Theorists of human evolution are interested in understanding major shifts in human behavioral cap... more Theorists of human evolution are interested in understanding major shifts in human behavioral capacities (e.g., the creation of a novel technological industry, such as the Acheulean). This task faces empirical challenges arising both from the complexity of these events and the time-depths involved. However, we also confront issues of a more philosophical nature, such as how to best think about causation and explanation. This article considers such fundamental questions from the perspective of a prominent theory of causation in the philosophy of science literature, namely, the interventionist theory of causation. A signature feature of this framework is its recognition of a family of distinct types of causes. We set out several of these causal notions and show how they can contribute to explaining transitions in human behavioral complexity. We do so, first, in a preliminary way, and then in a more detailed way, taking the origins of behavioral modernity as our extended case study. We conclude by suggesting some ways in which the approach developed here might be elaborated and extended.
Tennie, C. & Planer, R.J. Comment on: Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. E. (in press) "Reconsidering the lin... more Tennie, C. & Planer, R.J. Comment on: Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. E. (in press) "Reconsidering the link between past material culture and cognition in light of contemporary hunter-gatherer material use" in Behavioral and Brain Sciences": Stibbard-Hawkes forcefully alerts us to the pitfall of false negative reasoning in symbolic archaeology. We highlight the twin problem of false positive reasoning in what we call the “false- symbol problem.” False symbols are intuitively special entities that, owing to their non-utilitarian nature, invite symbolic interpretation. But they are not symbolic. We link the false symbol problem to work in comparative primate cognition, taking “primate art” as our main example.
The evolution of human communication and culture are among the most significant--and challenging-... more The evolution of human communication and culture are among the most significant--and challenging--questions we face in attempting to understand the evolution of our species. This article takes up two frameworks for theorizing about human communication and culture, namely, Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture of the human language faculty, and the cultural evolutionary framework of Memetics. The aim is to show that the two frameworks uniquely complement one another in some theoretically important ways. In particular, the Parallel Architecture's account of the lexicon significantly expands the range of linguistic phenomena that are plausibly covered by Memetics (e.g., from words to constructions and pure rules of syntax). At the same time, taking a "meme's-eye-view" of the lexicon retools the Parallel Architecture's treatment of the origins and subsequent cultural evolution of language.
In many traditional, small-scale societies, death and other misfortunes are commonly explained as... more In many traditional, small-scale societies, death and other misfortunes are commonly explained as a result of others' malign occult agency. Here, we call this family of epistemic tendencies, "the agential view of misfortune." After reviewing several ethnographic case studies that illustrate this view, we argue that its origins and stability are puzzling from an evolutionary perspective. For not only is the agential view of misfortune false; it imposes costs on individuals and social groups that seem to far outweigh whatever benefits the view might provide. We thus doubt that the agential view of misfortune is explainable in terms of adaptive effects. However, nor does it seem readily explainable as a consequence of belief formation strategies that are on the whole adaptive (as is plausibly the case for certain other of our false beliefs, including some that are costly). Accordingly, we contend that the commonness of the agential view of misfortune demands a special evolutionary explanation of some kind. We provide a partial explanation of this phenomenon by highlighting the adaptive benefits that often flow to occult specialists in environments where the agential view of misfortune is entrenched. What this does not explain, however, is the general lack of resistance we observe in response to occultists' exploitative behaviors over (cultural) evolutionary timescales. We conclude by canvassing a few possible explanations for this puzzling lack of resistance, and while we commit ourselves to none, we do find one option more promising than the others.
Human language sentences are standardly understood as exhibiting considerable hierarchical struct... more Human language sentences are standardly understood as exhibiting considerable hierarchical structure: they can and typically do contain parts that in turn contain parts, etc. In other words, sentences are thought to generally exhibit significant nested part-whole structure. As far as we can tell, this is not a feature of the gestural or vocal communication systems of our great ape relatives. So, one of the many challenges we face in providing a theory of human language evolution is to explain the evolution of hierarchically structured communication in our line. This article takes up that challenge. More specifically, I first present and motivate an account of hierarchical structure in language that departs significantly from the orthodox conception of such structure in linguistics and evolutionary discussions that draw on linguistic theory. On the account I propose, linguistic structure, including hierarchical structure, is treated as a special case of structured action. This account is rooted in the cognitive neuroscience of action, as opposed to (formal) linguistic theory. Among other things, such an account enables us to see how selection for enhanced capacities of act organization and act control in actors, and for act interpretation in observers, might have constructed the brain machinery necessary for the elaborate forms of hierarchically structured communication that we humans engage in. I flesh out this line of thought, emphasizing in particular the role of hominin technique and technology, and the social learning thereof, as evolutionary drivers of this brain machinery.
The Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution, 2023
Culture and communication are widespread in the animal kingdom. However, among apes, only the hum... more Culture and communication are widespread in the animal kingdom. However, among apes, only the human line has evolved these into something altogether different. Moreover, our extraordinary cultural and communicative capacities underlie much else of what makes our species stand out among apes. Thus, understanding the how and why of the process by which these capacities were transformed from their great ape-like precursors into their modern human equivalents is of fundamental importance to the challenge of understanding the evolution of our species more generally. In this chapter, we take up these questions using a novel framework for thinking about social learning. We hypothesize that human apes show a unique propensity for a certain type of social learning, which we call "know-how copying." Know-how copying is considered foundational to our species' well-known capacity to culturally evolve both behaviour and artifact forms that can far exceed anything a single individual could realistically invent on his or her own. This copying is therefore also foundational to our species' capacity to construct, maintain and expand the large lexicons of (often) arbitrary signs that underlie human languages. After discussing the various methodologies that are available for testing whether a given type of human or animal culture is demanding of know-how copying, we turn to the archaeological record with an eye towards identifying plausible signatures of the origins of know-how copying in the human line. In particular, we examine the course of hominin technological evolution-as the most visible and most frequent data. We suggest a much later date for the origins of know-how copying than is typically assumed. But this poses a deep puzzle, namely: there is good reason to think that hominins had considerably expanded their communicative repertoire prior to the evolution of know-how copying. How was this possible in the seeming absence of know-how copying? We sketch a solution to this puzzle which we think provides an additional argument in support of a gestural-iconic origins scenario for language.
Grice's analysis of human communication has proven to be highly influential among many philosophe... more Grice's analysis of human communication has proven to be highly influential among many philosophers and cognitive scientists, both past and present. At the same time, it has long been recognized that his analysis faces some difficult objections. In particular, a number of theorists have objected to the account Grice provides of the mental states and processes of those engaged in communication. For these theorists, communication as conceived of by Grice has seemed too mentally demanding and complex to be a good general model of human communication. In this article, I consider this challenge afresh from the perspective of Dan Dennett's intentional stance theory. More specifically, I consider some recent remarks Dennett has made in this area, seeking to pin down and clarify his view. I then argue that while Dennett's thinking is on the right track, his view stands in need of both a substantive adjustment and more positive detail. I seek to provide such improvements here. Finally, I consider some of the implications of this improved Dennettian account of Gricean communication for how great ape and human communication are related.
It has seemed to many theorists that our nature as a cooperatively breeding species is crucial to... more It has seemed to many theorists that our nature as a cooperatively breeding species is crucial to understanding how we became fully human. This article examines a particular strand within this thinking, according to which cooperative breeding drove the evolution of human skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. More specifically, I consider a model of the evolution of these skills and motivations offered by Tomasello and González-Cabrera (2017). Their model is “composite” in that it also recognizes an important role for collaborative foraging in the evolution of shared intentionality. I argue that their model (or more precisely: a natural construal of it) faces at least two problems—what I call the “reflexive metacognition problem” and the “bonding problem.” These two problems (as their names would suggest) concern the cognitive and emotional-motivational dimensions of the evolution of shared intentionality, respectively. I sketch an alternative evolutionary scenario which also posits a dual role for collaborative foraging and cooperative breeding. However, there are some crucial differences between the two models. In particular, the Tomasello and González-Cabrera model appeals to cooperative breeding in explaining the initial appearance of basic skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. In contrast, I argue that cooperative breeding, at least initially, instead served to drive down the age of development of preexisting skills and motivations for sharing intentionality that originally evolved to support collaborative foraging in adult life. This alternative model avoids the reflexive cognition and bonding problem, and has other advantages which I highlight.
