In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially ...

A book on human communication that is worthy of its subject must introduce the reader to the dynamic interaction of a number of diverse fields. Colin Cherry's book, over successive editions, has served for twenty years as perhaps the most literate and readable introduction to this interaction available. Readers have consistently found that fields within their specialty are covered with authority; that fields far removed are covered with clarity; and that the connections among them are shown to be (...) close and natural. This third edition includes a new chapter, "Feeling, Knowledge, and Understanding," that extends the book's reach into philosophy, and in particular communicates some existential points-of-view. In it the author undertakes to demonstrate that "The language of physical science is inadequate for discussion of what is essentially human about human communication." In addition, numerous changes have been introduced throughout the text, and the bibliography has been expanded and updated. (shrink)

This paper compares two explanations of the process by which human communication systems evolve: iterated learning and social collaboration. It then reports an experiment testing the social collaboration account. Participants engaged in a graphical communication task either as a member of a community, where they interacted with seven different partners drawn from the same pool, or as a member of an isolated pair, where they interacted with the same partner across the same number of games. Participants’ horizontal, (...) pair‐wise interactions led “bottom up” to the creation of an effective and efficient shared sign system in the community condition. Furthermore, the community‐evolved sign systems were as effective and efficient as the local sign systems developed by isolated pairs. Finally, and as predicted by a social collaboration account, and not by an iterated learning account, interaction was critical to the creation of shared sign systems, with different isolated pairs establishing different local sign systems and different communities establishing different global sign systems. (shrink)

Heintz & Scott-Phillips provide a useful synthesis for constructing a bridge between work by both cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists studying the diversity of human communication. Here, we aim to strengthen their bridge from the side of evolutionary biology, to argue that we can best understand ostensive communication as a scaffold for more complex forms of intentional expressions.

The article delineates a model of communication among human minds that is designed to work equally well for all kinds of nonverbal and verbal significance. The model thus allows for detailed analysis of and comparison among all varieties of human communication. In particular, the transitional stage of communication, which is termed the media product, is thoroughly developed and conceptualized in terms of mediality and semiosis. By way of mapping basic media dissimilarities that are vital for (...) differing communicative capacities, the model explains both how various sorts of significance can be transferred among minds, and why they cannot always be realized. The article furthermore suggests a semiotic framework for conceptualizing the familiar notion that communication is also strongly predisposed by surrounding factors such as earlier experiences and cultural influence. (shrink)

How might a human communication system be bootstrapped in the absence of conventional language? We argue that motivated signs play an important role (i.e., signs that are linked to meaning by structural resemblance or by natural association). An experimental study is then reported in which participants try to communicate a range of pre-specified items to a partner using repeated non-linguistic vocalization, repeated gesture, or repeated non-linguistic vocalization plus gesture (but without using their existing language system). Gesture proved more (...) effective (measured by communication success) and more efficient (measured by the time taken to communicate) than non-linguistic vocalization across a range of item categories (emotion, object, and action). Combining gesture and vocalization did not improve performance beyond gesture alone. We experimentally demonstrate that gesture is a more effective means of bootstrapping a human communication system. We argue that gesture outperforms non-linguistic vocalization because it lends itself more naturally to the production of motivated signs. (shrink)

'Human Communication' is a field of interest of enormous breadth, being one which has concerned students of many different disciplines. It spans the imagined 'gap' between the 'arts' and the 'sciences', but it forms no unified academic subject. There is no commonly accepted terminology to cover aU aspects. The eight articles comprising this book have been chosen to illustrate something of the diversity yet, at the same time, to be comprehensible to readers from different academic disciplines. They cannot (...) pretend to cover the whole field! Some attempt has been made to present them in an order which represents a continuity of theme, though this is merely an opinion. Most publications of this type form the proceedings of some sympo sium, or conference. In this case, however, there has been no such unifying influence, no collaboration, no discussions. The authors have been drawn from a number of different countries. The first article, by John Marshall and Roger Wales concerns the pragmatic values of communication, starting by considering bird-song and passing to the infinitely more complex 'meaningful' values of human language and pictures. The 'pragmatic aspect' means the usefulness - what does language or bird song do for humans and birds? What adaptation or survival values does it have? These questions are then considered in relation to brain specialisation for representation of experience and cognition. (shrink)

The Experience of Human Communication approaches everyday communication as a philosophical and psychological matter. Using insights from Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Foucault, Frank Macke stresses that human communication—and with it, the human body—is, first and foremost, a relational phenomenon involving friends and family.

