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  1. The Evolution of Denial.Luca Incurvati & Giorgio Sbardolini - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  • The process of linguistic understanding.J. P. Grodniewicz - 2020 - Synthese 198 (12):11463-11481.
    The majority of our linguistic exchanges, such as everyday conversations, are divided into turns; one party usually talks at a time, with only relatively rare occurrences of brief overlaps in which there are two simultaneous speakers. Moreover, conversational turn-taking tends to be very fast. We typically start producing our responses before the previous turn has finished, i.e., before we are confronted with the full content of our interlocutor’s utterance. This raises interesting questions about the nature of linguistic understanding. Philosophical theories (...)
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  • How Culture and Biology Interact to Shape Language and the Language Faculty.Kenny Smith - 2018 - Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (2):690-712.
    Smith gives an excellent overview on research in language evolution, in which he discusses several recent models of how linguistic systems and the cognitive capacities involved in language learning may have co‐evolved. He illustrates how combined pressures on language learning and communication/use produce compositionally structured languages. Once in place, a (culturally transmitted) communication system creates new selection pressures on the capacity for acquiring these systems.
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  • Self domestication and the evolution of language.James Thomas & Simon Kirby - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):9.
    We set out an account of how self-domestication plays a crucial role in the evolution of language. In doing so, we focus on the growing body of work that treats language structure as emerging from the process of cultural transmission. We argue that a full recognition of the importance of cultural transmission fundamentally changes the kind of questions we should be asking regarding the biological basis of language structure. If we think of language structure as reflecting an accumulated set of (...)
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  • The evolution of linguistic rules.Matthew Spike - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (6):887-904.
    Rule-like behaviour is found throughout human language, provoking a number of apparently conflicting explanations. This paper frames the topic in terms of Tinbergen’s four questions and works within the context of rule-like behaviour seen both in nature and the non-linguistic domain in humans. I argue for a minimal account of linguistic rules which relies on powerful domain-general cognition, has a communicative function allowing for multiple engineering solutions, and evolves mainly culturally, while leaving the door open for some genetic adaptation in (...)
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  • Evolutionary Psychology: The Burdens of Proof.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (2):211-233.
    I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the (...)
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  • The Cultural Origins of Cognitive Adaptations.David Papineau - 2005 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 56:24-25.
    According to an influential view in contemporary cognitive science, many human cognitive capacities are innate. The primary support for this view comes from ‘poverty of stimulus’ arguments. In general outline, such arguments contrast the meagre informational input to cognitive development with its rich informational output. Consider the ease with which humans acquire languages, become facile at attributing psychological states (‘folk psychology’), gain knowledge of biological kinds (‘folk biology’), or come to understand basic physical processes (‘folk physics’). In all these cases, (...)
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  • Minimal Semantics and Word Sense Disambiguation.Luca Gasparri - 2014 - Disputatio 6 (39):147-171.
    Emma Borg has defined semantic minimalism as the thesis that the literal content of well-formed declarative sentences is truth-evaluable, fully determined by their lexico-syntactic features, and recoverable by language users with no need to access non-linguistic information. The task of this article is threefold. First, I shall raise a criticism to Borg’s minimalism based on how speakers disambiguate homonymy. Second, I will explore some ways Borg might respond to my argument and maintain that none of them offers a conclusive reply (...)
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  • Structure emerges faster during cultural transmission in children than in adults.Vera Kempe, Nicolas Gauvrit & Douglas Forsyth - 2015 - Cognition 136:247-254.
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  • Nativism, Empiricism, and Ockham’s Razor.Simon Fitzpatrick - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (5):895-922.
    This paper discusses the role that appeals to theoretical simplicity have played in the debate between nativists and empiricists in cognitive science. Both sides have been keen to make use of such appeals in defence of their respective positions about the structure and ontogeny of the human mind. Focusing on the standard simplicity argument employed by empiricist-minded philosophers and cognitive scientists—what I call “the argument for minimal innateness”—I identify various problems with such arguments—in particular, the apparent arbitrariness of the relevant (...)
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  • Language Evolution Can Be Shaped by the Structure of the World.Amy Perfors & Daniel J. Navarro - 2014 - Cognitive Science 38 (4):775-793.
    Human languages vary in many ways but also show striking cross-linguistic universals. Why do these universals exist? Recent theoretical results demonstrate that Bayesian learners transmitting language to each other through iterated learning will converge on a distribution of languages that depends only on their prior biases about language and the quantity of data transmitted at each point; the structure of the world being communicated about plays no role (Griffiths & Kalish, , ). We revisit these findings and show that when (...)
