Results for 'evolution of cognition'

966 found
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  1. Likeness-Making and the Evolution of Cognition.Hajo Greif - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (1):1-24.
    Paleontological evidence suggests that human artefacts with intentional markings might have originated already in the Lower Paleolithic, up to 500.000 years ago and well before the advent of ‘behavioural modernity’. These markings apparently did not serve instrumental, tool-like functions, nor do they appear to be forms of figurative art. Instead, they display abstract geometric patterns that potentially testify to an emerging ability of symbol use. In a variation on Ian Hacking’s speculative account of the possible role of “likeness-making” in the (...)
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  2. The arrival of the smartest: In favour of a pluralistic account of the evolution of cognition.Giorgio Airoldi - 2021 - Aufklärung 8.
    The great advances of the last decades both in cognitive theories and in evolutionary biology have not yet fully merged. Most evolutionary hypotheses around the mind still rely on classical cognitivism, while most theories of cognition still look for adaptive explanations. We believe that the merging of novel cognitive theories into a pluralistic account can greatly improve our understanding of both what cognition is and how it evolved.
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  3. Music and the Evolution of Embodied Cognition.Stephen Asma - forthcoming - In M. Clasen J. Carroll (ed.), Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture. pp. pp 163-181.
    Music is a universal human activity. Its evolution and its value as a cognitive resource are starting to come into focus. This chapter endeavors to give readers a clearer sense of the adaptive aspects of music, as well as the underlying cognitive and neural structures. Special attention is given to the important emotional dimensions of music, and an evolutionary argument is made for thinking of music as a prelinguistic embodied form of cognition—a form that is still available to (...)
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  4. On evolution of thinking about semiosis: semiotics meets cognitive science.Piotr Konderak - 2017 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 7 (2):82-103.
    The aim of the paper is to sketch an idea—seen from the point of view of a cognitive scientist—of cognitive semiotics as a discipline. Consequently, the article presents aspects of the relationship between the two disciplines: semiotics and cognitive science. The main assumption of the argumentation is that at least some semiotic processes are also cognitive processes. At the methodological level, this claim allows for application of cognitive models as explanations of selected semiotic processes. In particular, the processes of embedded (...)
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  5. Toolmaking and the Evolution of Normative Cognition.Jonathan Birch - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (1):1-26.
    We are all guided by thousands of norms, but how did our capacity for normative cognition evolve? I propose there is a deep but neglected link between normative cognition and practical skill. In modern humans, complex motor skills and craft skills, such as toolmaking, are guided by internally represented norms of correct performance. Moreover, it is plausible that core components of human normative cognition evolved as a solution to the distinctive problems of transmitting complex motor skills and (...)
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  6. The Social Trackways Theory of the Evolution of Human Cognition.Kim Shaw-Williams - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (1):16-26.
    Only our lineage has ever used trackways reading to find unseen and unheard targets. All other terrestrial animals, including our great ape cousins, use scent trails and airborne odors. Because trackways as natural signs have very different properties, they possess an information-rich narrative structure. There is good evidence we began to exploit conspecific trackways in our deep past, at first purely associatively, for safety and orienteering when foraging in vast featureless wetlands. Since our own old trackways were recognizable they were (...)
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  7. Is behavioural flexibility evidence of cognitive complexity? How evolution can inform comparative cognition.Irina Mikhalevich, Russell Powell & Corina Logan - 2017 - Interface Focus 7.
    Behavioural flexibility is often treated as the gold standard of evidence for more sophisticated or complex forms of animal cognition, such as planning, metacognition and mindreading. However, the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition has not been explicitly or systematically defended. Such a defence is particularly pressing because observed flexible behaviours can frequently be explained by putatively simpler cognitive mechanisms. This leaves complex cognition hypotheses open to ‘deflationary’ challenges that are accorded greater evidential weight precisely (...)
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  8. The Cultural Evolution of Cultural Evolution.Jonathan Birch & Cecilia Heyes - 2021 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:20200051.
    What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to (...)
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  9. The Evolution of Consciousness & Subjectivity in a Biological Framework for The Universe.Ronald Williams - manuscript
    This paper explores the evolution of consciousness and subjectivity through a biological framework for understanding the universe. It posits that functional patterns in biological systems mirror cosmic mathematical principles, defining our objective reality. Similar to wave and Fibonacci patterns in different physical phenomena, biological patterns are intrinsic to all things and can be quantified using Dedre Gentner’s approach to analogy. For example, Earth’s ocean currents and the melting and freezing of Antarctica resemble the circulatory system and heart, while the (...)
