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Switch to: References
Citations of:
How Homo Became Sapiens: On the Evolution of Thinking
Oxford University Press (2003)
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In the course of our educational life we are introduced to various subject areas, each with its specific way of representing knowledge. The challenge for the learner is to be able to think in ways that are supported by, and match, the representational format. A fundamental question for the science of learning concerns how this is achieved. In this thesis, it will be argued that by observing individuals collaboratively constructing their own graphic representations in a subject area that is new (...) |
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With this contribution we analyze ancient hunting technologies as one way to explore the development of causal cognition in the hominin lineage. Building on earlier work, we separate seven grades of causal thinking. By looking at variations in force dynamics as a central element in causal cognition, we analyze the thinking required for different hunting technologies such as stabbing spears, throwing spears, launching atlatl darts, shooting arrows with a bow, and the use of poisoned arrows. Our interpretation demonstrates that there (...) |
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Bertrand Russell once pointed out that modern science doesn’t deal with causal laws and that assuming otherwise is not only wrong but such thinking is erroneously thought to do no harm. However, looking into the scientific practice of simulation or experimentation reveals a general causal comprehension of physical processes. In this paper I trace causal experiences to the existence of innate causal capacity by which we organize sensory information. This capacity, I argue, is something we have got in virtue of (...) |
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During antiquity, the astronomical questions of the day and the methods used to formulate and answer them were clearly within the realm of philosophy. That changed most notably in the sixteenth century when Tycho Brahe turned astronomy into a modern empirical science by formulating (in principle) testable hypotheses, figuring out how to test them, building the proper instruments, and making – for that time – very accurate and systematic observations of the sky. These observations eventually led to the modern view (...) |
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I argue that analyses of various kinds of cooperation will benefit from an account of the cognitive and communicative functions required for the cooperation. In particular, I focus on the role of intersubjectivity , which has not been sufficiently considered in game theory. Intersubjectivity will here be divided into representing the emotions, desires, attention, intentions, and beliefs of others. I then analyze some kinds of cooperation—reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, cooperation on future goals, and conventions—with respect to their cognitive and communicative (...) |
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The essay is critically examines the conceptual problems with the influential modularity model of mind. We shall see that one of the essential characters of modules, namely informational encapsulation, is not only inessential, it ties a knot at a crucial place blocking the solution to the problem of understanding the formation of concepts from percepts (nodes of procedural knowledge). Subsequently I propose that concept formation takes place by modulation of modules leading to cross-representations, which were otherwise prevented by encapsulation. It (...) |
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We disagree with Juslin & Vll's (J&V's) thesis that music-evoked emotions are indistinguishable from other emotions in both their nature and underlying mechanisms and that music just induces some emotions more frequently than others. Empirical evidence suggests that frequency differences reflect the specific nature of music-evoked emotions: aesthetic and reactive rather than utilitarian and proactive. Additional mechanisms and determinants are suggested as predictors of emotions triggered by music. |
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Research indicates that people value music primarily because of the emotions it evokes. Yet, the notion of musical emotions remains controversial, and researchers have so far been unable to offer a satisfactory account of such emotions. We argue that the study of musical emotions has suffered from a neglect of underlying mechanisms. Specifically, researchers have studied musical emotions without regard to how they were evoked, or have assumed that the emotions must be based on the mechanism for emotion induction, a (...) |
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Sometimes also called retro causation. A common feature of our world seems to be that in all cases of causation, the cause and the effect are placed in time so that the cause precedes its effect temporally. Our normal understanding of causation assumes this feature to such a degree that we intuitively have great difficulty imagining things differently. The notion of backward causation, however, stands for the idea that the temporal order of cause and effect is a mere contingent feature (...) |
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We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and context–independent representations of means and goals. We analyse these ways of (...) |
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The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in (...) |
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It is widely thought that causal cognition underpins technical reasoning. Here we suggest that understanding causal cognition as a thinking system that includes theory of mind (i.e., social cognition) can be a productive theoretical tool for the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. With this contribution, we expand on an earlier model that distinguishes seven grades of causal cognition, explicitly presenting it together with a new analysis of the theory of mind involved in the different grades. We then suggest how such (...) |
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This paper provides evidence for a radically enactive, embodied account of remembering. By looking closely at highly context-dependent instances of memorizing and recalling dance material, I aim at shedding light on the workings of memory. Challenging the view that cognition fundamentally entails contentful mental representation, the examples I discuss attest the existence of non-representational instances of memory, accommodating episodic memory. That being so, this paper also makes room for content-involving forms of remembering. As a result, it supports the duplex vision (...) |
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Many animal species use tools, but human technical engagement is more complex. We argue that there is coevolution between technical engagement and advanced forms of causal cognition in the human lineage. As an analytic tool, we present a classification of different forms of causal thinking. Human causal thinking has become detached from space and time, so that instead of just reacting to perceptual input, our minds can simulate actions and forces and their causal consequences. Our main thesis is that, unlike (...) |
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The main intent of this paper is to give an account of the relationship between bio-cognition and culture in terms of coevolution, analysing religious beliefs and language evolution as case studies. The established view in cognitive studies is that bio-cognitive systems constitute a constraint for the shaping and the transmission of religious beliefs and linguistic structures. From this point of view, religion and language are by-products or exaptations of processing systems originally selected for other cognitive functions. We criticize such a (...) |