This commentary seeks to supplement the case Quilty-Dunn et al. make for the psychological realit... more This commentary seeks to supplement the case Quilty-Dunn et al. make for the psychological reality of languages of thought in two ways. First, it focuses on the reduced physical demands which language-of-thought architectures often make compared to alternative architectures. Second, it embeds language-of-thought research within a broader framework that can be leveraged to understand the evolution of languages of thought.
While the term "metacognition" is sometimes used to refer to any form of thinking about thinking,... more While the term "metacognition" is sometimes used to refer to any form of thinking about thinking, in cognitive psychology, it is typically reserved for thinking about one's own thinking, as opposed to thinking about others' thinking. How metacognition in this more specific sense relates to otherdirected mindreading is one of the main theoretical issues debated in the literature. This article considers the idea that we make use of the same or a largely similar package of resources in conceptually interpreting our own mind as we do in interpreting others'. I assume that a capacity for other-directed mindreading is minimally shared with our great-ape relatives, but I argue that the architecture of this system had to be substantially modified before it could efficiently and adaptively be turned inwards on one's own mind. I contend that an important piece of the overall evolutionary explanation here likely concerns selection pressures arising from the domain of conversational interaction. Specifically, drawing on work carried out in the human interaction studies tradition (e.g., conversation analysis), I argue that the smooth to-and-fro of conversational interaction can be seen to heavily depend on metacommunicative capacities, which, in turn, are underpinned by metacognitive capacities. I conclude with a thumbnail sketch of an evolutionary account of the emergence of these metacognitive capacities in the human line. Their appearance and spread-whether via genes, cultural learning, or more likely, some combination of the two-helps to explain the transition from great-ape communication to human conversation.
This chapter (i) begins by emphasising the differences between the social lives of animals (prima... more This chapter (i) begins by emphasising the differences between the social lives of animals (primarily chimps) and those of humans (including humans in deep time). Human social life depends on persistent, collective organisational features of communities (for example, their multi-level character and their economic inter-dependence). (ii) The chapter nevertheless argues that chimp social lives have robust supra-individual, collective features. (iii) These evolve as aggregate outcomes of individual-level selection, but once they emerge, they change the selective landscape. (iv) The chapter then briefly reviews ideas about the evolution of the much more diverse and complex collective features of even the simplest human communities, and (v) discusses ways of integrating methodological individualism with a recognition of the importance of these collective phenomena. (vi) The chapter concludes with a summary and some directions for future research in the area of social ontology and human evolution.
We briefly critique Singh's tripartite cultural evolutionary theory of belief in witchcraft and s... more We briefly critique Singh's tripartite cultural evolutionary theory of belief in witchcraft and sorcery.
BBS Commentary: Mehr et al. seek to explain music’s evolution in terms of a unitary proper functi... more BBS Commentary: Mehr et al. seek to explain music’s evolution in terms of a unitary proper function—signaling cooperative intent—which they cash out in two guises, coalition signaling and (allo)parental attention signaling. While we recognize the role signaling almost certainly played in the evolution of music, we reject “ultimate” causal explanations which focus on a unidirectional, narrow range of causal factors.
Forthcoming in Biological Theory: A number of language evolution researchers have argued that whi... more Forthcoming in Biological Theory: A number of language evolution researchers have argued that while language as we now know it is a predominately vocal affair, early language plausibly made extensive use of gesture. Relatedly, these same researchers often claim that while modern language in general uses arbitrary symbols, it is very likely that early language made extensive use of iconicity. Anyone accepting an account of early language along these lines must therefore explain how language shifted over time from a heavily gestural and iconic communication system to a predominately vocal and highly arbitrary one. This article looks at an intriguing theory advanced by Woll (2009, 2014) as to how this shift was made. We find the spirit of the theory plausible but take issue with its details. Specifically, we identify a serious tension at the core of the theory. We then go on to explore how that tension might be plausibly resolved. The result is a blueprint for a much-improved version of the theory in our view.
