Friday January 21, we invite you to the CADI at 18:00 at a discussion about the origin of cooperation on a text by Michael Tomasello.

Introduction

"One of the great debates of Western civilization is among those who argue that people cooperate and help each other naturally, and it is the society which corrupts (e.g.. Rousseau), and those who argue that people are born selfish and indifferent to the fate of others, and (ii) learn to be better (e.g.. Hobbes). "

Psychologist Michael Tomasello, one of the most famous scientists who are studying the question of withdrawing of people and other animals, argues that the issue is more complicated. His experiments and his colleagues shows that there are three different kinds of altruism: help in physically, to inform, and to share what you have with others. If you give evidence of chimpanzee altruism only in the first case, people do naturally (if conditions are not excessive) in all three cases. Then explain how Tomasello this distinction in terms of cooperative behavior produces significant effects at the social level, as well as the emergence of the concept of "new" and emerging social norms and institutions. Thus we see how the basic elements with which to build the complex social order of human societies (rules and institutions) have their origin in a cognitive feature of primary human nature of what distinguishes psychology other primates: the unusual tendency of humans to selflessness, generosity and cooperation. This ability seems to have evolved adaptations for hunting large animals, primates being the only people who are doing something.

Workshop program

18:00 Presentation of the text of his Van Bobby Tomasello
18:20 Discussion

Resources

Michael Tomasello, ' Why We Cooperate ' (excerpts), 2009, MIT Press

http://cadi.ro/docs/workshop/2011-01-21-Tomasello.pdf

http://cadi.ro/docs/workshop/2011-01-21-prezentare.pptx
Videos of experiments:
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~warneken/video.htm