First slide:

Cicero was already using the phrase “cultura animi” [culturing of the mind] to describe the
cultivation of the soul as the development of a philosophical soul in accordance with Plato’s
conception of the highest ideal of man. (Cicero, Marcus Tullius, J. E. King, Marcus Tullius
Cicero, and Marcus Tullius Cicero. Tusculan disputations. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press,
1960.)

Second slide:
“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and
consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be
imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such
things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no
arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent
death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” - Thomas Hobbes
(Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679. Leviathan. Baltimore :Penguin Books, 1968.)

Third slide:
"The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm
that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth
of the world; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps
toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species." – Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (Cranston, Maurice, 1920-1993. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, 1754-1762. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.)

Fourth slide:
“Before this last step, namely the joining of the states, is taken, in other words, the halfway
mark of mankind’s development is reached; human nature is enduring the worst hardships
under the guise of external welfare and Rousseau was not so very wrong when he preferred
the condition of savages; [for it is to be preferred], provided one omits this last stage that our
species will have to reach. We are highly civilized by art and science, we are civilized in all
kinds of social graces and decency tο the point where it becomes exasperating, but much
(must be discarded) before we can consider ourselves truly ethicized. For the idea of morality
is part of culture by the use that has been made of this idea that amounts only to something
similar to ethics in the form of a love of honor and external decency (that) constitutes
civilization.”

“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” – Immanuel Kant

(Foundations of the metaphysics of morals, and What is enlightenment? New York: Liberal
Arts Press, 1959.)

Fifth slide:
“Religion is the opium of the people.” – Karl Marx (Marx, Karl. A contribution to the critique
of political economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970.)

Sixth slide:
“The domestication (the culture) of man does not go deep--where it does go deep it at once
becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The 'savage' (or, in moral terms, the evil man) is a
return to nature--and in a certain sense his recovery, his cure from 'culture'.” – Friedrich
Nietzsche (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Walter Kaufmann, and R. J. Hollingdale. The will
to power. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.)

Seventh slide (Title of the slide: Modern definitions)

“Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.” – Edward Taylor (Tylor, Edward. Primitive
Culture: Researches in the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art
and Custom. London: John Murray, 1871.) (From a philosophical perspective, this would be
especially problematic for those who hope that culture could be characterized as a natural
kind, and thus as a proper subject for scientific inquiry. Other definitions often try to choose
between the external and internal options in Tylor's definition.)
“Culture is the man-made part of the environment […]” – Melville J. Herskovits (Herskovits,
Melville. Man and his Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Knopf,
1948)

“[Culture] is the total shared, learned behavior of a society or a subgroup.” – Margaret Mead
(Mead, Margaret. The Study of Culture at a Distance. In M. Mead and R. Metraux (eds.), The
Study of Culture at a Distance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.)

“Culture is a well organized unity divided into two fundamental aspects—a body of artifacts
and a system of customs.” – Bronislaw Malinowski (Malinowski, Bronislaw. Culture. In
E.R.A. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4 (pp. 621–646). New York:
Macmillan, 1931.)

“[Culture is] a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols.” – Clifford

Geertz (Geertz, Clifford. Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.)

(behavioral dispositions) More recently, externally focused definitions of culture have taken a
semiotic turn. According to Geertz (1973, 89), culture is “an historically transmitted pattern of
meanings embodied in symbols.” Culture, on such a view, is like a text—something that
needs to be interpreted through the investigation of symbols. For Geertz, interpretation
involves the production of “thick descriptions,” in which behavioral practices are described in
sufficient detail to trace inferential associations between observed events. It's not sufficient to
refer to an observed ritual as a “marriage;” one must recognize that nuptial rites have very
different sequelae across social groups, and these must be described. Ideally, the
anthropologist can present a culture from the point of view of its members.

“[Culture is] information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from
other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social
transmission.” – Robert Boyd (Richerson, P. J. and R. Boyd (2005). Not by Genes Alone:
How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
2005.)

“[Culture is] widely distributed, lasting mental and public representations inhabiting a given
social group.” – Dan Sperber (Sperber, Dan. Explaining Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.)

In summary, most definitions characterize culture as something that is widely shared by

members of a social group and shared in virtue of belonging to that group. As stated, this
formulation is too general to be sufficient (a widespread influenza outbreak would qualify as
cultural). Thus, this formulation must be refined by offering a specific account of what kind of
shared items qualify as cultural, and what kind of transmission qualifies as social. The
definitions reviewed here illustrate that such refinements are matters of controversy.

Eighth slide (Title of the slide: Quine’s thesis of the

indeterminancy of reference)
Quine’s thought experiment: A radical interpreter, say a linguist, attempts to learn a foreign
language from scratch. The native speaker points to a rabbit and says “gavagai”. The radical
interpreter might guess that ‘gavagai’ references the demonstrated rabbit, however ‘gavagai’
could reference an innumerable list of other things:

- rabbit on a Monday

- rabbit with a white patch above its left eye

- the presence of a rabbit and the presence of a foreign linguistic combined

- a rabbit with a tree in the background

All the linguist can do is to make a common sense guess that the rabbit is being referenced by
‘gavagai’ and test his hypothesis with further observations of the speech-patterns of the
natives. This means that the linguist won’t ever arrive at a translation of ‘gavagai’ but at a
common-sense interpretation. This problem becomes radicalized when one considers the
possibility of ‘gavagai’ referencing a very common necessary condition of rabbits, e.g.
undetached parts of a rabbit’s body.

The important conclusion Quine draws from this is that everyone has been that radical
interpreter during the early phases of our language acquisition meaning everyone operates
with indeterminate meaning and interprets rather than translates linguistic signs. (Quine,
Willard Van Orman. Word and Object. Martino Fine Books, 2013. P.26-68.)