Ronald Planer - From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language

Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology

Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, Series Editors

From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language, Ronald J. Planer and Kim Sterelny, 2021

Whats Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept, Maria Kronfeldner, 2018

Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimists Guide to the Historical Sciences, Adrian Currie, 2018

A Mark of the Mental: In Defense of Informational Teleosemantics, Karen Neander, 2017

Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past, Kourken Michaelian, 2016

Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality, Jennifer Greenwood, 2015

The Measure of Madness: Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Philip Gerrans, 2014

Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture, James Tabery, 2014

Investigating the Psychological World: Scientific Method in the Behavioral Sciences, Brian D. Haig, 2014

Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, revised edition, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2014

Cooperation and Its Evolution, Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser, editors, 2013

Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Development, Roger Sansom, 2011

Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly, 2011

Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Steven Horst, 2011

Perplexities of Consciousness, Eric Schwitzgebel, 2011

Humanitys End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement, Nicholas Agar, 2010

Color Ontology and Color Science, Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen, editors, 2010

The Extended Mind, Richard Menary, editor, 2010

The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature, Scott Atran and Douglas Medin, 2008

Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007

Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert C. Richardson, 2007

The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce, 2006

Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2005

Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar, 2005

The Mind Incarnate, Lawrence A. Shapiro, 2004

Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Tim Lewens, 2004

Seeing and Visualizing: Its Not What You Think, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, 2003

Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, editors, 2003

The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, William R. Uttal, 2001

Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, editors, 2001

Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000

From Signal to Symbol

The Evolution of Language

Ronald J. Planer and Kim Sterelny

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2021 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Planer, Ronald J., author. | Sterelny, Kim, author.

Title: From signal to symbol : the evolution of language / Ronald J. Planer and Kim Sterelny.

Description: Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2021. | Series: Life and mind: philosophical issues in biology and psychology | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020041673 | ISBN 9780262045971 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages--Origin. | Language acquisition. | Human evolution.

Classification: LCC P116 .P585 2021 | DDC 401--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041673 ISBN: 978-0-262-04597-1

d_r0

For Eric, my son

R.P.

For my daughter Kate with love, and with appreciation of her tolerance of her fathers eccentricities

K.S.

List of Figures

A map of Europe drawn in 1602 (Europae by Arnoldo di Arnoldi, Ars Electronica: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), and a map of the same region drawn in 1923 (Europe after WW1 by Jon Ingram, Gresham Encyclopedia, CC BY 2.0).

The sender-receiver setup. The sender can see the state of the world but cannot act in that state except to send a signal. The receiver cannot see the state of the world but can perform one or another act depending on the signal it receives. The act that is performed in a given state yields a payoff for both sender and receiver. These payoffs shape sender and receiver strategies over time. (Figure reproduced from Godfrey-Smith 2017 with permission of author.)

An illustration of how activation spreads through the array of goal representations along control lines. Here we artificially take the goals in the bottom row to be basic ones (and omit some obvious goals for simplicitys sake); in reality, many of these goals would control still further goals.

A late Acheulian handaxe. The Portable Antiquities Scheme, photo by Andrew Richardson, 2004 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sykess diagram illustrating a possible chane opratoire for composite tool manufacture using birch bark pitch. The diagram simultaneously represents three courses of action: (i) the de novo creation of a hafted stone tool; (ii) the retooling of an existing hafted tool with a new flake; and (iii) disposal of the tool. The Hafted tool node controls three subgoals at the next level down, Adhesive, Stone edge, and Wood haft. And each of these, in turn, controls additional subgoals. Likewise, the Re-use of tool node controls two subgoals, New stone flake and Fire, which in turn control other less abstract goals. Material within a dotted box corresponds to possible goals (e.g., the toolmaker may not have to source stone if some is ready at hand). (The reader will notice that this diagram makes use of some different conventions for representing the structure of an action plan than we have used in this book; but it is easy enough to see how the information in the diagram might be reorganized to fit our format.) Figure reproduced from Sykes (2015) with permission of the author.

List of Tables

Some examples of an enriched imperative sign system

List of Boxs

This book has had a long gestation. One of us (Sterelny) has been working for the best part of fifteen years primarily on the evolution of human social life and on the capacities that make that life possible. As that work progressed, he became increasingly oppressed by the realization that a fully serious treatment of language was inescapable. He devoted a chapter of