BIO 358 Lecture 13: BIO 358 Topic 13
14 Jun 2018
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Topic 13: Human language – cooperation and information exchange – Part 1
Key Terms:
1. Design information controlling behavior:
Design information: design information: Refers to the information that builds and controls the
properties of biological vehicles (Chapter 2) or organisms. A major type of such information is genetic design
information (also see DNA). However, culturally transmitted design information, stored in the brain and
replicated through social communication, can also act as design information controlling the behavior of
organisms. This second information source is much more quantitatively important in humans than in any other
animal (Chapter 10). Notice that all forms of design information are inherently subject to Darwinian or natural
selection.
2. Culturally transmitted information: Genetic design information plays a crucial role in building our minds
and influencing our behavior. Also important is the culturally transmitted information absorbed by our brains
from our social surroundings. This information exists in non-human animals but is vastly larger in scope in
humans for reasons predicted by our theory (Chapter 10). Humans understand and look at the world
differently than non-human animals, almost entirely because of this vastly enlarged repertoire of culturally
transmitted information. The contemporary process of science is merely the continuation of our ancient,
uniquely human trick of using kinship-independent social cooperation to build a vast culturally transmitted
informational heritage (Chapter 10).
Some important things about our minds/brains remain unclear, for example, why we experience
consciousness or conscious awareness and why reality “feels” so vividly sharp. Moreover, many molecular,
cellular and histological features of the brain are likewise quite unclear. In spite of our vast ignorance in these
areas, we nevertheless know enough to begin to build some useful pictures of how our minds work and what
they do. In particular, their relationship to information is relatively clear (Chapter 10).
It is useful to divide the uniquely human cultural information stream into three functionally distinct
components, pragmatic information, social contract information and identifier information.
Pragmatic information consists of all functional insights into the world and how to manipulate it. All of
science and engineering constitute pragmatic information. Likewise the billions of useful skills, from cooking to
cleanliness or speech to sewing, we acquire and transmit culturally are pragmatic information.
Social contract information includes legal rules as well as the vast informal mores and norms for all the
cooperative elements of our public behavior. Virtually everything we think of as moral and ethical is defined as
such by social contract information. Identifier information consists of information that controls behaviors
(including speech, dress, and diet) that mark our social affiliations. Our minds are highly adapted to develop,
evince and monitor identifier information because of its central adaptive role in the ancestral past (Chapters
10 and 12). Identifier information includes most public religious ritual, for example. In the contemporary
world, narrowly defined identifier information, like wearing a cross, a star of David, or a crescent pendant, say,
is generally much more important in hierarchical societies than in democratized ones (Chapters 13 and 17).
3. Hostile manipulation problem: See Chapter 10 Key Terms.
4. Larynx: The highly structured, controllable constriction in the wind pipe containing muscular flaps of tissue
that can open and close variably so as to be vibrated by the air forced out of the lungs. This is the fundamental
vibrator that generates the sounds that are then shaped and controlled by the throat, mouth, and lips to
generate speech sounds (see diagrams in Chapter 9).
5. Waggle dance: A dance done by honey bees to communicate the location of external food sources to other
honey bees while they are still together in the home hive. The details of this dance indicate that non-human
animals are capable of abstract symbolic gestural communication of contingent or fakable information
(Chapter 9).
6. Whale song: The sophisticated vocal output of whales - long mistaken for a form of animal “language”.
More careful analysis demonstrates that whale song is a sexually selected signal, not abstractly encoded
information – consistent with the hypothesis that conflicts of interest are the sole variable limiting animal
communication.
7. Lyre bird: An Australian bird showing extremely sophisticated vocalization capabilities – including the
capacity to mimic many novel sounds like those of human machinery. This capability is produced by sexual
selection. In spite of this extremely advanced capacity to generate a complex, modulated sound stream, these
birds do NOT use their vocal capacity to transmit complex, abstractly encoded information – consistent with
the hypothesis that conflicts of interest are the sole variable limiting animal communication.
Key Concept Question: It is vital for us to fully understand the relationship between human speech and non-
human animal communication. This relationship, in turn, is determined by the underlying adaptive logic of all
animal communication. Which of the following statements most accurately and completely captures this
relationship and its ultimate evolutionary logic?
a. Human speech represents a dramatic quantitative expansion of non-human communicative abilities,
resulting from the uniquely human expansion of speech areas of the brain.
b. Human speech represents a qualitatively new communicative capability, unprecedented in any form in non-
human animals and resulting from fundamentally new rewiring in the human brain.
c. Human speech represents a qualitatively new communicative capability, unprecedented in any form in non-
human animals and resulting from the fact that only humans can have confluent interests with any other
conspecific.
d. Human speech represents a dramatic quantitative expansion of non-human communicative abilities,
resulting from the uniquely human scale of the ability to manage non-kin conflicts of interest.
Document Summary
Design information: design information: refers to the information that builds and controls the. Topic 13: human language cooperation and information exchange part 1. Key terms: design information controlling behavior: properties of biological vehicles (chapter 2) or organisms. A major type of such information is genetic design information (also see dna). However, culturally transmitted design information, stored in the brain and replicated through social communication, can also act as design information controlling the behavior of organisms. This second information source is much more quantitatively important in humans than in any other animal (chapter 10). Notice that all forms of design information are inherently subject to darwinian or natural selection: culturally transmitted information: genetic design information plays a crucial role in building our minds and influencing our behavior. Also important is the culturally transmitted information absorbed by our brains from our social surroundings.