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  • Early emergence as a diagnostic for innateness.Laurence B. Leonard - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):625-626.
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  • Linguistic theory and language acquisition: A note on structure-dependence.Robert Freidin - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):618-619.
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  • Objects are analogous to words, not phonemes or grammatical categories.Michael Tomasello - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):575-576.
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  • Language acquisition in the absence of experience.Stephen Crain - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):597-612.
    A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for innateness, (...)
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  • Gestures, persons and communication: Sociocognitive factors in the development and evolution of linguistic abilities.Juan C. Gómez & Encarnación Sarriá - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):562-563.
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  • Neurobiology and language acquisition: Continuity and identity.Bob Jacobs - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):565-565.
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  • A comparative view of object combination and tool use: Moving ahead.Dorothy Munkenbeck Fragaszy - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):557-557.
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  • Archaeological evidence for mimetic mind and culture.Thomas Wynn - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):774-774.
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  • Language, thought and consciousness in the modern mind.Evan Thompson - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):770-771.
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  • It's imitation, not mimesis.Michael Tomasello - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):771-772.
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  • Are spatial representations flattish?J. B. Deregowski - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (2):243-244.
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  • How do we know when private events control behavior?Kurt Salzinger - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):660-661.
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  • A case for auditory temporal processing as an evolutionary precursor to speech processing and language function.Roslyn Holly Fitch & Paula Tallal - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1):189-189.
    Wilkins & Wakefield suggest that changes in the hominid brain made it uniquely “preadaptive” for language, yet no precursor functions served as adaptive substrates to the emergence of language. We present contrary evidence that the ability to discriminate and process rapid and complex auditory information is a cross-species function subserving communication processes including, but not limited to, human speech perception. We suggest that auditory temporal processing served as an evolutionary precursor to speech processing and consequent language development in humans.
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  • On the biology and politics of cognitive sex differences.David C. Geary - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (2):267-284.
    The male advantage in certain mathematical domains contributes to the difference in the numbers of males and females that enter math-intensive occupations, which in turn contributes to the sex difference in earnings. Understanding the nature and development of the sex difference in mathematical abilities is accordingly of social as well as scientific concern. A more complete understanding of the biological contributions to these differences can guide research on educational techniques that might someday produce more equal educational outcomes in mathematics and (...)
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  • Universal Grammar and second language acquisition: The null hypothesis.Samuel David Epstein, Suzanne Flynn & Gita Martohardjono - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4):746-758.
    The target article advanced the null, unified and widely misinterpreted generative hypothesis regarding second language (L2) acquisition. Postulating that UG (Universal Grammar) constrains L2 knowledge growth does not entail identical developmental trajectories for L2 and first language (LI) acquisition; nor does it preclude a role for the L1. In embracing this hypothesis, we maintain a distinction between competence and performance. Those who conflate the two repeat fundamental and by no means unprecedented misconstruals of the generative enterprise, and more specifically, of (...)
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  • In support of the early presence of functional categories in second language acquisition.Kazue Kanno - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4):732-733.
    This commentary focuses on whether the full set of categories is available to beginning L2 learners. After critiquing Epstein et al.'s experimental evidence for the presence of functional categories, I outline the results of an experiment involving English speakers learning Japanese as a second language that does indeed point toward the early presence of fuuctional categories.
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  • Sexual selection and sex differences in mathematical abilities.David C. Geary - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (2):229-247.
    The principles of sexual selection were used as an organizing framework for interpreting cross-national patterns of sex differences in mathematical abilities. Cross-national studies suggest that there are no sex differences in biologically primary mathematical abilities, that is, for those mathematical abilities that are found in all cultures as well as in nonhuman primates, and show moderate heritability estimates. Sex differences in several biologically secondary mathematical domains are found throughout the industrialized world. In particular, males consistently outperform females in the solving (...)
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  • Communication and consciousness: A neural network conjecture.N. A. Schmajuk & E. Axelrad - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):695-696.
    The communicative aspects of the contents of consciousness are analyzed in the framework of a neural network model of animal communication. We discuss some issues raised by Gray, such as the control of the contents of consciousness, the adaptive value of consciousness, conscious and unconscious behaviors, and the nature of a model's consciousness.
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  • How to grow a human.Michael C. Corballis - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4):632-633.
