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A collection of bookmarks for my course Androids, Zombies and Brain (or Philosophy of Mind).
Updated on 2009-08-17
Created on 2008-06-19
Category: Science
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Colour, is it in the brain?
"Language requires the coordination of perceptually grounded categories with a socially-negotiated set of shared linguistic conventions to express them; i.e. language is based on shared groups of meanings that arise from our perceptual interaction with the external world and the way in which we convey that relationship to other human beings. Deacon’s opinion is that neurological predispositions and socio-ecological constraints sponsored the development and evolution of language, and that the subsequent feedback system gave rise to a complex coevolution of the two. Founded neurological determinism within evolutionary and socio-ecological boundaries drives the core of his argument." « Neuroanthropology
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Ability to use symbols appeared 35 million years ago?
"Humans are sometimes said to be distinguished as "The Symbolic Species." A Research Highlights note in Nature point to the work of Addessi et al., who show that capuchin monkeys, who diverged from the human lineage ~35 million years ago, can be trained to use and assign value to tokens (symbols) for different items of food." (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)
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In Dealing With Death, Are Animals Just Like Us or Pretty Much Unaware?
"Yes, we’re a lot like other primates, particularly the great apes, with whom we have more than 98 percent of our genes in common. Yet elaborate displays of apparent maternal grief like Gana’s may reveal less about our shared awareness of death than our shared impulse to act as though it didn’t exist." - NYTimes.com
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The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain:
A Review of two contrastive views (Pinker & Deacon).
(Printed 2001 in Grazer Linguistische Studien GLS 55, 1-20)
Ken Ramshøj Christensen
Department of English, University of Aarhus -
Baldwinian evolution
Stevan harnad
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we CAN pass on an inherited tendency to ACQUIRE certain traits
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what is evolving, gradually or quickly (depending on
where and what kind of genome we start with) is not the wings or the
fins, but the ability to learn certain specific things that give an
adaptive advantage, such as swimming or speaking
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The Baldwin Effect and its Significance
Kim Sterelney. The Baldwin Effect and Its Significance: A Review of Bruce Weber and David Depew (eds) Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered; MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass 2003, pp x, 341.
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Baldwin effect
08.31.2008 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Selected offspring would tend to have an increased capacity for learning new skills rather than being confined to genetically coded, relatively fixed abilities. In effect, it places emphasis on the fact that the sustained behavior of a species or group can shape the evolution of that species.
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a feedback loop operates whereby a dairy culture increases the selective advantage from this genetic trait, while the average population genotype increases the collective rewards of a dairy culture.
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The Baldwin Effect, if it ever occurs, works as follows
"The Baldwin effect occurs, if it ever does, when a biological trait becomes innate as a result of first being learned. Suppose that some trait is initially absent from a population of organisms. Then a number of organisms succeed in learning the trait. There will be a Baldwin effect if this period of learning leads to the trait becoming innate throughout the population." David Papineau
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The Baldwin effect occurs, if it ever does, when a
biological trait becomes innate as a result of first being learned. Suppose that some trait is initially absent
from a population of organisms. Then a
number of organisms succeed in learning the trait. There will be a Baldwin effect if this period of learning leads
to the trait becoming innate throughout the population.
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Talking Heads
"Our brains are well suited for language. But how did they get that way." Calvin's review of Deacon in the NYRB
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William H. Calvinreview of T. W. Deacon's THE SYMBOLIC SPECIES (1997)
NYT
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This pattern-hunger doesn't require even average intelligence, nor is it limited to speech. Deaf children can do the
same four levels of pattern discovery by observing body movements -- but only if they are immersed
in a fluent sign-language environment, and equally early in the first few years of life. -
a slow convergence in copying errors toward written
recipes with a combination of ingredients, amounts, times, temperatures, and assembly procedures
that -- with some common-sense tweaking -- will satisfy "good taste." - 5 more annotations...
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Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic Species | john hawks weblog
Deacon's position is that the evolution of human minds is mainly about the evolution of language. So for him, explaining the evolution of language (and the brain features that support it) explains much of interest about humans.
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the evolution of human minds is mainly about the evolution of language
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the brain has a strongly innate ability to learn language, so much so that the grammars of natural languages are confined to a small range of possibilities. But also intrinsic to Chomsky is the idea that the neural underpinnings of language were not themselves selected for their function in language but instead for some other function.
- 8 more annotations...
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Damasio, A. (2003) "Feelings of Emotion and the Self"
Damasio, A. (2003) "Feelings of Emotion and the Self," Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1001, 253-261.
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Thinking About Thinking
Preview of an article by Howard Gardner from The New York Review of Books, October 9, 1997
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Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange
By Harold Kalant, Werner Kalow, Steven Pinker, Reply by Stephen Jay Gould
In response to Darwinian Fundamentalism (June 12, 1997) - The New York Review of Books-
Evolutionary psychology is the attempt to understand our mental faculties in light of the evolutionary processes that shaped them.
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'The Prehistory of the Mind': An Exchange
By Merlin Donald, Steven Mithen, Reply by Howard Gardner
In response to Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange (October 9, 1997) - The New York Review of Books -
Language as an Emergent Function: Some Radical Neurological and Evolutionary Implications (pdf)
Language is a spontaneously evolved emergent adaptation, not a formal computational system. Its structure does not derive from either innate or social instruction but rather self-organization and selection. Its quasi-universal features emerge from the int
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