Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL130100141
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,996,807.00
Summary
The origins of inequality, hierarchy, and social complexity. Despite obvious failures, humans cooperate far more than other mammals. This project explains how we came to be so unlike other animals; how our cooperative practices transformed us; and how those practices changed, as human societies became increasingly complex after the invention of farming.
A New Theory Of Good Arguing. This project aims to develop a new and improved theory of argument and disagreement. The project expects to overcome a problem that affects researchers in various fields, including cognitive psychology, education, linguistics, philosophy and political science, and that negatively impacts the quality of public debate across the board. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capacity to investigate the function of reasoning in human beings, and improvement ....A New Theory Of Good Arguing. This project aims to develop a new and improved theory of argument and disagreement. The project expects to overcome a problem that affects researchers in various fields, including cognitive psychology, education, linguistics, philosophy and political science, and that negatively impacts the quality of public debate across the board. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capacity to investigate the function of reasoning in human beings, and improvement in the quality of arguing in diverse areas, including academic and public debate. This project should provide significant benefits for fundamental research into human behaviour and evolution, and for the understanding of argument and disagreement across a wide range of domains.Read moreRead less
From signs to symbols: language, mind and niche. Humans use language but our closest relatives - the great apes - do not. Language is immensely valuable to us, so there is a deep puzzle about our evolution. This project investigates how and why humans alone acquired language, in the light of new ideas about human evolution.
M.C.Escher and his Contemporaries: the Genesis of the Impossible. The project aims to produce a conceptual history of the twentieth-century impossible pictures movement which developed around M.C.Escher, to classify kinds of impossible pictures, and particularly to establish priorities over who discovered what. This requires geometrical construction, and rigorous logical and mathematical analysis. The project will employ the novel techniques available within the theory of inconsistency. The sign ....M.C.Escher and his Contemporaries: the Genesis of the Impossible. The project aims to produce a conceptual history of the twentieth-century impossible pictures movement which developed around M.C.Escher, to classify kinds of impossible pictures, and particularly to establish priorities over who discovered what. This requires geometrical construction, and rigorous logical and mathematical analysis. The project will employ the novel techniques available within the theory of inconsistency. The significance of this work is that it demonstrates the rich conceptual resources available within inconsistent content. Expected outcomes are a book aimed at the general reader, technical articles in logic and mathematics journals, and a expanded understanding of our human ability to grasp inconsistent visual contents. Read moreRead less