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This article discusses recent naturalistic theories of religion from the viewpoint of how the deal with the issue of the origins of religion. It will be argued that the theories can be divided according to if they view religion as being an adaptation or not, on the other hand, and if they consider it to be mostly natural or cultural on the other. On the basis of this discussion, it is suggested that a cognitive mechanism referred to here as the (...) |
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The aim of this article is to present an evolutionarily grounded explanation of why we speak in sentences. This question is seldomly addressed, neither in the Chomskian tradition nor in cognitive linguistics. I base my explanation on an analysis of different levels of communication. I identify four levels: praxis, instruction, coordination of common ground and coordination of meaning. The analysis will be focused on the evolutionary benefits of communicating about events as a way of coordinating actions. A cognitively grounded model (...) |
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This article presents two learning processes in order to explain how children at an early age can transform a complex sensory input to concepts and categories. The first process constructs the perceptual structures that emerge in children’s cognitive development by detecting invariants in the sensory input. The invariant structures involve a reduction in dimensionality of the sensory information. It is argued that this process generates the primary domains of space, objects and actions and that these domains can be represented as (...) |
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Od radykalnego przekładu do radykalnej interpretacji – Quine, Davidson i coś jeszcze Ponad trzydzieści lat począwszy od roku 1970 filozofia Willarda Van Ormana Quine'a i Donalda Davidsona stanowiła dominujący nurt w teorii interpretacji, epistemologii i ontologii. Rekonstruując i analizując tę tradycję w pierwszym kroku zarysowuję zwrot Quine'a od teorii znaczenia ku teorii przekładu. Jest to jednocześnie zwrot w stronę naturalizacji epistemologii, post-empiryzmu w teorii znaczenia i radykalnego przekładu oraz jego teorii bazowej. Post-empiryzm w teorii znaczenia głosi, że przekonania i inne (...) |
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I offer an argument for what mental action may be like in nonhuman animals. Action planning is a type of mental action that involves a type of intention. Some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of proximal mental actions, and some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of distal mental actions. The distinction between these two types of “plan-states” is often spelled out in terms of mental content. The prominent view is that while proximal mental actions are caused by mental (...) |
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Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. In the past decades, the important role of causal knowledge has been discovered in many areas of cognitive (...) |
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We find problems with Vaesen's treatment of the primatological research, in particular his analysis of foresight, function representation, and social intelligence. We argue that his criticism of research on foresight in great apes is misguided. His claim that primates do not attach functions to particular objects is also problematic. Finally, his analysis of theory of mind neglects many distinctions. |
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We present an account of semantics that is not construed as a mapping of language to the world but rather as a mapping between individual meaning spaces. The meanings of linguistic entities are established via a “meeting of minds.” The concepts in the minds of communicating individuals are modeled as convex regions in conceptual spaces. We outline a mathematical framework, based on fixpoints in continuous mappings between conceptual spaces, that can be used to model such a semantics. If concepts are (...) |
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The essay is a critical review of three possible approaches in the theory of knowledge while tracing the biological roots of knowledge: empiricist, rationalist and developmentalist approaches. Piaget's genetic epistemology, a developmentalist approach, is one of the first comprehensive treatments on the question of tracing biological roots of knowledge. This developmental approach is currently opposed, without questioning the biological roots of knowledge, by the more popular rationalist approach, championed by Chomsky. Developmental approaches are generally coherent with cybernetic models, of which (...) |
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In this paper we propose a narrative hypothesis on the nature of language and a proto-discursive hypothesis on the origin of our communicative abilities. Our proposal is based on two assumptions. The first assumption, concerning the properties of language, is tied to the idea that global discourse coherence governs the origin of our communicative abilities as well the functioning of these abilities. The second assumption, concerning processing devices, is connected to the idea that the systems of spatial and temporal navigation (...) |
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This paper discusses a number of basic strategies for modeling the mind in historical perspective. The best-known strategies are expansionism and eliminativism, which are both problematic: eliminativism compromises our self-understanding, while expansionism is unable to cope with fringe minds. Using Julian Jaynes’s theory of the bicameral mind as an example, an alternative strategy is outlined to meet the challenges posed by the history of the mind. |
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The discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in the late 19th century entails many problems, some of which are perceptual. Presenting doxology as a post-phenomenological way of approaching epistemic and perceptual questions, this article draws on the problematics of cave art and contemporary cognitive science to discuss the process of perception — what it takes to see what one sees — in caves (and elsewhere). The article concludes that in order to see and perceive anything at all, both our physical and (...) |
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Donald proposes that early Homo evolved mimesis as a new form of cognition. This article investigates the mimesis hypothesis in relation to the evolution of teaching. The fundamental capacities that distinguish hominin teaching from that of other animals are demonstration and pantomime. A conceptual analysis of the instructional and communicative functions of demonstration and pantomime is presented. Archaeological evidence that demonstration was used for transmitting the Oldowan technology is summarized. It is argued that pantomime develops out of demonstration so that (...) |
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Studies of primate cognition have conclusively shown that humans and apes share a range of basic cognitive abilities. As a corollary, these same studies have also focussed attention on what makes humans unique, and on when and how specifically human cognitive skills evolved. There is widespread agreement that a major distinguishing feature of the human mind is its capacity for causal reasoning. This paper argues that causal cognition originated with the use made of indirect natural signs by early hominins forced (...) |
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In this paper I try to consider the question of understanding as a special mental capacity in the light of the neuroscientific approach and the philosophical tradition. I assert that it is not sufficient to explain the process of understanding on the subpersonal level. The understanding has several dimensions that are revealed only in the aspect of interpretation, communication and social interaction. This kind of understanding implies the meta-representational knowledge, which we wanted to present on the example of rational and (...) |
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