Prehistoric cognition by description: a Russellian approach to the upper paleolithic

Bolender, John

doi:10.1007/s10539-006-9058-2

Cited by 35 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The implications of the findings by Powell and colleagues are quite radical. Decades of explanations for the Upper Paleolithic transition featured cognitive changes in the human mind (e.g., MITHEN 1996;KLEIN 2002) as opposed to demographic changes in human populations (BOLENDER 2007). This may warrant a look at how strongly the model of POWELL and colleagues (2009) depends on the assumptions regarding skill selection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If we are concerned with population-level effects of this transmission over many human generations, it is useful to consider prehistoric knowledge as being stored and transmitted among people. This concept is increasingly commonplace in our modern, wiki-media era of computers and information storage, and we are seeing more research into how humans have stored and retrieved information in other people, and subsequently in cave paintings, writing, built environments, and material culture (e.g., RENFREW and SCARRE 1998;BOLENDER 2007;GABORA 2008;POWELL, SHENNAN and THOMAS 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The selectivity of social learning and the tempo of cultural evolution

Bentley

O’Brien²

2011

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

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Many modern studies of cultural innovation and demographic change rest on the proposition that social learning is a key process in the spread of novel variants. We agree with this proposition, but we also suggest that the selectivity of social learning, with respect to a skill or knowledge, has largely been overlooked in considering how the tempo of cultural evolution depends on population size. We evaluate contrasting predictions ranging from cases of extreme selectivity, where everyone learns from the best individual in the group, to entirely nonselective, unbiased social learning, where everyone learns from one another. At the highly selective end of the spectrum, population size should correlate strongly with the tempo of cultural evolution. At the nonselective end, where social learning is unbiased, there should be little correlation between population size and tempo of cultural evolution. For any given case study, characterizing the relative selectivity of social learning is crucial to successfully predicting the effect of population size on cultural evolution.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The selectivity of social learning and the tempo of cultural evolution

Bentley

O’Brien²

2011

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

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“…É impressionante, de fato, que a linguagem e os números naturais de ambos compartilhem a propriedade de infinidade discreta. Chomsky argumentou que essa propriedade nos dá um insight sobre as computações subjacentes à linguagem e à contagem (1988;HAUSER, CHOMSKY e FITCH, 2002), ou seja, ao Confluir.…”

Section: Definir Observabilidadeunclassified

“…Bolender et al (2008) Dois pontos precisam ser feitos. Em primeiro lugar, a construção em questão é entendida a ocorrer fora da faculdade de linguagem, devido à hipótese de ser uma construção anterior à evolução de linguagem.…”

Section: Respostas a Objeçõesunclassified

Cognição Por Meio De Descrição E a Evolução De Linguagem

Bolender

2015

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Resumo: É surpreendente que o ser humano possa formar representações mentais de objetos e propriedades que os seus órgãos dos sentidos não foram projetados pela seleção natural para registrar. Isto não é apenas referência deslocada, uma capacidade partilhada com algumas outras espécies. Afinal, referência deslocada pode ser referência para observáveis. Defendo a plausibilidade de desenvolver um programa de pesquisa para explorar como essa capacidade se refere o conhecimento por descrição em um sentido mais ou menos russelliano. Como tal, é um desdobramento acidental da faculdade de linguagem, especificamente a capacidade de construir descrições. Ainda mais especificamente, ele requer a capacidade para formar frases quantificadas, como por variantes da teoria das descrições. Os linguistas têm apresentado evidências de uma operação computacional própria para a faculdade de linguagem, Confluir Interno, que liga variáveis. Defendo a razoabilidade de um programa para explorar a forma como a singularidade humana de Confluir Interno contribui para a nossa capacidade de conhecimento por descrição. Palavras-chave: Descrição, cognição, linguagem, Russell, Chomsky. Abstract:It is surprising that the human being can form mental representations of objects and properties which its sense organs were not designed by natural selection to register. This is not merely displaced reference, a capacity shared with some other species. After all, displaced reference can be reference to observables. I defend the plausibility of developing a research program for exploring how this capacity relates to knowledge by description in a roughly Russellian sense. As such it is an accidental offshoot of the language faculty, specifically the capacity to construct descriptions. Even more specifically, it requires the ability to form quantifier phrases, as per variants of the theory of descriptions. Linguists have presented evidence for a computational operation proprietary to the language faculty, Internal Merge, which binds variables. I argue for the reasonableness of a program for exploring how

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“…The distributed-mind approach has had philosophical and empirical ramifications (Bolender, 2007; Hausmann and Hidalgo, 2011). Philosophically, it suggests that population size has a direct bearing on thought because what goes through an individual’s mind is largely derived from other minds.…”

Section: Tipping Points: Changes In Tempo and Modementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Evolutionary Tipping Points in the Storage and Transmission of Information

Bentley¹,

O’Brien²

2012

Front. Psychology

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Human culture has evolved through a series of major tipping points in information storage and communication. The first was the appearance of language, which enabled communication between brains and allowed humans to specialize in what they do and to participate in complex mating games. The second was information storage outside the brain, most obviously expressed in the “Upper Paleolithic Revolution” – the sudden proliferation of cave art, personal adornment, and ritual in Europe some 35,000–45,000 years ago. More recently, this storage has taken the form of writing, mass media, and now the Internet, which is arguably overwhelming humans’ ability to discern relevant information. The third tipping point was the appearance of technology capable of accumulating and manipulating vast amounts of information outside humans, thus removing them as bottlenecks to a seemingly self-perpetuating process of knowledge explosion. Important components of any discussion of cultural evolutionary tipping points are tempo and mode, given that the rate of change, as well as the kind of change, in information storage and transmission has not been constant over the previous million years.

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Prehistoric cognition by description: a Russellian approach to the upper paleolithic

Cited by 35 publications

References 39 publications

The selectivity of social learning and the tempo of cultural evolution

The selectivity of social learning and the tempo of cultural evolution

Cognição Por Meio De Descrição E a Evolução De Linguagem

Cultural Evolutionary Tipping Points in the Storage and Transmission of Information

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