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  10. Evolution of Consciousness.Danko D. Georgiev - 2024 - Life 14 (1):48.
    The natural evolution of consciousness in different animal species mandates that conscious experiences are causally potent in order to confer any advantage in the struggle for survival. Any endeavor to construct a physical theory of consciousness based on emergence within the framework of classical physics, however, leads to causally impotent conscious experiences in direct contradiction to evolutionary theory since epiphenomenal consciousness cannot evolve through natural selection. Here, we review recent theoretical advances in describing sentience and free will as fundamental (...)
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  11. Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind.Karenleigh Anne Overmann & Frederick Lawrence Coolidge (eds.) - 2019 - New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Cognitive archaeology is a relatively new interdisciplinary science that uses cognitive and psychological models to explain archaeological artifacts like stone tools, figurines, and art. Edited by cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge, Squeezing Minds From Stones is a collection of essays, from both early pioneers and 'up and coming' newcomers in the field, that addresses a wide variety of cognitive archaeology topics, including the value of experimental archaeology, primate archaeology, the intent of ancient tool makers, and (...)
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  12. The Evolution of Imagination.Asma Stephen - 2017 - University of Chicago Press.
    This book develops a theory of how the imagination functions, and how it evolved. The imagination is characterized as an embodied cognitive system. The system draws upon sensory-motor, visual, and linguistic capacities, but it is a flexible, developmental ability, typified by creative improvisation. The imagination is a voluntary simulation system that draws on perceptual, emotional, and conceptual elements, for the purpose of creating works that adaptively investigate external (environmental) and internal (psychological) resources. Beyond the adaptive useful values of this system, (...)
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  13. The Evolution of Imagination.Stephen T. Asma - 2017 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience (...)
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  14. The cultural evolution of mind-modelling.Richard Moore - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1):1751-1776.
    I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms (...)
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  15. The Evolution of Technical Competence: Economic and Strategic Thinking.Ben Jeffares - 2010 - ASCS09: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science.
    This paper will outline a series of changes in the archaeological record related to Hominins. I argue that these changes underlie the emergence of the capacity for strategic thinking. The paper will start by examining the foundation of technical skills found in primates, and then work through various phases of the archaeological and paleontological record. I argue that the key driver for the development of strategic thinking was the need to expand range sizes and cope with increasingly heterogeneous environments.
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  16. The evolution of moral belief: support for the debunker’s causal premise.Michael T. Dale - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (2):1-18.
    The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker’s case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion. Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature (...)
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  17. (1 other version)Pragmatic Evolutions of the Kantian a priori: From the Mental to the Bodily.Matthew Crippen - 2007 - In Krzysztof Skowroński & Sami Pihlström (eds.), Pragmatist Kant: Pragmatism, Kant, and Kantianism in the Twenty-first Century. pp. 150-171.
    In this article, I review textual evidence demonstrating that James and Dewey incorporated Kant’s ideas, even while criticizing him. I specifically argue that the pragmatic evolution of the Kantian a priori carried out by James and Dewey is a transition from the mental to the bodily. I further argue that the parallels between pragmatists and Kant, along with the transition from the mental to bodily, relate to scientific contexts in which all developed their outlooks. Though historically grounded, my ultimate (...)
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  18. Skill and Collaboration in the Evolution of Human Cognition.John Sutton - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (1):28-36.
    I start with a brief assessment of the implications of Sterelny’s anti-individualist, anti-internalist apprentice learning model for a more historical and interdisciplinary cognitive science. In a selective response I then focus on two core features of his constructive account: collaboration and skill. While affirming the centrality of joint action and decision making, I raise some concerns about the fragility of the conditions under which collaborative cognition brings benefits. I then assess Sterelny’s view of skill acquisition and performance, which runs (...)
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  19. The evolution of the symbolic sciences.Nathalie Gontier - 2024 - In Nathalie Gontier, Andy Lock & Chris Sinha (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution. OUP. pp. 27-70.
    Aspects of human symbolic evolution are studied by scholars active in a variety of fields and disciplines in the life and the behavioral sciences as well as the scientific-philosophical, sociological, anthropological, and linguistic sciences. These fields and disciplines all take on an evolutionary approach to the study of human symbolism, but scholars disagree in their theoretical and methodological attitudes. Theoretically, symbolism is defined differentially as knowledge, behavior, cognition, culture, language, or social group living. Methodologically, the diverse symbolic (...) sciences establish their teachings upon diverging evolutionary biological schools and paradigms. This chapter reviews past and current research fields in human symbolic evolution for how they differentially implement tenets of the major evolution schools that were discussed in the previous chapter. Traditional evolutionary epistemology and biosemiotics bring in a mesoevolutionary outlook by drawing on early Darwinism and evolutionary developmental biology movements that emphasize the role of the organism in evolution. Communication studies instead originally take on a microevolutionary perspective by investigating how units of information are transmitted across generations through time. Only later do they integrate studies on meaning-making at the organismal level. Sociobiology complements a microevolutionary with a macroevolutionary outlook by implementing population genetic approaches, typical of the Modern Synthesis, into studies on individual and group behavior. The new symbolic evolutionary sciences build upon these traditions and include disciplines such as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary linguistics, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary archaeology, evolutionary sociology, and evolutionary economics. Originally centered on implementing Darwinian selection theory, these fields are now including ecological and evolutionary developmental biology as well as reticulate evolutionary paradigms. As diverse in outlook and scope as they are, no discipline holds a privileged position over the other and all have made valuable contributions to our understanding of human symbolic evolution. (shrink)
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  20. Evolution of Human Intelligence: Psychological Science for a Better World (3rd edition).K. L. Senarath Dayathilake - 2017 - Psyarxiv.Com.
    What might be the fundamental psychology of intelligence naturally selected in biological evolution to minimize, prevent, and cure social and personal issues like war, crime, commit suicide, homicide, theft, drug addictions, and so on? How to achieve a higher level of well-being? I found a primary cognitive limiting factor called mind viruses (MV)(more than 3000) which regresses intelligence and well-being and makes the grand delusion: remedies are healthy mind viruses(HMV)(3000). Here, I show the disclosed core of early Buddhist teachings (...)
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  21. Advancements in the Evolution of Human Capacities to Know.Mark Pharoah - 2020 - Linguistic Frontiers 3 (2):66-69.
    The premise of this paper is that there are three distinct and hierarchical ‘categories of knowledge’ (Pharoah 2018). The first of these is physiological knowledge which is acquired over generations through the interaction between replicating lineages and the environment. This interaction facilitates the evolution of me-aningful physiological structures, forms, functions, and qualitative ascriptions. Second, there is phenomenal knowledge which is qualified by the utilisation of real-time experience to effect an individuated spatiotemporal subjective perspective. This capability requires sophisticated cognitive capabilities. (...)
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  22. Subjective Evolution of Consciousness in Modern Science and Vedāntic Philosophy: Particulate Concept to Quantum Mechanics in Modern Science and Śūnyavāda to Acintya-Bhedābheda-Tattva in Vedānta.PhD Ph D. Shanta - 2019 - In Siddheshwar Rameshwar Bhatt (ed.), Quantum Reality and Theory of Śūnya. Springer.
    How the universe came to be what it is now is a key philosophical question. The hypothesis that it came from nothing or śūnya (as proposed by Stephen Hawking, among others) proves to be dissembling, since the quantum vacuum can hardly be considered a void (śūnya). In modern science, it is generally assumed that matter existed before the universe came to be. Modern science hypothesizes that the manifestation of life on earth is nothing but a mere increment in the complexity (...)
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  23. Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness.Walter Veit - 2023 - Biological Theory 18 (3):175-190.
    This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...)
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  24. Stone tools, predictive processing and the evolution of language.Ross Pain - 2023 - Mind and Language 38 (3):711-731.
    Recent work by Stout and colleagues indicates that the neural correlates of language and Early Stone Age toolmaking overlap significantly. The aim of this paper is to add computational detail to their findings. I use an error minimisation model to outline where the information processing overlap between toolmaking and language lies. I argue that the Early Stone Age signals the emergence of complex structured representations. I then highlight a feature of my account: It allows us to understand the early (...) of syntax in terms of an increase in the number and complexity of models in a cognitive system, rather than the development of new types of processing. (shrink)
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  25. the cultural evolution of institutional religions.Michael Vlerick - forthcoming - Religion, Brain and Behavior.
    In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have (...)
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  26. Cecilia Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018, ix + 292 pp., $31.50/£25.95/€28.50. [REVIEW]Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (2):1-5.
    Heyes’ book is an essential addition to the literature on human uniqueness. Her main claim is that the key human cognitive capacities are products of cultural rather than genetic evolution. Among these distinctively human capacities are causal understanding, episodic memory, imitation, mindreading, and normative thinking. According to Heyes, they emerged not by genetic mutation but by innovations in cognitive development. She calls these mechanisms ‘cognitive gadgets.’ This is perhaps one of the best and most comprehensive views of human cognitive (...)
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  27. The evolution of skilled imitative learning: a social attention hypothesis.Antonella Tramacere & Richard Moore - 2020 - In Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 394-408.
    Humans are uncontroversially better than other species at learning from their peers. A key example of this is imitation, the ability to reproduce both the means and ends of others’ behaviours. Imitation is critical to the acquisition of a number of uniquely human cultural and cognitive traits. However, while authors largely agree on the importance of imitation, they disagree about the origins of imitation in humans. Some argue that imitation is an adaptation, connected to the ‘Mirror Neuron System’ that evolved (...)
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  28. The Evolution of the Notion of Comparatio in the Dialectical Works of Valla, Agricola, and Vives.Matteo Giangrande - 2022 - Noctua 9 (2):159-187.
    This paper provides an account of the evolution of the notion of comparatio in the main dialectical works of Valla, Agricola, and Vives. It highlights the elements of continuity and discontinuity and sheds light on the original contributions of Vives’s treatment. In Valla, Agricola and Vives, the notion of comparatio characterizes: a) the locus of the relation to another in the inventio method; b) the cognitive act through which one can grasp the relationships of similarity and difference between concepts; (...)
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  29. What could cognition be, if not human cognition?: Individuating cognitive abilities in the light of evolution.Carrie Figdor - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (6):1-21.
    I argue that an explicit distinction between cognitive characters and cognitive phenotypes is needed for empirical progress in the cognitive sciences and their integration with evolution-guided sciences. I elaborate what ontological commitment to characters involves and how such a commitment would clarify ongoing debates about the relations between human and nonhuman cognition and the extent of cognitive abilities across biological species. I use theoretical proposals in episodic memory, language, and sociocultural bases of cognition to illustrate how cognitive (...)
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  30. The evolution of human birth and transhumanist proposals of enhancement.Eduardo R. Cruz - 2015 - Zygon 50 (4):830-853.
    Some transhumanists argue that we must engage with theories and facts about our evolutionary past in order to promote future enhancements of the human body. At the same time, they call our attention to the flawed character of evolution and argue that there is a mismatch between adaptation to ancestral environments and contemporary life. One important trait of our evolutionary past which should not be ignored, and yet may hinder the continued perfection of humankind, is the peculiarly human way (...)
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  31. Cultural Evolution and the Evolution of Cultural Information.Alejandro Gordillo-García - 2023 - Biological Theory 18 (1):30-42.
    Cultural evolution is normally framed in informational terms. However, it is not clear whether this is an adequate way to model cultural evolutionary phenomena and what, precisely, “information” is supposed to mean in this context. Would cultural evolutionary theory benefit from a well-developed theory of cultural information? The prevailing sentiment is that, in contradistinction to biology, informational language should be used nontechnically in this context for descriptive, but not explanatory, purposes. Against this view, this article makes the case for (...)
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  32. Can mathematics explain the evolution of human language?Guenther Witzany - 2011 - Communicative and Integrative Biology 4 (5):516-520.
    Investigation into the sequence structure of the genetic code by means of an informatic approach is a real success story. The features of human language are also the object of investigation within the realm of formal language theories. They focus on the common rules of a universal grammar that lies behind all languages and determine generation of syntactic structures. This universal grammar is a depiction of material reality, i.e., the hidden logical order of things and its relations determined by natural (...)
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  33. Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: A Critic on Plantinga’s View on Atheist Naturalism.Religious Thought, Ahmad Ebadi & Maryam Salehi - 2020 - JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 20 (77):127-150.
    In the naturalism and evolutionism context, the ultimate objective and function of cognitive faculties is adaptation, survival and reproduction. Our cognitive faculties are not developed to generate true beliefs, therefore, but to have adapt behavior. Alvin Planatinga is not at ease with naturalism idea. To him, the problem with naturalism is the non-existence of proper understanding on the manner by which the belief and behavior are interrelated, thus, he concludes that the reliability of cognitive faculties are founded on low naturalistic (...)