To appear in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy (ed. Killin, A., & Allen-Hermanson, S.): ... more To appear in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy (ed. Killin, A., & Allen-Hermanson, S.): There is growing acceptance among language evolution researchers that an increase in our ancestors' theory of mind capacities was critical to the origins of language. However, little attention has been paid to the question of how those capacities were in fact upgraded. This article develops a novel hypothesis, grounded in contemporary cognitive neuroscience, on which our theory of mind capacities improved as a result of an increase in our System-2 thinking capacities, in turn based in an increase in our working memory capacities. I contrast this hypothesis with what would appear to be the default position among language evolution researchers, namely, that our theory of mind became more powerful as a result of genetic change to a domain-specific mindreading system which we share with other great apes. While the latter hypothesis is not implausible, it arguably enjoys less empirical support at present than does the alternative hypothesis I develop.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books, 2020
An essay review of Richard Wrangham's "The Goodness Paradox". I summarize and then evaluate the b... more An essay review of Richard Wrangham's "The Goodness Paradox". I summarize and then evaluate the book’s overall argument. I pay special attention to Wrangham's ideas about connections between human self-domestication and the evolution of language and cooperation.
Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more glob... more Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more global scales. Hence, any adequate account of the evolution of human sociality must include an account of the evolution of human kinship. This article aims to make progress on the latter task by providing a few key pieces of an evolutionary model of kinship systems. The article is especially focused on the connection between primate social cognition and the origins of kinship systems. I argue that early conceptions of kinship in our line were very likely scaffolded by preexisting forms of primate social cognition. It was only later, as linguistic resources increased in our line, and as human social life grew more complex, that these conceptions came to resemble kin categories as we now know them. I conclude by situating “kin cognition” within a broader cognitive science framework for studying capacities that reflect both innate knowledge and human cultural learning.
The idea that cognition makes use of one or more "languages of thought" remains central to much c... more The idea that cognition makes use of one or more "languages of thought" remains central to much cognitive-scientific and philosophical theorizing. And yet, virtually no attention has been paid to the question of how a language of thought might evolve in the first place. In this article, I take some steps towards addressing this issue. With the aid of the so-called Sender-Receiver framework, I elucidate a family of distinctions and processes which enable us to see how languages of thought might evolve via a series of small, incremental changes. While much work doubtlessly remains to be done in this area, I hope to at least show that there need be nothing mysterious about the existence of languages of thought on evolutionary grounds.
Humans' capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and... more Humans' capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and in particular archeologists, when attempting to explain human cognitive and behavioral uniqueness. But what is meant by "symbolic cognition" is often left underspecified. In this article, I identify and discuss three different ways in which the notion of symbolic cognition might be construed, each of them quite distinct. Getting clear on the nature of symbolic cognition is a necessary first step in determining what symbolic cognition might plausibly explain.
Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of ... more Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics: the role of common interest in communication, signaling within the organism, meaning, and the evolution of human communication and language. The orientation to communication and representation created by these models, what we call "the sender-receiver framework," treats coordination between behaviors of sign production and interpretation as the core phenomenon of communication. In some cases, that coordination will be the product of intentional foresight and agency, while in others it will be due to simpler selective processes operating over phylogenetic, ontogenetic, or cultural timescales. The unifying character of this framework also depends on its recognizing both clear and partial cases of sender-receiver systems, where this is understood in terms of how closely a real-world system matches the entities and relations treated by the models.
Theorists of human evolution are interested in understanding major shifts in human behavioral cap... more Theorists of human evolution are interested in understanding major shifts in human behavioral capacities (e.g., the creation of a novel technological industry, such as the Acheulean). This task faces empirical challenges arising both from the complexity of these events and the time-depths involved. However, we also confront issues of a more philosophical nature, such as how to best think about causation and explanation. This article considers such fundamental questions from the perspective of a prominent theory of causation in the philosophy of science literature, namely, the interventionist theory of causation. A signature feature of this framework is its recognition of a family of distinct types of causes. We set out several of these causal notions and show how they can contribute to explaining transitions in human behavioral complexity. We do so, first, in a preliminary way, and then in a more detailed way, taking the origins of behavioral modernity as our extended case study. We conclude by suggesting some ways in which the approach developed here might be elaborated and extended.
