Untangling Knots: Embodied Diagramming Practices in Knot Theory

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 they are 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 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.

Section: Diversity In Human Expressionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Diversity In Human Expressionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Heintz

Scott‐Phillips²

2022

“…5), is a root cause of many of the most distinctive aspects of human behaviour and societies. Other domains that have been studied from a perspective broadly similar to ours include divination (Boyer, 2020), humour (Yus, 2016), emotional expression (Dezecache, Mercier, & Scott-Phillips, 2013;Wharton, Bonard, Dukes, Sander, & Oswald, 2021), literary interpretation (Cave & Wilson, 2018;Chapman & Clark, 2019), mathematical diagrams (McCallum, 2019), onomatopoeia (Sasamoto, 2019), many borderline or quasi-linguistic phenomena (Ifantidou, de Saussure, & Wharton, 2021), and others.…”

Section: Diversity In Human Expressionmentioning

confidence: 94%

What semantic dementia tells us about the ability to infer others' communicative intentions

Federico¹

2023

As Heintz & Scott-Phillips rightly argued, pragmatics has been too commonly considered as a supplement to linguistic communication. Their aim to reorient the study of cognitive pragmatics as the foundation of many distinctive features of human behavior finds echo in the neuropsychological literature on tool use, in which the investigation of semantic dementia challenges the classical semantics versus pragmatics dissociation.

“…5), is a root cause of many of the most distinctive aspects of human behaviour and societies. Other domains that have been studied from a perspective broadly similar to ours include divination (Boyer, 2020), humour (Yus, 2016), emotional expression (Dezecache, Mercier, & Scott-Phillips, 2013;Wharton, Bonard, Dukes, Sander, & Oswald, 2021), literary interpretation (Cave & Wilson, 2018;Chapman & Clark, 2019), mathematical diagrams (McCallum, 2019), onomatopoeia (Sasamoto, 2019), many borderline or quasi-linguistic phenomena (Ifantidou, de Saussure, & Wharton, 2021), and others.…”

Section: Diversity In Human Expressionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Primates unleashed

Amici¹,

Liebal²

2023

Before claiming major differences between the communication systems of humans and other species, it is necessary to (1) overcome methodological limitations in the comparative study of communicative intentions; (2) account for mechanisms other than epistemic vigilance that may also sustain complex forms of communication; and (3) better differentiate between motivational and cognitive factors potentially affecting the emergence of open-ended communication.