We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Social cognition, Stag Hunts, and the evolution of language.
- Authors
Moore, Richard
- Abstract
According to the socio-cognitive revolution (SCR) hypothesis, humans but not other great apes acquire language because only we possess the socio-cognitive abilities required for Gricean communication, which is a pre-requisite of language development. On this view, language emerged only following a socio-cognitive revolution in the hominin lineage that took place after the split of the <italic>Pan</italic>-<italic>Homo</italic> clade. In this paper, I argue that the SCR hypothesis is wrong. The driving forces in language evolution were not sweeping biologically driven changes to hominin social cognition. Our LCA with non-human great apes was likely already a Gricean communicator, and what came with evolution was not a raft of new socio-cognitive abilities, but subtle tweaks to existing ones. It was these tweaks, operating in conjunction with more dramatic ecological changes and a significant increase in general processing power, that set our ancestors on the road to language.
- Subjects
COGNITION; ABSTRACT thought; SENSORY perception; PERSONALITY &; cognition; SELECTIVITY (Psychology)
- Publication
Biology & Philosophy, 2017, Vol 32, Issue 6, p797
- ISSN
0169-3867
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10539-017-9598-7