History and Human Nature: Cross-cultural Universals and Cultural Relativities

Abstract

Recent studies in a wide range of different, if overlapping, fields of research have converged on a number of issues concerning the cross-cultural universality, or the cultural relativity, of human cognition. Those fields include social anthropology, linguistics, history, philosophy, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, and neurophysiology as well as cognitive science, the synoptic discipline, itself. The conclusions that have been proposed differ sharply. Some researchers (for example, Nisbett 2003) are convinced that there are radical differences in the ways in which different groups of humans perceive and reason -and in the ways in which earlier humans have done so in the past insofar as their thought patterns can be reconstructed from the evidence available to us. Others insist that, despite surface differences, there are robust underlying cross-cultural universals in such areas as colour perception (Berlin and Kay 1969), the basic emotions (Wierzbicka 1999) and even the 'common-sense' classification of animals (Atran 1990).A first question that arises concerns whether or how far the parties to the disputes are merely talking past one another. Certainly there are major differences in the data cited and the methodologies used in those different areas of research. Social anthropologists analyse ethnographic field reports, including those stemming from questionnaires designed to elicit responses to key issues to do with how their subjects perceive and reason. These may relate to matters that do not form part of the ordinary experience of the people investigated, such as how they would classify animals or artefacts that they have never seen. But neurophysiologists investigating the emotions (for instance) marshal evidence from the use of positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) or electroencephalography (EEG) or from the study of patients suffering from brain lesions or reacting to treatment from drugs and chemical mediators and transmitters such as dopamine or serotonin. Philosophers meanwhile attempt clarification of the issues by purely conceptual analysis, while linguists and historians tackle the problem of whether or how far the different vocabularies that different groups use or have used imply differences in their perception or understanding.

Words In Fiction: Communicative Distance, Codes And Associations

“…org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.08.110 Corresponding Author: Evgeniya M. Maslennikova Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN: 2357-1330 949 contexts, words' connotations and specific cultural meanings, cultural frameworks, other sociocultural indicators and ethnic constants adopted it the society and associated with the culturally specific aspects of social relations (Guizzo, Alldred, & Foradada-Villar, 2018;Vedenina, 2017). Experiences that different people and groups have may be considered to be an obstacle preventing people from finding any common ground (Lloyd, 2010). Even gender of the author and readers manifest themselves in text-projections (Gritsenko, 2016;Mamaev, 2015).…”

Transforming translations (part I)

“…Helpfully for us, questions of whether different ontologies may be compared and translated-and how to tackle this ethnographically-is currently a hot topic of debate in anthropology and related disciplines (Alberti and Bray 2009;Alberti et al 2011; Jensen 2010; Henare [Salmond], Holbraad, and Wastell 2007;Holbraad 2012;Latour 2009;Lloyd 2010;Pedersen 2011;Scott 2007Scott , 2013Venkatesan 2010;Paleček and Risjord 2012). Although some critics have associated these developments with a move away from the grounded realities of fieldwork toward theory of increasing degrees of abstraction (e.g., Geismar 2011: 214; Laidlaw 2012), a more engaged reading acknowledges the pivotal role accorded ethnography as the primary source of anthropologically distinctive insights into matters of ontological difference (e.g., Crook and Shaffner 2011).…”

Darkness and Din

“…In his paper, Geoffrey Lloyd (2010) convincingly argues that cross-cultural universality and cultural relativity, if pushed to an extreme, are equally unconvincing assumptions. But a middle-of-the-road approach would lead nowhere.…”