Colin Cherry's now famous book has been reissued in a third paperback edition in order to put into our hands an economical as well as genial and perspicuous survey of the state and contours of the so-called communication sciences. Cherry's book is properly speaking a manual, as befits its subtitle: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism. It is composed of eight synthetic and lucid chapters each of which deals with a central area of the processes of communication. (...) Philosophers of diverse persuasions will find here a handy and reliable guide through an enormous mass of materials dealing with both the formal and the material aspects of human communication. (shrink)

The emergence of human communication systems is typically investigated via 2 approaches with complementary strengths and weaknesses: naturalistic studies and computer simulations. This study was conducted with a method that combines these approaches. Pairs of participants played video games requiring communication. Members of a pair were physically separated but exchanged graphic signals through a medium that prevented the use of standard symbols (e.g., letters). Communication systems emerged and developed rapidly during the games, integrating the use of (...) explicit signs with information implicitly available to players and silent behavior-coordinating procedures. The systems that emerged suggest 3 conclusions: (a) signs originate from different mappings; (b) sign systems develop parsimoniously; (c) sign forms are perceptually distinct, easy to produce, and tolerant to variations. (shrink)

Colin Cherry's now famous book has been reissued in a third paperback edition in order to put into our hands an economical as well as genial and perspicuous survey of the state and contours of the so-called communication sciences. Cherry's book is properly speaking a manual, as befits its subtitle: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism. It is composed of eight synthetic and lucid chapters each of which deals with a central area of the processes of communication. (...) Philosophers of diverse persuasions will find here a handy and reliable guide through an enormous mass of materials dealing with both the formal and the material aspects of human communication. (shrink)

Anyone interested in the highly active field of human communication will find this collection of essays by authors in different disciplines a very useful compendium of present results and problems. Communication theory is related in different essays to current work in Anthropology, Neurophysiology, Organization Theory, Philosophy of Language, Psychiatry, Psycholinguistics, Psychology, Sociology, and several other areas. The editor concludes with an essay "Toward a Theory of Human Communication." Each essay contains a very helpful bibliography of (...) work in the appropriate area and in addition the book contains a general bibliography prepared by Hugh Duncan which includes comments about the contents and nature of each book listed. The excellent essays of Searle and Fodor, Jenkins, and Saporta make the most direct connection with philosophical issues being widely discussed today, but most of the essays provide material which should be of interest to philosophers.--R. H. K. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: The dynamics of expectations in inter-human communications can be modelled as “autopoiesis.” Consciousness and communications couple not only structurally (Maturana), but also penetrate each other reflexively (Luhmann. Reflexivity opens and enriches the model of autopoiesis for further exploration.

This article deals with the idea of human communities in business, government and other economic institutions that are predicated upon compatibility and a mutual desire for the common good. It explores the notion that the greatest single contribution the 20th century might make is to improve the ways men and women live and work together. The achievement of such a worthy goal can increase the overall productivity of an economic system just as much as the most profound technological advances (...) and discoveries.There is a fine metaphysical distinction between the human being as an individual and as a person. This distinction is important in understanding the interaction between the common good of the economic enterprise and a common ethical ground. (shrink)

