Biological Evolution, Cultural Evolution and the Evolution of Language. Review of Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2019.010Keywords
universal Darwinism, AI, cognitive science, Darwinian Spaces, biological evolution, cultural evolution, evolution of language, memeticsAbstract
Abstract. Daniel Dennett is one of the giants of contemporary philosophy. His new book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, does reiterates the old motifs, such as “strange inversion of reasoning” or “production without comprehension”. But it isfirst and foremost a new project, whose goal is to calibrate the theory of universalDarwinism to the very recent developments in science, technology and our lifestyles,the most important of which is the coming of Artificial Intelligence. What Dennett does in the new book offers us “thinking tools” (his own phrase) to understand thischanging reality by means of basic Darwinian principles.
References
Arbib, M. A. (2012). How the brain got language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aristotle. (1998). Metaphysics. (H. Lawson-Tancred, Trans.). London: Penguin.
Armstrong, D. F., & Wilcox, S. E. (2007). The gestural origin of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aunger, R. (2002). The electric meme: A new theory of how we think. New York: Free Press.
Benitez-Bribiesca, L. (2001). Memetics: A dangerous idea. Intercienca, 26(1), 29–31.
Bickerton, D. (1990). Language and species. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bickerton, D. (2009). Adam’s tongue: How humans made language, how language made humans. New York: Macmillan.
Bickerton, D. (2014). Some problems for biolinguistics. Biolinguistics, 8, 73–96.
Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blackmore, S. (2010). Dangerous memes; or, What the Pandorans let loose. In S. J. Dick & M. Lupisella (Eds.), Cosmos & culture: Cultural evolution in a cosmic context (pp. 297–318). Washington, D. C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Botha, R. (2000). Discussing the evolution of the assorted beasts called language. Language and Communication, 20(2), 149–160.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (2006). Culture, adaptation, and innateness. In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (Eds.), The innate mind: Culture and cognition (pp. 23–38). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cavalli-Sforza, L., & Feldman, M. (1981). Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Christiansen, M. H. (1994). Infinite languages, finite minds: Connectionism, learning and linguistic structure. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N. (2009). Language as shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 489–509.
Christiansen, M. H., & Kirby, S. (2003). Language evolution: Consensus and controversies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 300–307.
Claidière, N., Smith, K., Kirby, S., & Fagot, J. (2014). Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281(1797), 20141541.
Coppinger, R., & Coppinger, L. (2001). Dogs: A startling new understanding of canine origin, behavior & evolution. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Corballis, M. C. (2003). From mouth to hand: Gesture, speech, and the evolution of right-handedness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26(2), 199–208.
Cullen, B. (2000). Contagious ideas: On evolution, culture, archaeology, and Cultural Virus Theory. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1982). The extended phenotype: The gene as the unit of selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (2004). A devil’s chaplain: Reflections on hope, lies, science, and love. Boston: Mariner Books.
Deacon, T. (2004). Memes as signs in the dynamic logic of semiosis: Beyond molecular science and computation theory. In K. E. Wolff, H. D. Pfeiffer, & H. S. Delugach (Eds.), Conceptual structures at work. ICCS 2004. Lecture notes in computer science (pp. 17–30). Berlin: Springer.
Deacon, T. (2011). Incomplete nature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Dennett, D. (2017). Brainstorms: Philosophical essays on mind and psychology. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books.
Dennett, D. (1988). Quining qualia. In A. Marcel & E. Bisiach (Eds.), Consciousness in Contemporary Science (pp. 42–77). New York: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Dennett, D. (1992). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little & Brown.
Dennett, D. (1996). Darwin’s dangerous idea. Evolution and the meanings of life. London: Penguin Books.
Dennett, D. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. London: Penguin.
Dennett, D. (2017). From bacteria to Bach and back. The evolution of minds. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Descartes, R. (2014). Meditations on first philosophy. (D. Cress, Trans.). New York: Stonewall Press. (Original work published 1641)
Fay, N., Arbib, M., & Garrod, S. (2013). How to bootstrap a human communication system. Cognitive Science, 37(7), 1356–1367.
