Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T18:23:05.714Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A lifelong preoccupation with the sociality of moral obligation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2020

Zoe Liberman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA93106-3100. [email protected]/liberman/zoe
John W. Du Bois
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA93106-3100. [email protected]

Abstract

Tomasello provides compelling evidence that children understand that people are morally obligated toward members of their social group. We call for expanding the scope of inquiry to encompass the full developmental trajectory of humans’ understanding of the relation between moral obligation, sociality, and stancetaking in interaction. We suggest that humans display a lifelong preoccupation with the sociality of moral obligation.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Begus, K., Gliga, T. & Southgate, V. (2016) Infants’ preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(44):12397–402.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buttelmann, D., Zmyj, N., Daum, M. & Carpenter, M. (2013) Selective imitation of in-group over outgroup members in 14-month-old infants. Child Development 84(2):422–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de León, L. (2019) Playing at being bilingual: Bilingual performances, stance, and language scaling in Mayan Tzotzil siblings’ play. Journal of Pragmatics 144:92108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.02.006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. W. (2007) The stance triangle. In: Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, ed. Englebretson, R., pp. 139–82. John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. W. (2014) Towards a dialogic syntax. Cognitive Linguistics 25(3):359410. doi:10.1515/cog-2014-0024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. W., Hobson, R. P. & Hobson, J. A. (2014) Dialogic resonance and intersubjective engagement in autism. Cognitive Linguistics 25(3):411–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, M. H. (2006) The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinzler, K. D., Dupoux, E. & Spelke, E. S. (2007) The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(30):12577–80. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705345104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Köymen, S. B. & Kyratzis, A. (2014) Dialogic syntax and complement constructions in toddlers’ peer interactions. Cognitive Linguistics 25(3):I497521. doi:10.1515/cog-2014-0028.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, Z., Woodward, A. L. & Kinzler, K. D. (2017a) The origins of social categorization. Trends in cognitive sciences 21(7):556–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, Z., Woodward, A. L. & Kinzler, K. D. (2017b) Preverbal infants infer third-party social relationships based on language. Cognitive Science 41(3):622–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, Z., Woodward, A. L., Sullivan, K. R. & Kinzler, K. D. (2016) Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(34):9480–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Powell, L. J. & Spelke, E. S. (2013) Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(41):E3965–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, M. F. H., Rakoczy, H. & Tomasello, M. (2019) Eighteen-month-old infants correct non-conforming actions by others. Infancy 24(4):613–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Searle, J. R. (1995b) The construction of social reality. Penguin.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (2010) Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterponi, L. (2004) Construction of rules, accountability and moral identity by high-functioning children with autism. Discourse Studies 6(2):207–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stivers, T., Mondada, L. & Steensig, J., eds. (2011) The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1988) The role of joint attentional processes in early language development. Language Sciences 10(1):6988. doi:10.1016/0388-0001(88)90006-X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2014b) The ultra-social animal. European Journal of Social Psychology 44(3):187–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Vaish, A. (2013) Origins of human cooperation and morality. Annual Review of Psychology 64(1):231–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed