to mentally
represent the mental states of others so
for example I might know that you know
that I don’t know something that you do
know and I can use that information to
prevent you from tricking me or maybe I
can hope to get you to teach it to me
and
teaching is particularly relevant
because teaching effective teaching
depends on theory of mine the teacher
has to understand that the student knows
this but doesn’t know that and so I seek
to convey that information connect with
what the student does know that’s
probably why a recent review concluded
that intentional teaching is found in
all known human societies and with a
couple borderline questionable
exceptions nowhere else in nature no
other species really does teaching and
course teaching extremely important for
culture in terms of as we build up this
collective body of knowledge being able
to pass it on to future generations
self-control
means changing yourself changing your
behaviors and responses to fit with the
requirements of the situation which
might be your role or other people’s
expectations or laws or other sorts of
things again really important for
culture it’s something that’s a
self-control much more advanced in
humans than in others our culture
consists in large part of rules and
people have to obey the rules most of
the time in order for the system to work
so that it can create more resources and
raise the overall quality of life so and
evidence again it’s very clear that even
among different humans those with more
self-control are more successful and
contribute more to culture the moral
sense again morality much more advanced
in humans than in others moral rules
mostly tell you not to do some selfish
impulsive thing but rather to do what’s
best for the group so rules that enable
people to live together so morality very
important for culture again something we
had to evolve the capacity for in order
to get the most out of our cultural
systems freewill I know that term for
health is somewhat controversial and
contentious and sorry about that I get
into the controversy the thing is the
arguments are usually about the
definitions and often both sides agree
on how human behavior is actually
produced and that’s what I want to point
where the emphasized the human behavior
is controlled by
processes that are qualitatively
different from what’s seen in other
creatures so that your morality is one
that we adjust our behavior based on
morality rational calculation economic
and financial calculations logical
reasoning many other things go into the
causation of human behavior I leave it
up to you whether you want to call that
free will or not but the point is there
is this new kind of action control
system and again it’s something that
enables us to function and thrive in
culture and one more stop and I’ve been
studying recently is planning again
something people do a lot more than
other sorts of creatures that we work
together forecast the future project
imagine how things will turn out I argue
about things and negotiate things a
cultural animal needs to plan a lot more
than others and collectively we can
construct agreed-upon structure for the
future anyway all these things I think I
could go on but I’ve just tried to
illustrate how you can use this idea to
understand many of the key psychological
traits that separate humans from other
creatures so to conclude I started with
the question of what is the human mind
designed for and the answer is culture
or more precisely nature created natural
evolution created brains that were
capable of working with other brains to
create this new kind of social system
that would bring immense benefits to all
of them and I’m not just saying that the
brain or the mind is a product of both
nature and culture everybody says that
but nature and culture work together
they shape each other in producing this
marvelous new kind of kind of mind
that’s the basic starting point for I
think understanding everything that’s
special about the human mind is the
conceptual key to our understanding what
makes us human thank you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: