Category: Guest post

Lloyd, G.E.R. 2007. Cognitive variations: reflections on the universality and diversity of the human mind. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. 201 pp.

Reviewed by Grace Pappalardo (Wayne State University)

G.E.R. Lloyd’s Cognitive Variations is loyal to its name, exploring a wide variety of cognitive differences as well as similarities cross-culturally and historically. Lloyd vehemently supports a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding cognitive variations and proves this time and again throughout the text, exploring and analyzing arguments in favor of both nature and culture as well as from universalists and particularists. He also makes the important distinction that he seeks not to prove the validity or falsity of past claims on the topics he explores, but rather to determine to what extent these claims are applicable to the greater argument. Cognitive Variations serves not as a cognitive encyclopedia, but rather as a critical overview of the research that has been done thus far in some areas of cognition. Lloyd does not seek to answer any unresolved matters, but rather to analyze the value of the available data and offer a new platform for further discussion.

Cognitive Variations addresses the commonalities and differences in human cognition using a multidisciplinary approach. In each section, he focuses on a different area of cognition currently under investigation and assesses the research and findings on each thus far. He systematically tackles topics of debate, such as color perception and natural kinds, and forms each chapter in a way that synthesizes the multidisciplinary information provided, alongside his own extensive knowledge of classical Greek and Chinese thought. In doing so, he emphasizes the multidimensionality of phenomena, explaining that across cultures, each group of people will choose to assign importance to one or some of a variety of aspects. Additionally, he grapples with the reality that even people within a common culture can differ from each other considerably, making the discovery of commonalities a challenge. However, these differences are also not solid evidence for particularism, which, as Lloyd establishes throughout, is why an interdisciplinary approach to cognition is truly best. Lastly, throughout the text, he touches on themes of methodological error and erroneous conclusion based thereupon, explaining that presupposing a result can in fact skew that result. He argues that a myopic approach utilizing a single viewpoint or discipline can lead to false conclusions masquerading as accurate findings.

Lloyd very cogently argues this last point throughout his book and is careful to point out errors in methodology that may have led researchers to misleading conclusions about their subjects. This puts much of the evidence he provides into valuable perspective and reminds the reader to take caution in assuming the validity of research results. He address Berlin and Kay’s study on color perception in this way, explaining that, whether or not they intended to, their research question and materials were inherently skewed toward the results they hoped to find. He explains that Berlin and Kay essentially got the results they hoped for by failing to recognize the connotations of the differences they perceived. He claims that in their methodology, they favored hue over luminosity, which does not really allow for an appropriate answer if the informants categorized color in other terms. Lloyd here employs his knowledge of ancient Greek color classification to further explain his opposition to Berlin and Kay’s supposedly conclusive results on color universals. He presents the terms leukon and melan, which he explains are descriptors not of hue, but rather of luminosity. Additionally, Lloyd adds that similar to perceiving luminosity or saturation instead of hue, Berlin and Kay may have overlooked the fact that a color term may not have been the target identifier for a particular object. As Conklin’s findings explain, although an identifier may appear to be addressing color, it may very well be instead addressing a different primary connotation, such as wetness or dryness.

Despite the extreme variability of claims Lloyd addresses in Cognitive Variations, he manages to maintain an unbiased stance on each topic. While he imbues the text with his own judgements, his attempts at a true dissection of past arguments for the betterment of the cognitive discourse are successful. While Lloyd’s book is an impressive piece of scholarship, weaving together arguments made by those with opposing viewpoints, it is certainly an overview of these arguments. This is not to discount his achievements in bringing together such a diverse set of accounts, but rather to note that each chapter does not go into immense detail on each cognitive variation discussed. If more information was desired on certain arguments, further outside reading would be required. However, painstaking detail is not Lloyd’s objective here, but rather to bring together various and often opposing viewpoints and piece them together to make more sense of human cognition.

In total, Lloyd accomplishes exactly what he sets out to do. In sharing such a wide variety of findings from research in biology, psychology, anthropology, history, and more, he rightly concludes that the most effective way to approach issues of human cognition is through an interdisciplinary approach. As he shows throughout the text, failing to look at research findings through multiple lenses can lead to error and misleading conclusions. Taking advantage of the strengths of each discipline can make for more conclusive and accurate discoveries.

Tomasello, Michael. 2014. A natural history of human thinking.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 194 pp.

