Our poor monkey brains
Once again, someone at Language Log pulls out the above phrase to explain some logic problem that people have a hard time solving. I draw your attention to it because it is an important phenomena, a sign that one is in the presence of the ideology of evolutionism *: not a mere belief that Darwin and his successors have a pretty darned good theory in hand (a proposition with which I heartily concur), but the belief that the theory is a talisman, a guide to explaining all of human experience. Because really, what does invoking "monkey brains" have to do with explaining why humans have a hard time with multiple negations? Do rhesus monkeys and howlers have a similarly hard time, while turtles and sloths handle multiple negations quite nicely? Of course not: the more significant empirical fact** here is that not one of these animals even has the notion of a negation, and that that is pretty darned good evidence that we humans possess something somewhat different than t...