The Limits of Thinking without Words

Bermúdez, José Luis

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195159691.003.0009

Cited by 77 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

102

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…, Povinelli ). Alternatively, differences in prosocial motivation (Tomasello , ), linguistic capacity (Bermúdez ), development (Hare , Piantadosi and Kidd ), and other traits might have set the stage for our ability to learn and use theories, or (most likely) these traits may have evolved in a complex, mutually supporting feedback loop…”

Section: The Theory‐theory Of Human Uniquenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Logical Problem and the Theoretician's Dilemma

Clatterbuck

2016

Philos Phenomenol Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The theory-theory of human uniqueness posits that the capacity to theorize, in a way strongly analogous to theorizing in scientific practice, was a key innovation in the hominid lineage and was responsible for many of our unique cognitive traits. One of the central arguments that its proponents have used to support the claim that animals are not theorists, the logical problem, bears strong similarities to Hempel's theoretician's dilemma, which purports to show that theories are unnecessary. This similarity threatens to undermine both the claim that theorizing serves a unique, adaptive role in human cognition and our ability to test for the presence of theories. I examine two historical responses to the theoretician's dilemma and argue that they open up strategies for experimentally testing for theoretical ability in other animals.

show abstract

Section: The Theory‐theory Of Human Uniquenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Logical Problem and the Theoretician's Dilemma

Clatterbuck

2016

Philos Phenomenol Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The answer will be that they do, but there will still be significant differences with the human version. It would be nice if in addition we make progress in testing the hypothesis of Bermudez (2003) that the causal reasoning of animals in terms of antecedent‐consequent events is a starting point for the counterfactual “if–then” reasoning of humans. The debate surrounding mental attribution will be resolved. Explanations invoking the use of rules based on past experience with no encoding of mental content are hard to falsify, but there are two avenues that could be explored.…”

Section: The Next 30 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Next 30 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primate Cognition

Seed

Tomasello

2010

Topics in Cognitive Science

207

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for ''cultural intelligence,'' which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition.

show abstract

“…In the context of emotion experience, if more complex emotions are indeed dependent on self‐awareness, which in turn is dependent on language, this brings up the question of what kind of self‐awareness can be present without language. In an interesting exploration of this question, Bermúdez49 tied the ability to ‘think about thoughts’ to the ‘ability to think about words’ (p. 151) but he also acknowledged that nonlinguistic processes can have a fairly wide scope in human life. For instance, he notes that ‘the mutual control of attention and resource allocation in coordinated social activities does not require the intervention of language’ (p. 152).…”

Section: How Does Emotional Development Relate To Cognitive Development?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These kind of activities have a good deal of significance in infancy, as exemplified by the ‘affect attunement’ between infants and caregivers that was characterized by Stern 50. Such affective coordination could be seen as the communication of emotional states, a process which (while it may be considered ‘intentional’) should not be considered reliant on language or other symbols 49. As emphasized by Noë,51 the facial expressions and vocalizations in these interactions could be considered as enactments of emotional states, not symbols of them.…”

Section: How Does Emotional Development Relate To Cognitive Development?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of emotion

Marshall

2010

WIRES Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Given that they are responsible for much of the meaning that we attribute to our existence, emotions could be said to have a central role in the psychological life of humans. But given this fundamental level of significance, the construct of emotion remains poorly understood, with the field of emotion research being full of conflicting definitions and opposing theoretical perspectives. In this review, one particular aspect of research into emotion is considered: the development of emotion in infancy and early childhood. The development of the emotional life of the child has been the focus of a vast amount of research and theorizing, so in a brief review it is only possible to scratch the surface of this topic. Rather than any attempt at a comprehensive account, three perennial questions in theorizing and research on early emotional development will be considered. First, what develops in emotional development? Second, what is the relation of cognitive development to emotional development? Third, how has the study of early individual differences in emotion expression typically been approached? In relation to the first question, four theoretical approaches to emotional development are described. For the second question, the focus is on the relation of self-awareness to the development of emotion. Finally, for the third question, the use of temperament theory as a framework for understanding individual differences in emotion expression is examined. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

show abstract

The Limits of Thinking without Words

Cited by 77 publications

References 0 publications

The Logical Problem and the Theoretician's Dilemma

The Logical Problem and the Theoretician's Dilemma

Primate Cognition

The development of emotion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About