Reviewed by Heather Buza (Wayne State University)

Is there a cognitive evolutionary relationship between great apes and humans? In his valuable book, A Natural History of Human Thinking, Michael Tomasello discuses current research on great ape as well human adult, toddler, and infant cognition. He provides evidence that great apes and humans share many cognitive features due to descent from a recent common ancestor, then discusses exactly what differentiates human cognition from great ape cognition. He neatly disposes with the idea that language is thought, and attempts to explain why humans think in a more cooperative and coordinated fashion. When did human cognition become substantially different from great ape cognition? What might have caused this shift in cognition? Tomasello theorizes about these questions and offers a plausible two-step shift in human cognition that he terms the shared intentionality hypothesis. From his hypothesis, Tomasello discusses how human cognition, communication and culture emerged.

Tomasello’s book covers a lot of evolutionary ground, tracing human evolution from the emergence of the genus Homo around 2 million years ago when Tomasello believes shared intentionality first emerged. Tomasello uses the term objective-reflective-normative thinking to describe the components of the shared intentionality hypothesis, which consists of three key components: our ability to represent things cognitively, to infer possible outcomes, and to monitor our own behavior in relation to the larger group norms. Thus, human cognition is unique because we are capable of evaluating situations with multiple variables, including various social perspectives, while also accounting for our own behavior and considering how it will fit into the larger behavioral norms of a group.

The first part of the two-step shift in human cognition involves the emergence of socially shared joint goals or joint intentionality. Tomasello offers the example of hunter-gatherers who begin to cooperate in order to acquire enough food for survival. Following joint intentionality, Tomasello describes collective intentionality. This second step occurs later, after the hunter-gatherers have had time to develop some cultural conventions and norms. Ultimately, this second cognitive shift resulted in modern humans’ existence in a matrix of culture and language.

Tomasello acknowledges some gaps in his theory and welcomes input. He is clear, though, that humans are not hardwired to think in a culturally cooperative, group-oriented perspective. Rather, humans are capable, and modern humans may certainly be more prone to thinking in this way, as they are constantly bombarded by culture and language. However, Tomasello reminds the reader that evolution cannot see cognition; rather, it can only see behaviors that affect survival. Cognition and decision-making abilities do not preserve well. Tomasello concludes with two questions, which require further thought. What does the individual bring to the table? While individuals participate in joint attention and joint goals, investigating what the individuals brings to the ‘joint’ portion of the communicative act is an important aspect. Also, humans’ overwhelming tendency to objectify entities should be further investigated.

Tomasello brings important new information together in his book. He highlights important contributions to the field and rightfully acknowledges the limitations of our knowledge. While on the whole approachable, could be improved with less complicated jargon at a few junctures. But importantly, Tomasello does not oversell his theory or make claims that reasonable people cannot accept. A Natural History of Human Thinking is an excellent contribution to the field of cognitive science.

Cerulo, Karen. 2006. Never saw it coming: cultural challenges to envisioning the worst. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 336 pp.

Reviewed by Michael Thomas (Wayne State University)

Evelyn Waugh, a notoriously prickly Catholic satirist, was once asked by his friend Nancy Mitford how he could be so cruel and still call himself Christian, to which he replied, “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.” This pithy anecdote is useful to keep in mind when reading Karen Cerulo’s Never Saw it Coming, for it colorfully illustrates a challenge at the heart of any project seeking to evaluate the relative influence of inferred cognitive or ideological inputs on behavioral outputs.

Cerulo’s is an interesting book for a number of reasons; the curious reader is sure to find it valuable wherever they may stand in relation to its sometimes nebulous premises and impressionistic exposition. That is to say, the book primarily articulates its thesis through offering a fair amount of statistical information and some well formulated examples, though at the expense of some specificity with regard to the concepts and mechanisms underlying the phenomenon itself. Cerulo’s bold attempt at synthesizing cognitive and social theory to explain an interactive social phenomenon she calls “positive asymmetry” is less of an analytical argument than an expansive theoretical hypothesis, and so for this reason the lack of specificity may be forgivable given the scope and complexity of the central claim.

According to Cerulo, positive asymmetry functions as a bias toward privileging positive outcomes in decision-making, which can have an ultimately negative effect in that this phenomenon can occlude imagining “worst case” scenarios. The positive asymmetry is, Cerulo insists, pervasive in American, but not only American, culture and can partially explain the inability of institutions or individuals to foresee “worst case” scenarios, or, more accurately, “especially bad” scenarios. As pervasive as this phenomenon is, however, it is not universal and Cerulo is commendably sensitive to identifying where, and under what conditions, it does not apply. Aside from exceptional circumstances, this widespread failure of imagination leaves organizations and individuals vulnerable to any number of potential failure modes.