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  34. Superdupersizing the mind: Extended cognition and the persistence of cognitive bloat.Sean Allen-Hermanson - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):791-806.
    Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from (...)
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  35. The Analysis Based on Evolution of the Computer Industry.Jiannian Yu - 2018 - Journal of Human Cognition 2 (2):5-16.
    Human innovation is the basis of human survival and development, and scientific and technological innovation are the precursors of industrial evolution. What is the role of cognition in innovative activity? What are the characteristics of the process of its development in a creative environment? This paper proposes the internal mechanism of class creation as an innovative activity from the point of view of industrial evolution and argues that class creation occurs on the basis of cognition. Taking (...)
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  36. Do Somatic Cells Really Sacrifice Themselves? Why an Appeal to Coercion May be a Helpful Strategy in Explaining the Evolution of Multicellularity.Adrian Stencel & Javier Suárez - 2021 - Biological Theory 16 (2):102-113.
    An understanding of the factors behind the evolution of multicellularity is one of today’s frontiers in evolutionary biology. This is because multicellular organisms are made of one subset of cells with the capacity to transmit genes to the next generation and another subset responsible for maintaining the functionality of the organism, but incapable of transmitting genes to the next generation. The question arises: why do somatic cells sacrifice their lives for the sake of germline cells? How is germ/soma separation (...)
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  37. 10 The evolution of strategic thinking.Adam Morton - 2000 - In Peter Carruthers & Andrew Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition. Cambridge University Press. pp. 218.
    I discuss ways in which innate human psychology facilitates the quasi-game-theoretical reasoning required for group life.
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  38. Networks of Gene Regulation, Neural Development and the Evolution of General Capabilities, Such as Human Empathy.Alfred Gierer - 1998 - Zeitschrift Für Naturforschung C - A Journal of Bioscience 53:716-722.
    A network of gene regulation organized in a hierarchical and combinatorial manner is crucially involved in the development of the neural network, and has to be considered one of the main substrates of genetic change in its evolution. Though qualitative features may emerge by way of the accumulation of rather unspecific quantitative changes, it is reasonable to assume that at least in some cases specific combinations of regulatory parts of the genome initiated new directions of evolution, leading to (...)
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  39. Hell and the Cultural Evolution of Christianity.Lari Launonen - 2022 - Theology and Science 20 (1):193-208.
    The traditional view of hell as eternal conscious torment is challenged by proponents of universalism and conditional immortality. However, they need to explain why the church has been misled in adopting the traditional view. This paper draws from cognitive and evolutionary science of religion to provide an “error theory” of why eternal hell became the dominant view. Early Christianity grew rapidly despite persecution and marginalization. The fear of hell probably helped Christian communities to maintain cooperation by weeding out free riding (...)
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  40. Attention and the evolution of intentional communication.Ingar Brinck - 2000 - Pragmatics and Cognition 9 (2):259-277.
    Intentional communication is perceptually based and about attentional objects. Three attention mechanisms are distinguished: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. Attention-focusing directs the subject towards attentional objects. Attention-focusing is goal-governed (controlled by stimulus) or goal-intended (under the control of the subject). Attentional objects are perceptually categorised functional entities that emerge in the interaction between subjects and environment. Joint attention allows for focusing on the same attentional object simultaneously (mutual object-focused attention), provided that the subjects have focused on each other beforehand (subject-subject (...)
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  41. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of executive control.Krist Vaesen - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (1):115-124.
    Dubreuil (Biol Phil 25:53–73, 2010b , this journal) argues that modern-like cognitive abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance most likely evolved in Homo heidelbergensis , much before the evolution of oft-cited modern traits, such as symbolism and art. Dubreuil’s argument proceeds in two steps. First, he identifies two behavioral traits that are supposed to be indicative of the presence of a capacity for inhibition and goal maintenance: cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. Next, he tries to show that these (...)
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  42. From Computer Metaphor to Computational Modeling: The Evolution of Computationalism.Marcin Miłkowski - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (3):515-541.
    In this paper, I argue that computationalism is a progressive research tradition. Its metaphysical assumptions are that nervous systems are computational, and that information processing is necessary for cognition to occur. First, the primary reasons why information processing should explain cognition are reviewed. Then I argue that early formulations of these reasons are outdated. However, by relying on the mechanistic account of physical computation, they can be recast in a compelling way. Next, I contrast two computational models of (...)