Biodiversity is the key indicator of a healthy planet and healthy society. Losses of biodiversity have now become widespread and current rates are potentially catastrophic for species and habitat integrity. Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Communities advocates both the preservation of the best remaining habitats and the enhancement of new biodiverse habitats to ensure that they cope with human impact, climate change and alien species invasion. The authors argue that these aims can be achieved by a mix of strict (...) protection, inclusive involvement of people inside and adjacent to reserves, and by combining livelihoods and social well-being in all future biodiversity management. Case studies from regions around the world, including Europe, the United States, Latin America and Africa are examined and discussed, and the contributors include political scientists, economists and ecologists. (shrink)

Following a synthesis of naturalistic and experimental studies of language creation, we propose a theoretical model that describes the process through which human communication systems might arise and evolve. Three key processes are proposed that give rise to effective, efficient and shared human communication systems: motivated signs that directly resemble their meaning facilitate cognitive alignment, improving communication success; behavioral alignment onto an inventory of shared sign-to-meaning mappings bolsters cognitive alignment between interacting partners; sign refinement, through (...) interactive feedback, enhances the efficiency of the evolving communication system. By integrating the findings across a range of diverse studies, we propose a theoretical model of the process through which the earliest human communication systems might have arisen and evolved. Importantly, because our model is not bound to a single modality it can describe the creation of shared sign systems across a range of contexts, informing theories of language creation and evolution. (shrink)

Globalization is a natural process. It has a number of advantages & disadvantages, causes many questions and problems, which can hardly sometimes be solved by countries independently. These problems can only be solved by the world community. One of these problems is to maintain the concrete communities identity. Is it possible to keep the unique culture of different ethnos, language, traditions in the globalizing world? Or as some researchers consider, there is a tendency to the formation of the so called (...) super ethnos? In such conditions tolerance takes on special significance as a certain means of activity, as social behavior model, as a norm of behavior for each member of the society. Tolerance as a behavior model on one hand should be worked out by a state legislative body, from the other it should be a norm of behavior for each member of the society. The basis of the tolerant behavior is the principle of mutual understanding.It can be considered to be a moral imperative for the resolution of conflict situations. The relevance & importance of tolerance & creating tolerant relations is a characteristic feature of the democratic personality. (shrink)

Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806) has long enjoyed a reputation as a Romantic poet, but her philosophical contributions have largely been neglected. This paper is one of the first to address Günderrode’s political thought, especially her view of the interrelationship between human society and the broader environment. The paper argues that Günderrode develops resources for reconceiving the relationship of human beings to the nonhuman and to each other that work against an instrumentalizing view of nature and programmatic political ideals. (...) Günderrode’s normative restraint, concept of harmony, and view of human beings as part of and the same in kind as the rest of nature contribute to a vision of sociality, grounded in her metaphysics, that envisions small communities fostering connections between human beings and the nonhuman. On Günderrode’s model, these connections can grow and strengthen and eventually, perhaps, enable the emergence of the single, perfect organism that she calls the “realized idea of the earth.”. (shrink)

Algorithms used in the public sector, e.g., for allocating social benefits or predicting fraud, often require involvement from multiple stakeholders at various phases of the algorithm’s life-cycle. This paper focuses on the communication issues between diverse stakeholders that can lead to misinterpretation and misuse of algorithmic systems. Ethnographic research was conducted via 11 semi-structured interviews with practitioners working on algorithmic systems in the Dutch public sector, at local and national levels. With qualitative coding analysis, we identify key elements of (...) the communication processes that underlie fairness-related human decisions. More specifically, we analyze the division of roles and tasks, the required skills, and the challenges perceived by diverse stakeholders. Three general patterns emerge from the coding analysis: (1) Policymakers, civil servants, and domain experts are less involved compared to developers throughout a system’s life-cycle. This leads to developers taking on the role of decision-maker and policy advisor, while they potentially miss the required skills. (2) End-users and policy-makers often lack the technical skills to interpret a system’s output, and rely on actors having a developer role for making decisions concerning fairness issues. (3) Citizens are structurally absent throughout a system’s life-cycle. This may lead to unbalanced fairness assessments that do not include key input from relevant stakeholders. We formalize the underlying communication issues within such networks of stakeholders and introduce the phase-actor-role-task-skill (PARTS) model. PARTS can both (i) represent the communication patterns identified in the interviews, and (ii) explicitly outline missing elements in communication patterns such as actors who miss skills or collaborators for their tasks, or tasks that miss qualified actors. The PARTS model can be extended to other use cases and used to analyze and design the human organizations responsible for assessing fairness in algorithmic systems. It can be further extended to explore communication issues in other use cases, design potential solutions, and organize accountability with a common vocabulary. (shrink)

