Fido the Yak

Robert Barton shows that "like brain size and neocortex size, relative expansion of parvocellular lateral geniculate nucleus layers is correlated with both frugivory and social group size" in primates¹. The parvocellular system is a part of the brain that specializes in processing colors, in contrast to the magnocellular system which processes motion². The link between frugivory and color vision doesn't require much explanation; if you specialize in eating fruit, color vision helps you spot the fruit amidst the trees, and allows you to discern qualities such as ripeness. A competing hypothesis holds that large brain size is correlated with frugivory in the primates because of a selection for spatial memory. Barton's case for the primacy of color vision should lead to a reexamination of the emergence of spatial memory in primates.

But that's not the end of the story. How do we explain the correlation between parvocellular elaboration and large social groups? Barton argues that the answer lies in another aspect of the parvocellular system: the capacity for high-acuity vision.

The parvocellular system mediates a range of visual processes in the neocortex, particularly those that involve the perception of fine details. This kind of processing is critically involved in facial recognition, and perception of gaze direction and facial expression. Several areas of the neocortex whose main visual inputs are parvocellular, such as [the] inferotemporal cortex, are specialized for processing social information of this type. These kinds of complex visual cues must be processed and integrated to achieve what Brothers calls "the accurate perception of the dispositions and intentions of other individuals."³

Barton wants us to understand social cognition not as a higher cognitive function over and above basic sensory processing, but rather as a "large array of sensory-cognitive operations occuring in parallel"⁴. Okay. What are the implications of that idea?

Aporiai, thoughts along the way:

• Hamblet's critique of Levinas' monadology still seems very wrong to me, though she obviously knows what she's talking about.




• Husserlian phenomenology will probably never satisfactorily resolve the tension between the transcendental ego and the lifeworld.




• Lyotard's coupling of the "image of the Other" with the addressivity of language struck me as insightful, but perhaps too abstract, too abbreviated. Is there a more primary orientation towards the Other? Can it be discovered through phenomenological reduction? Could we speak of an image to or from the Other? The imagination of the Other as a give and take of possibilities? Can that simply be a modality of intending? And why Other instead of others? (That's obvious, but is it so obvious in all primates?)




• The notion of "cognitive templates" has been bugging me, particularly with regard to human evolution. For instance what would a face template accomplish that an orientation towards others would not? For the species, I mean. Obviously, if you look at adults, whose relations to others are highly structured, it's stupid to deny the use of something like cognitive templates--I'd rather say "apperceptive schemata," but the idea is about the same. But how do they emerge? Were they the direct product of a genetic mutations that glommed onto the hominid lineage? At what points? Or do they instead owe their genesis to the habitus? And if the answer is by and large both, then we really ought to clarify what we mean by "cognitive template" or "apperceptive schema" because we may be describing radically different phenomena by the same term. Barton's research doesn't settle the dispute, but it may moot certain points of contention. What can we say about social cognition that holds true for all primates? What if anything marks social cognition in Homo sapiens as unique?




• If we imagine culture rather abstractly as a system of possibilities, or a bit more concretely as a matrix of cultivated dispositions and capabilities, then on what grounds do we limit its scope to Homo sapiens (or hominins, or Homininae)? Empirical evidence? It's not that cut and dry. And besides, we have to face the question of whether our thinking is circumscribed or distorted by biological facts of our being here.




• Stated positively, what can we discover about ourselves by virtue of our being born into the Order Primates? Suborder Haplorhini, and so on? Philosophers are wont to discuss life quite apart from the discoveries of the life sciences. Is this simply a question of method? Do we have any call to imagine that different methods might lead to similar insights? What would that say about how we know things? Ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpôi: Could Socrates have meant that it is only his elenctic method of inquiry that makes life livable for a human being? I rather suspect he was presenting a more general defense of free inquiry. But I have my doubts. Are the ideas of modern evolutionary science or indeed any rigorous discipline so embedded in a history of methodical applications and elaborations that they cannot be freely shared? How can we tolerate ideas being placed beyond scrutiny by virtue of their belonging to highly specialized traditions of inquiry? Does our knowledge of social cognition in primates suggest one kind of answer?




• Do chimpanzees play peekaboo? With their infants? The bonobo ethology is unclear to me. Which primates play peekaboo?




• If we think of an idea as an object, we can say that once we come upon an idea and grasp it, we can think it again. But the idea we come back to is never exactly the same as the idea we initially grasped. Does a monkey think, I'm eating the same fruit over and over and over....? How about a gorilla? How is it that most of us get over it, thinking about food instead of eating it?

  
  

• Are you looking at me?