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  43. Gricean Communication, Joint Action, and the Evolution of Cooperation.Richard Moore - 2018 - Topoi 37 (2):329-341.
    It is sometimes claimed that Gricean communication is necessarily a form of cooperative or ‘joint’ action. A consequence of this Cooperative Communication View is that Gricean communication could not itself contribute to an explanation of the possibility of joint action. I argue that even though Gricean communication is often a form of joint action, it is not necessarily so—since it does not always require intentional action on the part of a hearer. Rejecting the Cooperative Communication View has attractive consequences for (...)
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  44. The Transition to Experiencing: II. The Evolution of Associative Learning Based on Feelings.Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (3):231-243.
    We discuss the evolutionary transition from animals with limited experiencing to animals with unlimited experiencing and basic consciousness. This transition was, we suggest, intimately linked with the evolution of associative learning and with flexible reward systems based on, and modifiable by, learning. During associative learning, new pathways relating stimuli and effects are formed within a highly integrated and continuously active nervous system. We argue that the memory traces left by such new stimulus-effect relations form dynamic, flexible, and varied global (...)
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  45. Explanation and Understanding in a Model-Based Model of Cognition.Karlis Podnieks - manuscript
    This article is an experiment. Consider a minimalist model of cognition (models, means of model-building and history of their evolution). In this model, explanation could be defined as a means allowing to advance: production of models and means of model-building (thus, yielding 1st class understanding), exploration and use of them (2nd class), and/or teaching (3rd class). At minimum, 3rd class understanding is necessary for an explanation to be respected.
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  46. Bayesian Cognitive Science. Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.Matteo Colombo - 2023 - Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
    Bayesian cognitive science is a research programme that relies on modelling resources from Bayesian statistics for studying and understanding mind, brain, and behaviour. Conceiving of mental capacities as computing solutions to inductive problems, Bayesian cognitive scientists develop probabilistic models of mental capacities and evaluate their adequacy based on behavioural and neural data generated by humans (or other cognitive agents) performing a pertinent task. The overarching goal is to identify the mathematical principles, algorithmic procedures, and causal mechanisms that enable cognitive agents (...)
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  47. The Formalist Picture of Cognition. Towards a Total Demystification.Karlis Podnieks - manuscript
    This paper represents a philosophical experiment inspired by the formalist philosophy of mathematics. In the formalist picture of cognition, the principal act of knowledge generation is represented as tentative postulation – as introduction of a new knowledge construct followed by exploration of the consequences that can be derived from it. Depending on the result, the new construct may be accepted as normative, rejected, modified etc. Languages and means of reasoning are generated and selected in a similar process. In the (...)
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  48. Individuating Cognitive Characters: Lessons from Praying Mantises and Plants.Carrie Figdor - 2024 - Philosophy of Science:1-20.
    This paper advances the development of a phylogeny-based psychology in which cognitive ability types are individuated as characters in the evolutionary biological sense. I explain the character concept and its utility in addressing (or dissolving) conceptual problems arising from discoveries of cognitive abilities across a wide range of species. I use the examples of stereopsis in the praying mantis, internal cell-to-cell signaling in plants, and episodic memory in scrub jays to show how anthropocentric cognitive ability types can be reformulated into (...)
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  49. From Pan to Homo sapiens: evolution from individual based to group based forms of social cognition.Dwight Read - 2020 - Mind and Society 19 (1):121-161.
    The evolution from pre-human primates to modern Homo sapiens is a complex one involving many domains, ranging from the material to the social to the cognitive, both at the individual and the community levels. This article focuses on a critical qualitative transition that took place during this evolution involving both the social and the cognitive domains. For the social domain, the transition is from the face-to-face forms of social interaction and organization that characterize the non-human primates that reached, (...)
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  50. The Cambrian Explosion and the Origins of Embodied Cognition.Michael Trestman - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (1):80-92.
    Around 540 million years ago there was a sudden, dramatic adaptive radiation known as the Cambrian Explosion. This event marked the origin of almost all of the phyla (major lineages characterized by fundamental body plans) of animals that would ever live on earth, as well the appearance of many notable features such as rigid skeletons and other hard parts, complex jointed appendages, eyes, and brains. This radical evolutionary event has been a major puzzle for evolutionary biologists since Darwin, and while (...)
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