Business firms have been explained as internal markets or as communities. To be sustainable, however, they need to reconcile these two constituting elements that have mainly been touted as opposite and part of a dualistic relationship. We suggest that organizations may, in alternative, view market and community as part of a duality, interdependent and mutually constituting processes that may not only contradict each other but also enable one another. The implications of a duality view for business ethics, which articulates market (...) and community elements in a fruitful, mutually enabling relationship, are considered, and duality is presented as a way of transcending what is commonly viewed as opposition, moving organizations both in the direction of humane and competitive finalities. (shrink)

An excellent introduction to communication theory, this book is a comprehensive study of its subject; fields such as linguistics, logic, mathematics, and psychology are considered in terms of their relevance for communication theory. No material that appeared in the first edition has been deleted from this second edition, but some comments have been added, some figures updated, and the bibliography extended to include the new publications in the field. Cherry begins with an examination of the concept of " (...) class='Hi'>communication"; he also discusses social structures, considering the pattern of communication within a social group. After this introductory chapter, Cherry presents an historical review of the evolution of communication theory; he discusses codes, signs, brains, and machines, mentioning the work of such scientists as Shannon, Zipf, and Wiener. Topics such as phonetics, phonemics, object language and metalanguage, Zipf's Law, and semantics are also considered, as well as the role of the telecommunication engineer, who describes and analyzes the physical signals themselves without reference to their meanings. In the concluding chapter, psychological considerations concerning the reception of information are presented: recognition, for example, of universals, of geometric figures, of speech sounds, of distorted speech, the relevance of past experience, and the intake of information by the senses. Although technical material is presented, the book is very readable; jargon is kept at a minimum. The result is an exceedingly interesting and stimulating book.—E. M. (shrink)

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. (...) The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

Deciphering nonhuman communication – particularly nonhuman vocal communication – has been a longstanding human quest. We are, for example, fascinated by the songs of birds and whales, the grunts of apes, the barks of dogs, and the croaks of frogs; we wonder about their potential meaning and their relationship to human language. Do these utterances express little more than emotional states, or do they convey actual bits and bytes of concrete information? Humans’ numerous attempts to decipher (...) nonhuman systems have, however, progressed slowly. We still wonder why only a small number of species are capable of vocal learning, a trait that, because it allows for innovation and adaptation, would seem to be a prerequisite for most language-like abilities. Humans have also attempted to teach nonhumans elements of our system, using both vocal and nonvocal systems. The rationale for such training is that the extent of success in instilling symbolic reference provides some evidence for, at the very least, the cognitive underpinnings of parallels between human and nonhuman communication systems. However, separating acquisition of reference from simple object-label association is not a simple matter, as reference begins with such associations, and the point at which true reference emerges is not always obvious. I begin by discussing these points and questions, predominantly from the viewpoint of someone studying avian abilities. I end by examining the question posed by Premack: do nonhumans that have achieved some level of symbolic reference then process information differently from those that have not? I suggest the answer is likely “yes,” giving examples from my research on Grey parrots. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence (...) for iconicity at the level of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language. (shrink)

In what follows I wish to raise and eventually to suggest an answer to the following question: What is the rationality of human communication? Why should we ask this question? By way of a first approach I would place the problem within the context of the so called “pragmatic turn” of analytic philosophy, i.e. within a context in which the concept of the rationality of logical syntactics and logical semantics of language systems has been integrated into, or superseded (...) by, the rationality concept of the human use of language—say, e.g., of arguments. (shrink)

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10–14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in (...) all cultures in the same basic situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants’ pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers’ and infants’ pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication. (shrink)

Despite the once-common idea that a universal ideography would have numerous advantages, attempts to develop such ideographies have failed. Here, we make use of the biological idea of fitness landscapes to help us understand the nonevolution of such a universal ideographic code as well as how we might reach this potential global fitness peak in the design space.