    I enlarge on the theme that the brain mechanisms required for languageand other aspects of the human mind evolved through selective changes in the regulatory genes governing growth. Extension of the period of postnatal growth increases the role of the environment in structuring the brain, and spatiotemporal programming (heterochrony) ofgrowth might explain hierarchical representation, hemispheric specialization, and perhaps sex differences.
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  • A dim monocular view of Universal-Grammar access.Derek Bickerton - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4):716-717.
    This target article's handling of theory and data and the range of evidence surveyed for its main contention fall short of normal BBS standards. However, the contention itself is reasonable and can be supported if one rejects the metaphor for linguistic competence and accepts that are no more than the way the brain does language.
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  • Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research.Samuel David Epstein, Suzanne Flynn & Gita Martohardjono - 1996 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4):677-714.
    To what extent, if any, does Universal Grammar (UG) constrain second language (L2) acquisition? This is not only an empirical question, but one which is currently investigable. In this context, L2 acquisition is emerging as an important new domain of psycholinguistic research. Three logical possibilities have been articulated regarding the role of UG in L2 acquisition: The first is the hypothesis that claims that no aspect of UG is available to the L2 learner. The second is the hypothesis that claims (...)
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  • Complex behaviors: Evolution and the brain.William O. Dingwall - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1):186-188.
    Three issues are addressed in this commentary. (1) Wilkins & Wakefield are commended for placing the complex behavior they discuss within an evolutionary matrix. (2) They err on a number of points in regard to their treatment of this complex behavior. These involve (a) their emphasis on the evolution of conceptual structure rather than language, (b) their equation of meaning with reference, (c) their minimalist view of learning theory, and (d) their separation of the evolution of speech from that of (...)
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  • Evidence for POT expansion in early Homo: A pretty theory with ugly (or no) paleoneurological facts.Ralph L. Holloway - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1):191-193.
    If POT (parieto-occipital-temporal junction) reorganization came earlier in australopithecines than in Homo, it is likely that the selective pressures were different, and not necessarily directed toward language. The brain endocast evidence for the POT in A. afarensis is actually better than it is for early Homo.
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  • Brains evolution and neurolinguistic preconditions.Wendy K. Wilkins & Jennie Wakefield - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1):161-182.
    This target article presents a plausible evolutionary scenario for the emergence of the neural preconditions for language in the hominid lineage. In pleistocene primate lineages there was a paired evolutionary expansion of frontal and parietal neocortex (through certain well-documented adaptive changes associated with manipulative behaviors) resulting, in ancestral hominids, in an incipient Broca's region and in a configurationally unique junction of the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes of the brain (the POT). On our view, the development of the POT in (...)
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  • Précis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition.Merlin Donald - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):737-748.
    This bold and brilliant book asks the ultimate question of the life sciences: How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? In seeking the answer, Merlin Donald traces the evolution of human culture and cognition from primitive apes to the era of artificial intelligence, and presents an original theory of how the human mind evolved from its presymbolic form. In the emergence of modern human culture, Donald proposes, there were three radical transitions. During the first, our bipedal but still (...)
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  • The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications.W. Tecumseh Fitch, Marc D. Hauser & Noam Chomsky - 2005 - Cognition 97 (2):179-210.
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  • The communicative function of ambiguity in language.Steven T. Piantadosi, Harry Tily & Edward Gibson - 2012 - Cognition 122 (3):280-291.
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  • The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.Nicholas Evans & Stephen C. Levinson - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (5):429-448.
    Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the (...)
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  • Argumentation: its adaptiveness and efficacy.Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber - 2011 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2):94-111.
    Having defended the usefulness of our definition of reasoning, we stress that reasoning is not only for convincing but also for evaluating arguments, and that as such it has an epistemic function. We defend the evidence supporting the theory against several challenges: People are good informal arguers, they reason better in groups, and they have a confirmation bias. Finally, we consider possible extensions, first in terms of process-level theories of reasoning, and second in the effects of reasoning outside the lab.
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  • Selectionist Approaches in Evolutionary Linguistics: An Epistemological Analysis.Nathalie Gontier - 2012 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1):67 - 95.
    Evolutionary linguistics is methodologically inspired by evolutionary psychology and the neo-Darwinian, selectionist approach. Language is claimed to have evolved by means of natural selection. The focus therefore lies not on how language evolved, but on finding out why language evolved. This latter question is answered by identifying the functional benefits and adaptive status that language provides, from which in turn selective pressures are deduced. This article analyses five of the most commonly given pressures or reasons why presumably language evolved. I (...)