Tennie, C. & Planer, R.J. Comment on: Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. E. (in press) "Reconsidering the lin... more Tennie, C. & Planer, R.J. Comment on: Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. E. (in press) "Reconsidering the link between past material culture and cognition in light of contemporary hunter-gatherer material use" in Behavioral and Brain Sciences": Stibbard-Hawkes forcefully alerts us to the pitfall of false negative reasoning in symbolic archaeology. We highlight the twin problem of false positive reasoning in what we call the “false- symbol problem.” False symbols are intuitively special entities that, owing to their non-utilitarian nature, invite symbolic interpretation. But they are not symbolic. We link the false symbol problem to work in comparative primate cognition, taking “primate art” as our main example.
The evolution of human communication and culture are among the most significant--and challenging-... more The evolution of human communication and culture are among the most significant--and challenging--questions we face in attempting to understand the evolution of our species. This article takes up two frameworks for theorizing about human communication and culture, namely, Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture of the human language faculty, and the cultural evolutionary framework of Memetics. The aim is to show that the two frameworks uniquely complement one another in some theoretically important ways. In particular, the Parallel Architecture's account of the lexicon significantly expands the range of linguistic phenomena that are plausibly covered by Memetics (e.g., from words to constructions and pure rules of syntax). At the same time, taking a "meme's-eye-view" of the lexicon retools the Parallel Architecture's treatment of the origins and subsequent cultural evolution of language.
In many traditional, small-scale societies, death and other misfortunes are commonly explained as... more In many traditional, small-scale societies, death and other misfortunes are commonly explained as a result of others' malign occult agency. Here, we call this family of epistemic tendencies, "the agential view of misfortune." After reviewing several ethnographic case studies that illustrate this view, we argue that its origins and stability are puzzling from an evolutionary perspective. For not only is the agential view of misfortune false; it imposes costs on individuals and social groups that seem to far outweigh whatever benefits the view might provide. We thus doubt that the agential view of misfortune is explainable in terms of adaptive effects. However, nor does it seem readily explainable as a consequence of belief formation strategies that are on the whole adaptive (as is plausibly the case for certain other of our false beliefs, including some that are costly). Accordingly, we contend that the commonness of the agential view of misfortune demands a special evolutionary explanation of some kind. We provide a partial explanation of this phenomenon by highlighting the adaptive benefits that often flow to occult specialists in environments where the agential view of misfortune is entrenched. What this does not explain, however, is the general lack of resistance we observe in response to occultists' exploitative behaviors over (cultural) evolutionary timescales. We conclude by canvassing a few possible explanations for this puzzling lack of resistance, and while we commit ourselves to none, we do find one option more promising than the others.
Human language sentences are standardly understood as exhibiting considerable hierarchical struct... more Human language sentences are standardly understood as exhibiting considerable hierarchical structure: they can and typically do contain parts that in turn contain parts, etc. In other words, sentences are thought to generally exhibit significant nested part-whole structure. As far as we can tell, this is not a feature of the gestural or vocal communication systems of our great ape relatives. So, one of the many challenges we face in providing a theory of human language evolution is to explain the evolution of hierarchically structured communication in our line. This article takes up that challenge. More specifically, I first present and motivate an account of hierarchical structure in language that departs significantly from the orthodox conception of such structure in linguistics and evolutionary discussions that draw on linguistic theory. On the account I propose, linguistic structure, including hierarchical structure, is treated as a special case of structured action. This account is rooted in the cognitive neuroscience of action, as opposed to (formal) linguistic theory. Among other things, such an account enables us to see how selection for enhanced capacities of act organization and act control in actors, and for act interpretation in observers, might have constructed the brain machinery necessary for the elaborate forms of hierarchically structured communication that we humans engage in. I flesh out this line of thought, emphasizing in particular the role of hominin technique and technology, and the social learning thereof, as evolutionary drivers of this brain machinery.
The Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution, 2023
Culture and communication are widespread in the animal kingdom. However, among apes, only the hum... more Culture and communication are widespread in the animal kingdom. However, among apes, only the human line has evolved these into something altogether different. Moreover, our extraordinary cultural and communicative capacities underlie much else of what makes our species stand out among apes. Thus, understanding the how and why of the process by which these capacities were transformed from their great ape-like precursors into their modern human equivalents is of fundamental importance to the challenge of understanding the evolution of our species more generally. In this chapter, we take up these questions using a novel framework for thinking about social learning. We hypothesize that human apes show a unique propensity for a certain type of social learning, which we call "know-how copying." Know-how copying is considered foundational to our species' well-known capacity to culturally evolve both behaviour and artifact forms that can far exceed anything a single individual could realistically invent on his or her own. This copying is therefore also foundational to our species' capacity to construct, maintain and expand the large lexicons of (often) arbitrary signs that underlie human languages. After discussing the various methodologies that are available for testing whether a given type of human or animal culture is demanding of know-how copying, we turn to the archaeological record with an eye towards identifying plausible signatures of the origins of know-how copying in the human line. In particular, we examine the course of hominin technological evolution-as the most visible and most frequent data. We suggest a much later date for the origins of know-how copying than is typically assumed. But this poses a deep puzzle, namely: there is good reason to think that hominins had considerably expanded their communicative repertoire prior to the evolution of know-how copying. How was this possible in the seeming absence of know-how copying? We sketch a solution to this puzzle which we think provides an additional argument in support of a gestural-iconic origins scenario for language.
Grice's analysis of human communication has proven to be highly influential among many philosophe... more Grice's analysis of human communication has proven to be highly influential among many philosophers and cognitive scientists, both past and present. At the same time, it has long been recognized that his analysis faces some difficult objections. In particular, a number of theorists have objected to the account Grice provides of the mental states and processes of those engaged in communication. For these theorists, communication as conceived of by Grice has seemed too mentally demanding and complex to be a good general model of human communication. In this article, I consider this challenge afresh from the perspective of Dan Dennett's intentional stance theory. More specifically, I consider some recent remarks Dennett has made in this area, seeking to pin down and clarify his view. I then argue that while Dennett's thinking is on the right track, his view stands in need of both a substantive adjustment and more positive detail. I seek to provide such improvements here. Finally, I consider some of the implications of this improved Dennettian account of Gricean communication for how great ape and human communication are related.
It has seemed to many theorists that our nature as a cooperatively breeding species is crucial to... more It has seemed to many theorists that our nature as a cooperatively breeding species is crucial to understanding how we became fully human. This article examines a particular strand within this thinking, according to which cooperative breeding drove the evolution of human skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. More specifically, I consider a model of the evolution of these skills and motivations offered by Tomasello and González-Cabrera (2017). Their model is “composite” in that it also recognizes an important role for collaborative foraging in the evolution of shared intentionality. I argue that their model (or more precisely: a natural construal of it) faces at least two problems—what I call the “reflexive metacognition problem” and the “bonding problem.” These two problems (as their names would suggest) concern the cognitive and emotional-motivational dimensions of the evolution of shared intentionality, respectively. I sketch an alternative evolutionary scenario which also posits a dual role for collaborative foraging and cooperative breeding. However, there are some crucial differences between the two models. In particular, the Tomasello and González-Cabrera model appeals to cooperative breeding in explaining the initial appearance of basic skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. In contrast, I argue that cooperative breeding, at least initially, instead served to drive down the age of development of preexisting skills and motivations for sharing intentionality that originally evolved to support collaborative foraging in adult life. This alternative model avoids the reflexive cognition and bonding problem, and has other advantages which I highlight.
This commentary seeks to supplement the case Quilty-Dunn et al. make for the psychological realit... more This commentary seeks to supplement the case Quilty-Dunn et al. make for the psychological reality of languages of thought in two ways. First, it focuses on the reduced physical demands which language-of-thought architectures often make compared to alternative architectures. Second, it embeds language-of-thought research within a broader framework that can be leveraged to understand the evolution of languages of thought.
