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Why Imitation Is at the Heart of Being Human
Imitation and culture
Imitating and performing impractical actions is the key to learning complex cultural skills.
Over-imitation enables us to maintain a distinctively human culture.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Describing wonder
Wonder is said to be a childish emotion. However, as adults, we experience it when gaping at something unexpectedly spectacular.
Adam Smith, an 18th-century moral philosopher, describes wond...
Bodily symptoms
The bodily symptoms of this strange appearance point to three dimensions:
- Sensory: The marvelous things take hold of our senses - we stare and widen our eyes.
- Cognitive: We are perplexed because we don't have a past experience to understand them. It leads to a suspension of breath, similar to when we are startled.
- Spiritual: We look upwards in veneration, which makes our heart swell.
The scale of wonder
At the mild end of this emotion, we talk about things being marvelous. More intense emotions might be described as astonishing. The extreme of this experiences is met with expressions of awe.
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Key Ideas
Science providing anwers
Despite the advances in science over the past century, our understanding of nature is still limited. Scientists still don't know what the vast majority of the universe is made up of or how cons...
Mysterian arguments
"Mysterian" thinkers give an important role to biological arguments and analogies.
Late philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that there are bound to be thoughts we are unable to think. Similarly, philosopher Colin McGinn claimed that all minds suffer from "cognitive closure" about particular problems. Just as animals will never understand prime numbers, so human brains are unable to consider some of the world's wonders.
Mysterians and pessimism
Mysterians present the question of cognitive limits in fixed terms: either we can solve a problem, or we will never be able to.
A possibility that eludes mysterians is one of slowly diminishing returns. We keep slowing down, even as we exert more effort, and there is no point where progress becomes impossible.
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Key Ideas
Baby advice industry
The baby-advice industry targets people at their most vulnerable - at the start of the weightiest responsibility of their lives - and suggests that they have some information that will ensure the f...
The two camps of parenting advice
- Baby Trainers urge parents to get their newborn on to a strict schedule to integrate him into the rhythms of the household.
- Natural Parents emulate the earthy practices of indigenous tribes in the developing world.
Nobody really knows
- For a start, nobody can remember what it was like to be a baby.
- Most parenting gurus only have direct experience of parenting two or three babies, which isn't much better as a sample size. They can't assume that whatever worked for them will work for everyone.
- When you have read all the parenting books, your baby will possibly follow an entirely different manual of instructions.