Essentially, Cerulo’s thesis is that the structure of human cognition relative to classification and inference is such that in the event of uncertainty, such as in future planning or decision making, the mind will categorize according to “best fit”. Relying on the inductive model of the mind, the “best fit” refers to a classification scheme wherein the most salient instance of a category is considered the most representative and so inferences regarding candidate members of some category are made in relation to that exemplar. Her thesis is built upon the model Eleanor Rosch advances, sometimes called prototype theory or exemplar theory, and is typically formulated in contrast to deductive theory theories such as those of Bob Reider and Doug Medin. What this means in practice is that insofar as negative circumstances, and the effects of negative circumstances, are rendered variously insignificant, they cannot participate in constituting classification criteria. For example, where deviant persons relative to the norms of some cultural milieu are ostracized, shunned, or banished, they are no longer salient. This lack of salience prohibits their inclusion in the category “person” so that the “best fit” for “person” is invariably skewed toward positive representation. Subsequent evaluations under conditions of uncertainty thus skew inferences away from “worst cases”.

This model of cognition allows Cerulo the necessary structure to integrate cultural practice, habitus, relationships of power, and social norms into the process of drawing inferences. Cerulo’s description of positive asymmetries at work in scientific measurement serves as a concise starting point for STS scholars interested in exploring the relationship of cognition and laboratory practice. She addresses the structure by which quality standards embody the positive asymmetry in all variety of forms familiar to social scientists such as power or ideology, but throughout the book she provides a deluge of examples, and it is here that the reader sees most starkly the compromise in specificity for the effect of breadth. Cerulo’s examples are numerous and presented in dizzying modalities. Statistical samples, historical narratives, pedagogical anecdotes, mythology, and case studies are but a few of the means by which positive asymmetry is presented. The technique is effective and nearly makes the reader forget exactly what the ontological status of a positive asymmetry actually is. It is of course a social phenomenon, but of what sort? And what does that mean? It is no doubt an interactive feedback effect of particular social forms and cognitive architecture, but the dynamics are fuzzy and one gets confused trying to track the deliberate modulations between “best” or “worst” being used as (1) normative evaluations relative to human welfare and (2) descriptive accounts of classification membership. Consider an admittedly glib counter example to Cerulo’s example taken from competitive diving. Cerulo discusses quality metrics with regard to competitive diving, but what is a “worst case dive” given (1) the diver performs the dive exceptionally well but suffers a heart attack upon such exertion or (2) a diver decides to withdraw from the competition because he feels he needs rest. Cerulo’s account cannot distinguish because the unit of analysis is never clearly defined.

So one question inevitably emerges, how do you know when you are observing an asymmetry? Thinking back to the Evelyn Waugh quote above, there is no clear objective synchronic measure by which one might determine the relative position of some response. Worst cases can always be worse, and best cases better.

The four case studies Cerulo provides don’t seem to help. For example, in chapter six Cerulo discusses Exceptions to the Rule, one such being the Phoenix document that warned of the 9/11 attack. Cerulo attributes the failure of adequate response to the institutionally structural positive asymmetry, though she notes that the administration was distracted by establishing strategic National Missile Defense (NMD), an action undertaken, if mistakenly, to prevent a clearly worse scenario. The problem, then, was not one of asymmetry, but of improper risk assessment. Unfortunately, an asymmetry analyses can only be performed ex post facto, which invites the question, “How is this theory falsifiable?” An example of a failure mode despite negative asymmetry would go a long way to outlining the extent to which her argument operates, lest it be regarded as an inverse tautology where positive outcomes must equal negative asymmetry.

The book closes with both an account of the structural attributes inhibiting or cultivating negative asymmetry and a tentative plan for achieving balanced perspectives in organizations. If one accepts the premises that (1) positive and negative asymmetry describe actual phenomena and (2) these phenomena are causally decisive, then one will find her propositions interesting to ponder, though interest alone may not suffice to traverse the inferential distance between her data and her proposals. In all, this book tackles an important topic of interest to those in the cognitive, political, and social sciences though ultimately readers may find themselves less than satisfied. A less ambitious project, or more narrowly constrained subject matter, may have permitted a more precise understanding of the relationship between cognition and culture relative to quality evaluation.