Evolution of Sociality: PSYC Call for Commentators

Stevan Harnad (harnad@ECS.SOTON.AC.UK)
Wed, 21 Jun 1995 21:20:47 +0100

PSYCOLOQUY Commentary is invited on:

Caporael on the EVOLUTION OF SOCIALITY

Qualified professional biobehavioral, neural or cognitive scientists
are hereby invited to submit Open Peer Commentary on the target article
whose abstract appears below. It has been published in PSYCOLOQUY,
a refereed electronic journal sponsored by the American Psychological
Association.

Instructions for retrieval and for preparing commentaries follow the
abstract. The address for submitting commentaries and articles and for
requesting information is psyc@pucc.princteton.edu

The URLs for retrieving articles are:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1995.volume.6

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psycoloquy.95.6.01.group-selection.1.caporael
ISSN 1055-0143 (51 pars, 1 table, 1 note, 44 refs, 999 lines)
PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
Copyright 1995 Linnda R. Caporael

SOCIALITY: COORDINATING BODIES, MINDS AND GROUPS

Linnda R. Caporael
Department of Science and Technology Studies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180
caporl@rpi.edu

ABSTRACT: Human interaction, as opposed to aggregation, occurs in
face-to-face groups. "Sociality theory" proposes that such groups
have a nested, hierarchical structure, consisting of a few basic
variations, or "core configurations." These function in the
coordination of human behavior, and are repeatedly assembled,
generation to generation, in human ontogeny, and in daily life. If
face-to-face groups are "the mind's natural environment," then we
should expect human mental systems to correlate with core
configurations. Features of groups that recur across generations
could provide a descriptive paradigm for testable and non-intuitive
evolutionary hypotheses about social and cognitive processes. This
target article sketches three major topics in sociality theory,
roughly corresponding to the interests of biologists,
psychologists, and social scientists. These are (1) a multiple
levels-of-selection view of Darwinism, part group selectionism,
part developmental systems theory; (2) structural and psychological
features of repeatedly assembled, concretely situated face-to-face
coordination; and (3) superordinate, "unsituated" coordination at
the level of large-scale societies. Sociality theory predicts a
tension, perhaps unresolvable, between the social construction of
knowledge, which facilitates coordination within groups, and the
negotiation of the habitat, which requires some correspondence with
contingencies in specific situations. This tension is relevant to
ongoing debates about scientific realism, constructivism, and
relativism in the philosophy and sociology of knowledge.

KEYWORDS: developmental systems theory, group coordination, group
selection, hierarchy, human evolution, social cognition, social
identity, teleofunctionalism
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These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to
retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/psyc.html
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1995.volume.6/
ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1995.volume.6/

To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin@yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1995.volume.6
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
mget *.1.caporael
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

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Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
and
bitftp@pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:

help

for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR PSYCOLOQUY COMMENTATORS

Accepted PSYCOLOQUY target articles have been judged by 5-8 referees to
be appropriate for Open Peer Commentary, the special service provided
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(~50-60 word) abstract

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and currently estimated to reach a readership of 40,000. PSYCOLOQUY
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Target article length should normally not exceed 500 lines [c. 4500 words].
Commentaries and responses should not exceed 200 lines [c. 1800 words].

All target articles, commentaries and responses must have (1) a short
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and responses), (2) an indexable title, (3) the authors' full name(s)
and institutional address(es).

In addition, for target articles only: (4) 6-8 indexable keywords,
(5) a separate statement of the authors' rationale for soliciting
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field? what kind of commentary do you expect to elicit?) and
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reviewers selected.

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long as they clearly acknowledge PSYCOLOQUY as its original locus of
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advance, contributions that have already been published or are being
considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered
for publication in PSYCOLOQUY,

Please submit all material to psyc@pucc.bitnet or psyc@pucc.princeton.edu
Anonymous ftp archive is DIRECTORY pub/harnad/Psycoloquy HOST princeton.edu