The Analogical Peacock Hypothesis: The Sexual Selection of Mind-Reading and Relational Cognition in Human Communication

This integrative review presents a novel hypothesis as a basis for integrating two evolutionary viewpoints on the origins of human cognition and communication, the sexual selection of human mental capacities, and the social brain hypothesis. This new account suggests that mind-reading social skills increased reproductive success and consequently became targets for sexual selection. The hypothesis proposes that human communication has three purposes: displaying mind-reading abilities, aligning and maintaining representational parity between individuals to enable displays, and the exchange of propositional information. Intelligence, creativity, language, and humor are mental fitness indicators that signal an individual’s quality to potential mates, rivals, and allies. Five features central to the proposed display mechanism unify these indicators, the relational combination of concepts, large conceptual knowledge networks, processing speed, contextualization, and receiver knowledge. Sufficient between-mind alignment of conceptual networks allows displays based upon within-mind conceptual mappings. Creative displays communicate previously unnoticed relational connections and novel conceptual combinations demonstrating an ability to read a receiver’s mind. Displays are costly signals of mate quality with costs incurred in the developmental production of the neural apparatus required to engage in complex displays and opportunity costs incurred through time spent acquiring cultural knowledge. Displays that are fast, novel, spontaneous, contextual, topical, and relevant are hard-to-fake for lower quality individuals. Successful displays result in elevated social status and increased mating options. The review addresses literatures on costly signaling, sexual selection, mental fitness indicators, and the social brain hypothesis; drawing implications for nonverbal and verbal communication.

Laughter and Humour as Conversational Mind-Reading Displays

Laughter and humor are pervasive phenomena in conversa- tional interactions. This paper argues that they function as displays of mind-reading abilities in social interactions–as suggested by the Analogi- cal Peacock Hypothesis (APH). In this view, they are both social bonding signals and can elevate one’s social status. The relational combination of concepts in humor is addressed. However, it is in the inclusion of context and receiver knowledge, required by the APH view, that it contributes the most to existing theories. Taboo and offensive humor are addressed in terms of costly signaling, and implications for human computer inter- action and some possible routes to solutions are suggested.

Acts of Solidarity: Crossing and Reiterating Israeli-Palestinian Frontiers

In academic and public discourses on the Zionist-Palestinian conflict prevails still a ‘methodological nationalism’ based on a separatist imagination that overshadows the existence and role of Israeli-Palestinian forms of communality and solidarity. This article analyzes micropolitical practices that cross existing frontiers both within Israel and between occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Through recent conceptualizations of ‘acts’, I read these ethnographic episodes in their intentional and performative dimension. What is the role of these ‘acts’? What are their effects on both the participants and the wider public? Through two interconnected cases, different functions of acts are explored. The first case relates to encounters between Israelis and Palestinian in the embattled city of Hebron in the occupied Palestinian territories; the second investigates moments of a Gandhi-inspired peace march at the ‘internal’ frontier of the Israeli Negev desert. The ethnographic perspective reveals what lies behind and beneath the acts, going beyond the obvious structures of power of the conflict. Acts function primarily as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves, both overcoming and reproducing hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict. Paradoxically, acts of solidarity are often crucial in creating public knowledge about the conflict in more sectarian terms. 

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the most enduring and complex in the modern world. But, why did the conflict break out? Who is demanding what, and why is peace so difficult to achieve?

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict tackles the subject and analyses the conflict from its historical roots in the late nineteenth century to the present attempts at conflict resolution in the twenty-first century.

Framing the debate and analysis around issues such as Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, international peace efforts, the refugees, state-building, democracy and religious opposition and highlighted by first hand quotes and sources of the conflict from its major participants, Beverley Milton-Edwards explores the deep impact of the conflict on regional politics in the Middle East and why the enmity between Palestinians and Israelis has become a number one global issue drawing in the world’s most important global actors.

An essential insight into the complexities of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, this textbook is designed to make a complex subject accessible to all. Key features include a chronology of events and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is an ideal and authoritative introduction into aspects of politics in Israel, among the Palestinians – a vitally important issue for those studying the politics of the Middle East.

Laugh-aware virtual agent and its impact on user amusement

In this paper we present a complete interactive system en- abled to detect human laughs and respond appropriately, by integrating the information of the human behavior and the context. Furthermore, the impact of our autonomous laughter-aware agent on the humor experience of the user and interaction between user and agent is evaluated by sub- jective and objective means. Preliminary results show that the laughter-aware agent increases the humor experience (i.e., felt amusement of the user and the funniness rating of the film clip), and creates the notion of a shared social experience, indicating that the agent is useful to elicit posi- tive humor-related affect and emotional contagion.

Marvell's Latin Poetry and the Art of Punning

This chapter analyses Marvell’s linguistic ingenuity as exemplified by his Latin poetic corpus. Here, it is argued, a pseudo Lucretian sensitivity to the parallelism between the structure of Latin words and the structure of the world co-exists with a linguistic methodology that is essentially Marinesque. Close examination of the Latin poems as a whole assesses the nature and significance of etymological play, paronomasia, puns on juxtaposed Latin words, on place names, and on personal names. It is suggested that such devices demonstrate ways in which the neo-Latin poetic text can serve both as a linguistic microcosm of the literary contexts in which they are employed, and as a re-invention of the artifice, extravagant conceits, and baroque wit of Marinism. The result is a neo-Latin ‘echoing song’ that is both intra- and intertextual. Through bilingual punning and phonological wit Marvell plays with a classical language only to demonstrate its transformative potential. The chapter concludes by offering a new reading of Hortus in relation to the garden sections of Marino’s L’Adone, in which an extravagantly luscious setting confounds the senses and is mirrored linguistically by word-clusters and labyrinthine punning.

Between Imaginary Lines: Violence and its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine

Looking at one site, the Israeli checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territory, this article seeks to understand the mechanisms by which violence can present itself as justifiable (or justified), even when it materializes within frames presumably set to annul it. We look at the checkpoints as a condensed microcosmos operating within two such frames. One is the prolonged IsraeliPalestinian ‘peace process’ (the checkpoints became a primary technology of control in the period following the beginning of the peace process), and the other is regulatory power (disciplinary and biopower), which in the Foucauldian framework presumably sidelines the violent form which sovereign power takes. We argue that the checkpoints, which dissect the Palestinian occupied territories into dozens of enclaves and which are one of the most effective and destructive means of control within the current stage of occupation, can be seen as more than obstacles in the way of Palestinian movement; we suggest that they also function as corrective technologies that are meant to fail. It is with this failure that violence can appear as justified. In order to show the operation of this embedded failure, we examine one mechanism operating within the checkpoints: ‘the imaginary line’. The imaginary line is both a component within, and an emblem of a mode of control that constantly undoes itself in order to summon violence. Since it is never visibly marked in the physical space, the imaginary line is bound to be unintentionally crossed, thereby randomly rendering Palestinians as ‘transgressors’ of the rule and thus facilitating eruptions of violence by the soldiers stationed at the checkpoints. This article proposes an analysis of this hidden demarcation of space in order to question the different relations between subjects and power which it both assumes and constitutes.