The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

By J. Unger, Terrence W. Deacon. 1998

Subfields: Cognitive Science & Psychology

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In Cognitive Science & Psychology

Citations in the corpus

What can the brain teach us about building artificial intelligence? (2016, background): “2002)? Is it the ability to re-use symbols by name (Deacon 1998)? Is it the ability to understand others intentionally and build shared intentionality (Bloom 2000; Frank et al.”
INNATENESS AND EMERGENTISM (1996, background): “For example, Deacon (1997) describes evidence for lawful axon growth in the brain of the adult rat, from cortical transplants taken from fetal pigs!”
The seven sins of evolutionary psychology (2001, unknown): “For instance, visual cortex can be destroyed in fetal mice, and visual ability will emerge in adjacent tissues (see DEACON 1990, 1997).”
Selection, Tinkering, and Emergence in Complex Networks - Crossing the Land of Tinkering (2002, background): “The degree of expression of such a feature is not correlated with intelligence and thereafter not surprisingly present even when intellectual skills are extremely poor, which is the case of the idiots savants [75].”
Language as shaped by the brain. (2008, methodology): “Indeed, it seems likely that a number of pre-adaptations for language might have occurred (see Hurford 2003, for a review), such as the ability to represent discrete symbols (Deacon 1997; Tomasello 2003), to reason about other minds (Malle 2002), to understand and share intentions (Tomasello 2003; T”
Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion (2004, background): “According to TMT, highly adaptive cognitive capabilities, especially self-awareness and temporal thought (Becker 1971; 1973; Deacon 1997), rendered our ancestral forebears aware of the everpresent threat and inevitability of death.”
Cooperation and the evolution of symbolic communication (2004, background): “As mentioned earlier, it has so far not been shown that apes can communicate in a fully symbolic way (Deacon 1997, Tomasello 1999).”
The faculty of language: what's special about it? (2005, unknown): “Humans also display greater cortical control over articulation and breathing, compared with the largely subcortical control found in other primates (Deacon, 1997).”
Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language (2008, background): “While this feature of language as a carrier of cultural information is obviously important, we have argued that there is a second sense in which language is an evolutionary milestone: each utterance has a dual purpose, not only carrying semantic content, but also conveying information about its own ”
Density and Dispersion: The Co-Development of Land Use and Rail in London (2007, unknown): “Deacon (1997) makes similar arguments about the relationship with human language and the brain.”
The small world of human language (2001, background): “Over two million years of hominid evolution, a coevolutionary exchange between languages and brains took place (Deacon, 1997).”