Philosophical analysis, with reference to language.

The claims are grounded in a wealth of fascinating data, particularly on primate and young child communication and social cognition, much produced by Tomasello’s own lab. But there is certainly no dearth of stimulating speculation. Tomasello’s story is rich and complex. In what follows, I focus on aspects of the three hypotheses listed above, offering some commentary as I go.

Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural (...) transmission through single chains of learners. By removing elements of interactive communication and focusing only on the way in which language is repeatedly acquired by learners, we hope to gain a better understanding of how useful structural properties of language could have emerged without being intentionally designed or innovated. (shrink)

This paper investigates how reticulate evolution contributes to a better understanding of human sociocultural evolution in general, and community formation in particular. Reticulate evolution is evolution as it occurs by means of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. From these mechanisms and processes, we mainly zoom in on symbiosis and we investigate how it underlies the rise of (1) human, plant, animal, and machine interactions typical of agriculture, animal husbandry, farming, and industrialization; (2) diet-microbiome relationships; (...) and (3) host-virome and other pathogen interactions that underlie human health and disease. We demonstrate that reticulate evolution necessitates an understanding of behavioral and cultural evolution at a community level, where reticulate causal processes underlie the rise of synergistic organizational traits. (shrink)

[Abstract] Suppose that the Big Bang was the first singularity in the history of the cosmos. Then it would be plausible to presume that the availability of the strong general intelligence should mark the second singularity for the natural human race. The human race needs to be prepared to make it sure that if a singularity robot becomes a person, the robotic person should be a blessing for the humankind rather than a curse. Toward this direction I would (...) scrutinize the implication of the hypothesis that the singularity robot is a member of the human society. I will ask how the robot is equipped to satisfy the ontological criteria such as accountability, consciousness, identity, by demonstrating a possibility that it has the epistemological capacities like conceptual role semantic understanding and non-monotonous inference, and by probing whether it can behave in the way human moral visions expect it to. -/- [Table of contents] 1. Opening: Singularity robots are coming 1) Singularity robots of strong general intelligence 2) A singularity robot is a member of the human community 2. Ontological interpretation of singularity robot 1) Responsibility: thinking, understanding, belief 2) Consciousness: three characteristics – zombie, enjoyment, sympathy 3) Identity: I, body, autonomy, unity 3. Epistmological prospects of singularity robot 1) Semantics of general intelligence: conceptual role semantics 2) Logic for general intelligence: non-monotonous logic 4. Moral horizon of singularity robot 1) When a singularity robot becomes a robot person 2) Humanity independence: singularity robot is a user of human languages 5. Concluding: preemptive humanities. (shrink)

The article considers the scientific category of “educational neuroscience” as a promising interdisciplinary field of research that studies relationship between education and the sciences of higher nervous activity. The role of theoretical research in the field of neuroscience for creation of modern distance educational technologies is determined. It is established that use of neuroscience in learning process expands and enhances competency characteristics of higher education students in research, diagnostic and professional activities. The problem of obtaining neuroscientific knowledge by higher education (...) students, which will help provide future specialists with a sufficient communicative level of skills in everyday life and work environment, has been brought up to date. Evaluation of large-scale application of the distance learning system in the process of formation of communicative competencies of higher education students is carried out. The main problems that arise in higher education students and teaching staff when working in the distance learning system are analyzed. Possibilities of application of mobile devices and applications in educational process at a distance form of training are considered. The effectiveness of application of information and communication technologies in the process of formation of communicative competencies in higher education students is clarified. The positive and negative impact, advantages and disadvantages of distance learning for both higher education students and the academic teaching staff of higher education establishments, including in the context of neuroscience, have been identified and generalized. (shrink)