Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

A tendency which has come into vogue with the modern sciences is to explain certain things by evolution.

I must emphasize that I am not trying to do speculative evolutionary biology, rather I am trying to do a logical analysis of the relations between prelinguistic cognitive capacities and language, with the aim of figuring out what language is. In response to earlier drafts of this article, some people thought I was trying to enter into current discussions of animal cognition and the actual evolution of language.

There is currently a sizable amount of research on animal cognition2 and important work is done on the evolution of language.

Another feature of prelinguistic consciousness -- and this will prove crucial for the evolution of language-- is that any animal that has the biologically primitive intentional apparatus of conscious prelinguistic hominids already has a hefty number of the traditional philosophical (e.g. Aristotelian and Kantian) categories.

What we will require in order to explain this evolution is the notion of meaning and the notion of a convention.

The belief and the intention have nothing like the commitments of the statement or the promise. If we are trying to explain the logical, conceptual evolution of a language that has statements and promises, it is not enough that we explain how a speaker can convey his belief and his intention to the hearer.

The approach, however, is sufficiently problematic that it cannot be used to support claims about evolution.

Keywords: Phonology; Communication; Language; Evolution; Minimalism; Syntax 1.

The vocal tract, for example, is clearly not exclusively used for language, yet in the course of human evolution it may have been tuned to subserve language at the expense of other functions such as breathing and swallowing.

Answers to this question have clear implications for the evolution of language.