PLEASE NOTE: Our seminar room has a limited capacity. Please arrive early to ensure you
get a seat. The talk will begin promptly at 5.
The next talk in the CDC Seminar series will be given by:
Alan Fiske, UCLA Department of Anthropology
Date: TOMORROW, Wednesday, September 26, 2012, 5 PM
Location: Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
The Universal Mechanisms of Cultural Specificity in Social Relations
Abstract: To develop culturally informed proficiency to participate in social
relationships, children need to have innate models of the structures of the four basic
forms of relationships. Children also need to know the semiotic medium through which their
culture will transmit specifications regarding when, where, how, and with whom each model
operates in their particular community. Conformation systems theory posits that children
know that the indexical medium for Communal Sharing is consubstantial assimilation: people
create a CS relationship by making their bodily substances or surfaces the same by giving
birth, nursing, feeding, commensal consumption, intimate sex, blood-bonding, gentle touch,
body surface marking, or rhythmic synchronous movement. Children expect that the iconic
medium of Authority Ranking, in contrast, consists of relative positions on physical
dimensions: ABOVE–BELOW, BIGGER–SMALLER, IN-FRONT–BEHIND, STRONGER–WEAKER, BEFORE–AFTER,
LOUDER–SOFTER, BRIGHTER–DIMMER . Equality Matching consists of concrete ostensive
operations — procedures that are operational definitions of equality, such as taking
turns, casting ballots, drawing lots, even alignment of action, one-to-one correspondence
of shares, reciprocating in-kind, or exacting eye-for-an-eye vengeance. The medium of
Market Pricing is abstract, arbitrary symbols whose meanings derive purely from their
conventional use: propositional statements in ads and contracts, bidding gestures, and, of
course, money, represented in coins and paper bills, checks, stock certificates, written
account books and statements, or digital electronic databases in hyperspace. Conformation
systems theory posits that the distinctive semiotic system specific to each relational
model is the natural medium not only for children’s discovery (and hence the cultural
transmission) of its cultural specifications, but also for its cognitive representation
and for the constitution, coordination, and communication of that relational model.
Moreover, the conformation system of a relational model is uniquely evocative of the
relational emotions and moral motives essential to sustaining that particular form of
cooperative coordination.
Cognitive Science Events at CEU:
http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
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