While the term "metacognition" is sometimes used to refer to any form of thinking about thinking,... more While the term "metacognition" is sometimes used to refer to any form of thinking about thinking, in cognitive psychology, it is typically reserved for thinking about one's own thinking, as opposed to thinking about others' thinking. How metacognition in this more specific sense relates to otherdirected mindreading is one of the main theoretical issues debated in the literature. This article considers the idea that we make use of the same or a largely similar package of resources in conceptually interpreting our own mind as we do in interpreting others'. I assume that a capacity for other-directed mindreading is minimally shared with our great-ape relatives, but I argue that the architecture of this system had to be substantially modified before it could efficiently and adaptively be turned inwards on one's own mind. I contend that an important piece of the overall evolutionary explanation here likely concerns selection pressures arising from the domain of conversational interaction. Specifically, drawing on work carried out in the human interaction studies tradition (e.g., conversation analysis), I argue that the smooth to-and-fro of conversational interaction can be seen to heavily depend on metacommunicative capacities, which, in turn, are underpinned by metacognitive capacities. I conclude with a thumbnail sketch of an evolutionary account of the emergence of these metacognitive capacities in the human line. Their appearance and spread-whether via genes, cultural learning, or more likely, some combination of the two-helps to explain the transition from great-ape communication to human conversation.
This chapter (i) begins by emphasising the differences between the social lives of animals (prima... more This chapter (i) begins by emphasising the differences between the social lives of animals (primarily chimps) and those of humans (including humans in deep time). Human social life depends on persistent, collective organisational features of communities (for example, their multi-level character and their economic inter-dependence). (ii) The chapter nevertheless argues that chimp social lives have robust supra-individual, collective features. (iii) These evolve as aggregate outcomes of individual-level selection, but once they emerge, they change the selective landscape. (iv) The chapter then briefly reviews ideas about the evolution of the much more diverse and complex collective features of even the simplest human communities, and (v) discusses ways of integrating methodological individualism with a recognition of the importance of these collective phenomena. (vi) The chapter concludes with a summary and some directions for future research in the area of social ontology and human evolution.
We briefly critique Singh's tripartite cultural evolutionary theory of belief in witchcraft and s... more We briefly critique Singh's tripartite cultural evolutionary theory of belief in witchcraft and sorcery.
BBS Commentary: Mehr et al. seek to explain music’s evolution in terms of a unitary proper functi... more BBS Commentary: Mehr et al. seek to explain music’s evolution in terms of a unitary proper function—signaling cooperative intent—which they cash out in two guises, coalition signaling and (allo)parental attention signaling. While we recognize the role signaling almost certainly played in the evolution of music, we reject “ultimate” causal explanations which focus on a unidirectional, narrow range of causal factors.
Forthcoming in Biological Theory: A number of language evolution researchers have argued that whi... more Forthcoming in Biological Theory: A number of language evolution researchers have argued that while language as we now know it is a predominately vocal affair, early language plausibly made extensive use of gesture. Relatedly, these same researchers often claim that while modern language in general uses arbitrary symbols, it is very likely that early language made extensive use of iconicity. Anyone accepting an account of early language along these lines must therefore explain how language shifted over time from a heavily gestural and iconic communication system to a predominately vocal and highly arbitrary one. This article looks at an intriguing theory advanced by Woll (2009, 2014) as to how this shift was made. We find the spirit of the theory plausible but take issue with its details. Specifically, we identify a serious tension at the core of the theory. We then go on to explore how that tension might be plausibly resolved. The result is a blueprint for a much-improved version of the theory in our view.
To appear in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy (ed. Killin, A., & Allen-Hermanson, S.): ... more To appear in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy (ed. Killin, A., & Allen-Hermanson, S.): There is growing acceptance among language evolution researchers that an increase in our ancestors' theory of mind capacities was critical to the origins of language. However, little attention has been paid to the question of how those capacities were in fact upgraded. This article develops a novel hypothesis, grounded in contemporary cognitive neuroscience, on which our theory of mind capacities improved as a result of an increase in our System-2 thinking capacities, in turn based in an increase in our working memory capacities. I contrast this hypothesis with what would appear to be the default position among language evolution researchers, namely, that our theory of mind became more powerful as a result of genetic change to a domain-specific mindreading system which we share with other great apes. While the latter hypothesis is not implausible, it arguably enjoys less empirical support at present than does the alternative hypothesis I develop.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books, 2020
An essay review of Richard Wrangham's "The Goodness Paradox". I summarize and then evaluate the b... more An essay review of Richard Wrangham's "The Goodness Paradox". I summarize and then evaluate the book’s overall argument. I pay special attention to Wrangham's ideas about connections between human self-domestication and the evolution of language and cooperation.
Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more glob... more Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more global scales. Hence, any adequate account of the evolution of human sociality must include an account of the evolution of human kinship. This article aims to make progress on the latter task by providing a few key pieces of an evolutionary model of kinship systems. The article is especially focused on the connection between primate social cognition and the origins of kinship systems. I argue that early conceptions of kinship in our line were very likely scaffolded by preexisting forms of primate social cognition. It was only later, as linguistic resources increased in our line, and as human social life grew more complex, that these conceptions came to resemble kin categories as we now know them. I conclude by situating “kin cognition” within a broader cognitive science framework for studying capacities that reflect both innate knowledge and human cultural learning.
The idea that cognition makes use of one or more "languages of thought" remains central to much c... more The idea that cognition makes use of one or more "languages of thought" remains central to much cognitive-scientific and philosophical theorizing. And yet, virtually no attention has been paid to the question of how a language of thought might evolve in the first place. In this article, I take some steps towards addressing this issue. With the aid of the so-called Sender-Receiver framework, I elucidate a family of distinctions and processes which enable us to see how languages of thought might evolve via a series of small, incremental changes. While much work doubtlessly remains to be done in this area, I hope to at least show that there need be nothing mysterious about the existence of languages of thought on evolutionary grounds.
Humans' capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and... more Humans' capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and in particular archeologists, when attempting to explain human cognitive and behavioral uniqueness. But what is meant by "symbolic cognition" is often left underspecified. In this article, I identify and discuss three different ways in which the notion of symbolic cognition might be construed, each of them quite distinct. Getting clear on the nature of symbolic cognition is a necessary first step in determining what symbolic cognition might plausibly explain.
Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of ... more Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics: the role of common interest in communication, signaling within the organism, meaning, and the evolution of human communication and language. The orientation to communication and representation created by these models, what we call "the sender-receiver framework," treats coordination between behaviors of sign production and interpretation as the core phenomenon of communication. In some cases, that coordination will be the product of intentional foresight and agency, while in others it will be due to simpler selective processes operating over phylogenetic, ontogenetic, or cultural timescales. The unifying character of this framework also depends on its recognizing both clear and partial cases of sender-receiver systems, where this is understood in terms of how closely a real-world system matches the entities and relations treated by the models.
From Publisher (MIT Press) website:
"In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny p... more From Publisher (MIT Press) website:
"In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny propose a novel theory of language, proposing that modern language is the product of a long series of increasingly rich protolanguages evolving over the last two million years. Arguing that language and cognition coevolved, they give a central role to archaeological evidence and they attempt to infer cognitive capacities on the basis of that evidence, which they link in turn to communicative capacities.
Countering other accounts, which move directly from archaeological traces to language, Planer and Sterelny show that rudimentary forms of many of the elements on which language depends can be found in the great apes and were part of the equipment of the earliest species in our lineage. After outlining the constraints a theory of the evolution of language should satisfy and filling in the details of their model, they take up the evolution of words, composite utterances, and hierarchical structure. They consider the transition from a predominantly gestural to a predominantly vocal form of language and discuss the economic and social factors that led to language. Finally, they evaluate their theory in terms of the constraints previously laid out."
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Papers by Ronald Planer
"In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny propose a novel theory of language, proposing that modern language is the product of a long series of increasingly rich protolanguages evolving over the last two million years. Arguing that language and cognition coevolved, they give a central role to archaeological evidence and they attempt to infer cognitive capacities on the basis of that evidence, which they link in turn to communicative capacities.
Countering other accounts, which move directly from archaeological traces to language, Planer and Sterelny show that rudimentary forms of many of the elements on which language depends can be found in the great apes and were part of the equipment of the earliest species in our lineage. After outlining the constraints a theory of the evolution of language should satisfy and filling in the details of their model, they take up the evolution of words, composite utterances, and hierarchical structure. They consider the transition from a predominantly gestural to a predominantly vocal form of language and discuss the economic and social factors that led to language. Finally, they evaluate their theory in terms of the constraints previously laid out."