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  • Symposium on “A multi-methodological approach to language evolution”: Introductory article: Studying the evolution of language: a multi-methodological enterprise.Angelo Cangelosi - 2008 - Mind and Society 7 (1):35-41.
    This symposium includes a selection of articles on the origins and evolution of language. These are extended version of selected papers presented at “EVOLANG6: The Sixth International Conference on the Evolution of Language” that was held in Rome in April 2006. This selection of papers provides a multi-methodological view of different approaches to, and theoretical explanations of, the evolution of language.
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  • Embodiment versus memetics.Joanna J. Bryson - 2007 - Mind and Society 7 (1):77-94.
    The term embodiment identifies a theory that meaning and semantics cannot be captured by abstract, logical systems, but are dependent on an agent’s experience derived from being situated in an environment. This theory has recently received a great deal of support in the cognitive science literature and is having significant impact in artificial intelligence. Memetics refers to the theory that knowledge and ideas can evolve more or less independently of their human-agent substrates. While humans provide the medium for this evolution, (...)
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  • Language Acquisition Meets Language Evolution.Nick Chater & Morten H. Christiansen - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (7):1131-1157.
    Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the (...)
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  • Moral nativism: A sceptical response.Kim Sterelny - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (3):279-297.
    In the last few years, nativist, modular views of moral cognition have been influential. This paper shares the view that normative cognition develops robustly, and is probably an adaptation. But it develops an alternative view of the developmental basis of moral cognition, based on the idea that adults scaffold moral development by organising the learning environment of the next generation. In addition, I argue that the modular nativist picture has no plausible account of the role of explicit moral judgement, and (...)
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  • The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky).Ray Jackendoff - 2005 - Cognition 97 (2):211-225.
    In a continuation of the conversation with Fitch, Chomsky, and Hauser on the evolution of language, we examine their defense of the claim that the uniquely human, language-specific part of the language faculty (the “narrow language faculty”) consists only of recursion, and that this part cannot be considered an adaptation to communication. We argue that their characterization of the narrow language faculty is problematic for many reasons, including its dichotomization of cognitive capacities into those that are utterly unique and those (...)
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  • The limits of neuropsychological models of consciousness.Max Velmans - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):702-703.
    This commentary elaborates on Gray's conclusion that his neurophysiological model of consciousness might explain how consciousness arises from the brain, but does not address how consciousness evolved, affects behaviour or confers survival value. The commentary argues that such limitations apply to all neurophysiological or other third-person perspective models. To approach such questions the first-person nature of consciousness needs to be taken seriously in combination with third-person models of the brain.
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  • How a Kantian can accept evolutionary metaethics.Frederick Rauscher - 1997 - Biology and Philosophy 12 (3):303-326.
    Contrary to widely held assumptions, an evolutionary metaethics need not be non-cognitivist. I define evolutionary metaethics as the claim that certain phenotypic traits expressing certain genes are both necessary and sufficient for explanation of all other phenotypic traits we consider morally significant. A review of the influential cognitivist Immanuel Kants metaethics shows that much of his ethical theory is independent of the anti-naturalist metaphysics of transcendental idealism which itself is incompatible with evolutionary metaethics. By matching those independent aspects to an (...)
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  • Sexual selection for syntax and Kin selection for semantics: Problems and prospects.Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (4):453-470.
    The evolution of human language, and the kind of thought the communication of which requires it, raises considerable explanatory challenges. These systems of representation constitute a radical discontinuity in the natural world. Even species closely related to our own appear incapable of either thought or talk with the recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality that characterize human talk and the thought it expresses. W. Tecumseh Fitch’s proposal (2004, in press) that human language is descended from a sexually selected, prosodic (...)
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  • Evolutionary psychology versus Fodor: Arguments for and against the massive modularity hypothesis.Willem E. Frankenhuis & Annemie Ploeger - 2007 - Philosophical Psychology 20 (6):687 – 710.
    Evolutionary psychologists tend to view the mind as a large collection of evolved, functionally specialized mechanisms, or modules. Cosmides and Tooby (1994) have presented four arguments in favor of this model of the mind: the engineering argument, the error argument, the poverty of the stimulus argument, and combinatorial explosion. Fodor (2000) has discussed each of these four arguments and rejected them all. In the present paper, we present and discuss the arguments for and against the massive modularity hypothesis. We conclude (...)
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