Human Complex Systems

Comparing the effect of statistical distributions on the outcome of the “treadmill” model relating average skill level achieved through imitation to demogaphic factors is premature as the model incorporates an invalid assumption. The model incorrectly assumes that the imitation bias remains constant with increasing average skill level and is contradicted by data on hunter-gatherer and oceanic fishing groups showing that for these groups there is no relationship between the interacting population size and tool complexity.

We seek explanation for how a species with our complex social systems could have arisen. We argue that an “innovation innovation” took place during hominin evolution that decoupled organizational change from a Darwinian evolutionary process and underlies the forms of social organization we find in human societies today. We discuss enculturation as a mode of cultural transmission that enabled our species to construct and transmit forms of social organization in which individual functionality derives from systematic organization of behavior, itself subject to endogenous change. We discuss a possible evolutionary pathway through which this change in the basis for societal organization could have arisen. The evolutionary pathway incorporated new cognitive abilities that enabled constructed, conceptual relations between individuals (cultural, rather than biological, kinship), along with recursive reasoning as a way to form new relations through composition of relations, to become the basis for social organization.

A recent article argues that pure working memory in humans and chimpanzees have the  same size.  However, the data offered to support this claim show the opposite, namely that the  size of pure working memory in chimpanzees is smaller than that of humans.  In addition, extensive data show that the effective size of working memory in chimpanzees is much smaller than in humans.  Altogether, there are quantitative differences in the size of working memory (pure or effective) between chimpanzees and humans leading to significant qualitative differences between them.

This chapter begins by reviewing the Darwinian account of biological innovation, which is based on what Ernst Mayr calls “population thinking” and posits two kinds of key mechanisms underlying the innovation process, variation and selection. The chapter then argues that the increasingly popular tendency to adapt this account to provide the foundations for a theory of human sociocultural innovation is ill-advised. Human sociocultural organizations are self-reflexive and self-modifying, through negotiation processes that can lead to transformations in organizational structure and functionality, including the essential activities of recruitment, differentiation and coordination. Innovation in these organizations is accomplished through processes of organizational transformation, and to understand how these work, “organization thinking” rather than “population thinking” is required. The fundamental questions that organization thinking addresses include the following: What is social organization? How are particular social organizations constructed, maintained, and transformed? What kinds of functionality do social organizations support, and how do they create new functionality? In addressing these questions, the chapter describes a bootstrapping dynamic, whereby organizations generate new functionality, which is instantiated in activities that in turn generate new organizations.

Starting from a reflection by Jean Pouillon, it is shown - both deductively and on the basis of experimental data - that consciousness is deprived of any decisional power. Consciousness' role is reduced to transmitting to the body instructions based on the emotional response to percepts. Language allows human beings to generate a self-justifying narrative of their deeds. Such an account does not reflect, however, the actual psychological mechanism at work. Consciousness' actual effectiveness resides in influencing on the one hand the affect of the speaker (as speech or as “inner speech”), and on the other hand the affect of any listener. The pair “body” and “soul” gets thus validated, but their traditionally assigned responsibilities need reassigning between one body that decides and acts and one soul whose feedback operates at the affective level only.

In a recent article, it is argued that the pure working memory in humans and the chimpanzees are homologous with the same parameter values for the size of pure working memory.  However, the data offered to support this claim show the opposite, namely that the pure working size of chimpanzees is smaller than that of humans.  In addition, extensive data show that the effective size of working memory in the chimpanzees is much smaller than in humans.  Altogether, there are qualitative differences between the chimpanzees and humans deriving from quantitative differences in the size of their working memory (pure or effective).

The claim that extant terminologies are optimal solutions in a space of all possible terminologies depends on invalidly assuming any partition of a set of genealogical relations is a possible kinship terminology.  Instead, kinship terminologies have a particular type of logical/formal structure that is generative with categories providing for classification that is reciprocal.  As a consequence, all terminologies, extant or hypothetical, are optimal solutions in the sense this term is used in the claim made about kinship terminologies. 

The evolutionary development of the hominids that culminated in the appearance of Homo sapiens included the subdivision of the species into societies on the basis of culturally, instead of biologically, constructed differentiation. It is argued that this change must have occurred after the mental ability to formulate and culturally express conceptual structures of extended relationships had been biologically introduced, and that intergroup competition within a species provided the selective impetus for this more complex form of organization. The combination of conceptual structures for organization at a more extensive scale and the effects of intergroup competition would lead to a restructuring of the whole species into society like groups.

D’un point de vue conceptuel, les systèmes de parenté reposent sur des modes de représentation culturelle que nous appelons terminologies de parenté et à partir desquelles les limites, la forme et la structure des principes d’organisation sociale sont culturellement élaborés. Contrairement à ce que les anthropologues tiennent depuis longtemps pour acquis, une terminologie n’est pas forcément inhérente aux relations généalogiques, ces dernières découlant de la logique structurelle de la terminologie de parenté. La structure de la terminologie, représentée sous une forme algébrique, peut être produite à partir des principaux termes de parenté, suivant un principe supposé universel de structures terminologiques de la parenté. Les terminologies diffèrent, sur le plan culturel, selon les principales expressions et équations utilisées pour les élaborer. Cela implique un changement de paradigme qui nous ferait passer de la généalogie considérée comme fondement essentiel des relations de parenté à un modèle dans lequel la parenté intégrerait à la fois des termes de parenté propres à un système de représentations culturellement constitué auquel nous nous référons dans la terminologie de parenté, et une dimension généalogique élaborée de manière récursive en utilisant les relations parents/enfants. Ces deux domaines sont fondés sur un espace familial comprenant les positions de parents/enfants, conjoints, germains.