Specters of Marx: A Review of Adam's Tongue by Derek Bickerton

Abstract

This work has been carried out through the project Biolingüística: Fundamento genético, desarrollo y evolución del lenguaje (HUM2007-60427/FILO) of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and partially cofunded by FEDER funds (Balari & Lorenzo), and received support from the Generalitat de Catalunya through grant 2009SGR1079-

Self-Organization and Natural Selection: The Intelligent Auntie’s Vade-Mecum

“…Bickerton's proposal has been subject to strong criticism for different reasons (Balari & Lorenzo 2010a, Balari & Lorenzo 2010b, Arbib 2011, Clark 2011), but this is not what is at issue here. What we want to emphasize is the value of Bickerton's idea as a 'textbook case' of the application of natural selection to a particular aspect of the evolution of human mind: It presents the earliest stages of language evolution as due to a process of "long, slow gestation" (Bickerton 2009: 212), that succeeded because it worked as an "evolutionary adaptation, just as much as walking upright, shedding body hair, or getting and opposable thumb" (p. 103)-in this particular case for "recruitment, that turns out to be the key word in the birth of language" (p. 132).…”

From Wallace’s Problem to Owen’s Solution: A Review of More than Nature Needs by Derek Bickerton

“…We like MTNN. This may come as a surprise to those who followed our debate around Adam's Tongue (Balari 2010a, 2010b, Bickerton 2010; maybe to Bickerton himself, who confesses in the book to be ready for strong criticisms (MTNN: 271). But we actually like MTNN for the same reasons that we disliked Adam's Tongue: i.e.…”

“…We want to stress from the start that MTNN is a quantum leap relatively to Bickerton's previous Adam's Tongue-a failed effort to explain "how humans made language, and language made humans," as the book promised in its subtitle (Bickerton 2009). As Bickerton self-acknowledged after a review that we targeted to the book (Balari & Lorenzo 2010a), Adam's Tongue was "about the transition from the alingual state that characterizes all other species to something that might qualify as a genuine precursor of language" (Bickerton 2010: 128), but it had almost nothing to offer beyond that, in clear contradiction with its declared purpose. In MTNN Bickerton offers an honest diagnosis of why Adam's Tongue was a flawed project and also a very interesting plot to overcome its many shortcomings.…”

“…We will not assess here the plausibility of this latter thesis. It has already been the target of enough criticism (Balari & Lorenzo 2010a, Arbib 2011, Clark 2011, which Bickerton has decided to plainly ignore in the new book.…”