Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking

Abstract

There has been a reappraisal of phylogenetic issues in cognitive science, as reconstructing cognitive phylogenies has been considered a key for unveiling the cognitive novelties that set the stage for what makes humans special. In our opinion, the studies made until now have approached cognitive phylogenies in a non-optimal way, and we wish to both highlight their problems, drawing on recent considerations in philosophy of biology. The inadequacy of current visions on cognitive phylogenies stems from the influence of the traditional “linear cladograms,” according to which every seemingly new or more sophisticated feature of a cognitive mechanism, viewed as a novelty, is represented as a node on top of the old and shared elements. We claim that this kind of cladograms does not succeed in depicting the complexity with which traits are distributed across species and, furthermore, that the labels of the nodes of these traditional representational systems fail to capture the “tinkering” nature of evolution. We argue that if we are to conceive of cognitive mechanisms in a multi-dimensional, bottom-up perspective, in accordance with the Darwinian logic of descent, we should rather focus on decomposing these mechanisms into lower-level, generic functions, which have the additional advantage of being implementable in neural matter, which ultimately produces cognition. Doing so renders current constructions of cognitive phylogenies otiose.

Vocal learning: Beyond the continuum

“…Focusing on just one measure of any one cognitive trait (that is, a "two-dimensional" continuum [28]), seems to be an attempt to find neat cognitive phylogenies (in the sense of Fitch and colleagues [35]) for what is a complex behavior (see [84] for discussion). This becomes an easier task if vocal learning is reduced to a single circuit because it allows one to conceive of single events (nodes in a phylogeny) that confer the behavior to a species and its descendants (e.g., a whole order of birds).…”

Implications of Oxytocin in Human Linguistic Cognition: From Genome to Phenome

“…In humans, OXT is dispersed from the magnocellular neurons in the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus to practically throughout the brain: including the amygdala, the hippocampus, the striatum, the brainstem, the cerebellum, the insula, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the septum, the bed nucleus of stria terminalis, the globus pallidus, the substantia nigra pars compacta, the ventral tegmental are, the spinal cord, and to neocortical areas traditionally associated with “language,” such as the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus (Lee et al, 2009 , 2010 ; Ma et al, 2016 ). Even though it is important to find out “where” OXT is expressed in the brain, a mere locationist approach cannot enlighten our understanding of “how” OXT gives rise to cognitive sub-processes mechanistically (Theofanopoulou and Boeckx, 2015 ). At the following level of analysis (i.e., the dynome) the direct effects of OXT administration on brain rhythms and how this translates into specific cognitive processes (i.e., the cognome) will be illustrated.…”

“…Here I put forth the hypothesis that OXT also has a significant role in our linguistic abilities, ranging from modulating genes involved in spoken-language acquisition to modulating our motivation to communicate. In building this hypothesis, I follow an approach I have argued in Theofanopoulou and Boeckx ( 2015 ) in the context of cognitive phylogenies, where for a hypothesis to be valid in the Language Sciences, there needs to be evidence at multiple levels of biological organization, from genetics to ultimately the behavioral level (Fisher, 2015 ). Thus, I appeal to relevant findings from a multitude of studies, touching upon all the following levels of analysis: genome, connectome, dynome (brain oscillations), cognome, and phenome (See Figure 1 ).…”