Fay, N., Lister, C., Ellison, T. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). Creating a communication system from scratch: Gesture beats vocalization hands down. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 354.
Fitch, T. (2010). The evolution of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fitch, T. W. (2017). Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 3–33.
Gill, J. (2011). Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated research in organisations. In Euram 11: Proceedings of the European Academy of Management. Brussels: European Academy of Management.
Gintis, H. (2009). The bounds of reason: Game theory and the unification of the behavioral sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2007). Conditions for evolution by natural selection. The Journal of Philosophy, 104(10), 489–516.
Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581–598.
Haugeland, J. (1989). Artificial intelligence: The very idea. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2007). The genesis of grammar: A reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Henrich, J. (2004). Demography and cultural evolution: How adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses: The Tasmanian case. American Antiquity, 69(2), 197–214.
Hurford, J. (2007). The origins of meaning. Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hurford, J. (2011). The origins of grammar. Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hurford, J. (2014). The origins of language: A slim guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kirby, S. (2017). Culture and biology in the origins of linguistic structure. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 118–137.
Kirby, S., Cornish, H., & Smith, K. (2008). Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(31), 10681–10686.
Laland, K. (2018). Darwin’s unfinished symphony: How culture made the human mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Laland, K., Matthews, B., & Feldman, M. (2016). An introduction to niche construction theory. Evolutionary Ecology, 30(2), 191–202.
Lupyan, G., & Dale, R. (2010). Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS One, 5(1), e8559.
Matthews, B., de Meester, L., Jones, C., Ibelings, B. W., Bouma, T. J., Nuutinen, V., ... Odling-Smee, J. (2014). Under niche construction: An operational bridge between ecology, evolution and ecosystem science. Ecological Monographs, 84(2), 245–263.
McCrohon, L. (2012). The two-stage life cycle of cultural replicators. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 9, 149–170.
Mithen, S. (2005). The singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind and body. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Odling-Smee, F., Laland, K., &
Feldman, M. (2003). Niche construction: The neglected process in evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pike, K. (1967). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. The Hague: Mouton.
Pinker, S. (2003). Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. Studies in the Evolution of Language, 3, 16–37.
Ritt, N. (2004). Selfish sounds and linguistic evolution: A Darwinian approach to language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, S. (2017, February 2). From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C Dennett review – consciousness explained? The Guardian, Retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/02/from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-by-daniel-c-dennett-review
Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2016). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach. London: Pearson Education Limited.
Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–457.
Sperber. D. (2000). Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wacewicz, S. (2015). Concepts as correlates of lexical labels: A cognitivist perspective. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Wacewicz, S. & Żywiczyński, P. (2014). From the narrow to the broad: multiple perspectives on language evolution. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 11, 5-18
Wacewicz, S., Żywiczyński, P. & Chiera, A. (2017). An evolutionary approach to low-level conversational cooperation. Language Sciences 63: 91-104. DOI:
1016/j.langsci.2017.01.005
Whiten, A. (2017). Social learning and culture in child and chimpanzee. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 129–154.
Wilkins, J. (1998). What’s in a meme? Reflections from the perspective of the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. Journal of Memetics, 2(1), 21–38.
Williams, G. C. (1992). Natural selection: Domains, levels, and challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winters, J., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2015). Languages adapt to their contextual niche. Language and Cognition, 7(3), 415–449.
Wray, A. (1998). Protolanguage as a holistic system for social interaction. Language and Communication, 18(1), 47–67.
Wray, A., & Grace, G. (2007). The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua, 117(3), 543–578.
Zlatev, J., Wacewicz, S., Żywiczyński, P., & van de Weijer, J. (2017). Multimodal- first or pantomime-first?Communicating events through pantomime with and without vocalization. Interaction Studies, 18, 465–488.
Jena’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, https://www.shh. mpg.de/en. 01.2018.
Cultural Evolution Society, https://culturalevolutionsociety.org. 01.2018.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 632
Number of citations: 0
