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I identify two similarities between evolutionary epistemology (EE) and radical constructivism (RC): (1) They were founded primarily by biologists and (2) their respective claims can be related to Kant. Despite this fact there seems to be an abyss between them. I present an attempt to reconcile this gap and characterize EE as the approach that focuses on external behaviour, while RC emphasizes the perspective from within. The central concept of hypothetical realism is criticized as unnecessarily narrowing down the scope of EE. Finally, methodological and philosophical conclusions are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary psychology can shed light on mathematical abilities. To do so, it must be supplied with a strong model of cultural evolution. Natural selection endowed us with some modules, like the number sense or the logical module, useful for mathematics. Then cultural evolution tinkered with them to create modern mathematics. Of particular significance during cultural evolution is ancient Greece, where a feedback loop that stressed the importance of formal proofs was engaged. Ever since, mathematicians have been engaged in a quest for relevance that uses formal proofs as an indicator of relevance. This led to modern mathematics. Nonetheless, mathematics relies on cognitive mechanisms that were empirically acquired during phylogenetic evolution, and this explains their ‘unreasonable effectiveness’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the author has shown in previous work, although linguistics as a science was born in Darwin’s century, Darwinism’s influence on it was superficial and produced the mystifying, but still current, view that language is a living organism, and language change an organic law. Language is, instead, a social artefact with an interface with nature, which is governed by the law of conservation and changes only exceptionally. Since language is innate—as claimed by Chomsky and now demonstrated by natural sciences—and Homo was thus born loquens, the evolution of language—and all world languages, including Indo-European (IE)—must be mapped onto the entire course of human cultural evolution, in the new framework provided by the Palaeolithic Continuity Theory (PCT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is shown that the laws of nature providing us with cognitive survival competence are not objective properties of the world, rather they depend on the previously acquired phenotype in the same sense as the acting competence of organisms depends on the previously acquired organic phenotype. For example: the law of energy-conservation can be derived from the homogeneity of time. But homogeneity in time is defined by how our internal clock (which is part of our phenotype) is constructed. Cognitive evolution is subject to the boundary condition that will result in a world view (i.e. physics) that has to be invariant under all we do within this world-view. As locomotion is the oldest and most important capability of our ancestors our world view must be invariant first of all under locomotion, i.e. it has to be Galilei-invariant. Emmy Noether has shown that this is sufficient to derive the 10 conservation laws of classical mechanics. The other so-called laws of nature are defined as invariants of physical measurements. Therefore, cognitive evolution itself has brought about what we call the laws of nature and, therefore, cannot be subject to these laws as advocated by Campbell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show the presence of genuine quantum structures in human language. The neo-Darwinian evolutionary scheme is founded on a probability structure that satisfies the Kolmogorovian axioms, and as a consequence cannot incorporate quantum-like evolutionary change. In earlier research we revealed quantum structures in processes taking place in conceptual space. We argue that the presence of quantum structures in language and the earlier detected quantum structures in conceptual change make the neo-Darwinian evolutionary scheme strictly too limited for Evolutionary Epistemology. We sketch how we believe that evolution in a more general way should be implemented in epistemology and conceptual change, but also in biology, and how this view would lead to another relation between both biology and epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the current theories on language evolution on the market are structural and functional rather than strategic in nature, and are built upon the presupposition that it is possible to model our innate linguistic endowment and then correlate these models with some neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. I argue that, alternatively, complex meaning relations between assertions and the world emerge from evolutionary semantic games played by the Population of Utterers and the Population of Interpreters sampled from a diamorphic population of agents. These games provide a realistic application of game-theoretic semantics (GTS) to evolutionary situations (EGTS). I will discuss the foundational status of EGTS, relating it to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games and Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy, thus providing an alternative to adaptation in evolutionary epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we motivate and report on the implementation of a computer experiment to investigate the syntax and semantics of linguistic constructions about time. It is argued that the way in which a domain like time is conceptualized is not universal and evolves over time. To investigate this we want to simulate a population of agents evolving their proper language and ontology of time in order to succeed in communicating temporal information. Such simulations can be done using a formalism proposed by Steels (2004). Some advances in applying the formalism to the domain of time are reported and examples of actual simulations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the uses of computer models in studying the evolution of language. Language is a complex dynamic system that can be studied at the level of the individual and at the level of the population. Much of the dynamics of language evolution and language change occur because of the interaction of these two levels. It is argued that this interaction is too complicated to study with pen-and-paper analysis alone and that computer models, therefore, provide a useful tool for understanding language evolution. Different techniques are presented: direct optimization, genetic algorithms and agent-based models. Of each of these techniques, an example is briefly presented. Also, the importance of correctly measuring and presenting the results of computer simulations is stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments are running high that modularity pervades all neural organization. As a consequence this hallmark is also to be stipulated for language. This demands the concentration on the overall dynamics of language development and the processes governing the organization of systems. The framework used allows for the spotting of system-specific developmental growth curves each of them depending on the interplay of the given neural infrastructure and the input provided. Of particular importance is the notion that language development does not take a linear path but rather comes in phases of intermittent turbulence, fluctuations and stability apt to swap linguistic borders in mid-stream. The focus is set on bilingual development in immigrant children (N = 106; age 6–10) featuring Turkish, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and German. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the philosophical idea that the cultural creativity and the evolution of the human being are both dependent on evolutionary flexibility. This thesis will be defended in three steps: starting with a short phenomenological analysis of the possibilities of the human being and its body (1), I will then examine theories and explanations of evolutionary flexibility (2) and finally I will explore how this contains the possibilities for cultural creativity and evolution (3). Both evolutionary developed features of the human being and its interactions with the environment are considered. The conclusion will be that the diversity and evolution of human culture awakens the dormant potential of this flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to analyze the role of the Baldwin effect in cultural evolution and to propose that it played a fundamental role in the evolution of social norms. Drawing on a recent interpretation of the Baldwin effect proposed by Godfrey-Smith (2003), it is argued that the Baldwin effect should be construed in terms of niche construction. The paper appeals to the works of Deacon (1997, 2003) to illustrate the process of niche construction, and then concludes by applying a Baldwinian process of niche construction to the case of social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to build up a theoretical framework for a more comprehensive understanding of human cognition as an evolutionary and developmentally complex process constituted through social relations. Sociality and cognition are part and parcel of becoming a human and a person. Thanks to Dynamic Systems Theories, a non-linear, non-dualistic nor deterministic approach is taken for the understanding of the heterochronic mutually specified processes encountered in evolutionary and developmentally systems. In light of neurophysiological evidence, embodiment theory and situated cognition, Neo-Darwinist accounts of cognition are discussed and reviewed. Special attention is given to dialogic relations and socialization in ontogeny, by which knowledge is re-created and embodied in new generations. Last but not least, some considerations are made with respect to the externalization and objectivization of knowledge as recursive mediators/amplifiers for further cognitive evolution that allows, in turn, for more social complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are cultural differences superimposed upon a universal human nature? The appeal to an essentialist concept of human nature is a defensive reaction to the legacy of racist science left by Darwin’s argument in The Descent of Man. Humans are made to appear different in degree from their evolutionary antecedents by attributing the movement of history to a process of culture that differs in kind from the biological process of evolution. The specifications of evolved human nature are supposed to lie in the genes. However, human capacities are not genetically specified but emerge within processes of ontogenetic development. Moreover the circumstances of development are continually shaped through human activity. There is consequently no human nature that has escaped the current of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symbiogenesis is a form of horizontal evolution that occurred 2 billion years ago, with the evolution of eukaryotic cells. It will be argued that, just as we can develop universal selection theories based upon a general account of natural selection, we can also develop a universal symbiogenetic principle that can serve as a general framework to study the origin and evolution of language. (1) Horizontal evolution will be compared with and distinguished from vertical evolution. (2) Different examples of intra- and interspecific horizontal evolution will be given to show that horizontal evolution is quantitatively and qualitatively the most commonly occurring form of evolution throughout the history of life. (3) Finally, three examples are given of how a universal symbiogenesis principle can be implemented in the study of language origins and evolution, more specifically within: (a) the study of language variation, (b) language genes and (c) conceptual blending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question I will deal with concerns the nature of phylogenetically acquired knowledge and the assumptions of biological evolutionary epistemology. EE constitutes a direct extension of the synthetic theory of evolution and supposes that (1) some external world exists and (2) knowledge about the external world has been shaped by the external world itself, i.e. through natural selection. If evolutionary epistemology accepts the evolution as a fact and admits the influence of the natural selection on the formation of living organisms (including their cognition), the speculations of constructivism and of subjective or transcendental idealism are not defensible. The ontological status of logic and mathematics will be discussed from an evolutionary point of view as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the evolution of the lexicon in a changing environment. We adopt Mufwene’s (2001) metaphor of ‘language as species’ that explains evolution of languages as differential selection of features in languages’ feature pools. We propose a multi-agent model and use it to explore the role of different constraints on the feature selection process. We show that constraints are indeed competing and that one of them is the major constraint in natural selection, viz., fitness to the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model based on the evolution of notated language and chaotics is presented to explain the emergence of language. Language emerges as the bifurcation from percept-based to concept-based thought. Our first words are our first concepts and act as strange attractors for the percepts associated with that concept. The mind is shown to be the brain acting as a percept processor plus language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Dennett has claimed that ‘nothing complicated enough to be really interesting could have an essence’. He and other universal Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory undermined traditional essentialism in biology. This paper shows, first, that Dennett and other universal Darwinists are themselves committed to an essentialist view about historical processes, and second, that this process essentialism is optional. One can be a universal Darwinist without being a process essentialist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier versions of evolutionary epistemology were based on—or at least strongly informed by—the adaptationist paradigm. It is for this reason that advocates of evolutionary epistemology have been frequently criticized by those who have adopted an organismic perspective in evolutionary thinking. Evolutionists defending the view that any living system—including all its characters at the anatomical as well as the behavioral level—can be sufficiently explained in terms of adaptation, have neglected the (somehow trivial) fact that organisms are active systems that do not entirely depend on their respective environment(s). Meanwhile, however, a systems-theoretical approach to understanding living beings and their evolution has made clear that (1) organisms and their environment(s) have a common history and have not evolved independent of each other, (2) any living system and its environment(s) are linked together by a feedback principle, and (3) adaptability is not defined by the environment but the organism itself. This has serious consequences for evolutionary epistemology. In this paper, I outline a non-adaptationist version of this epistemology. I also briefly discuss its philosophical implications. The main focus is the problem of realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary epistemology (EE) is about developing a normative framework, based upon evolutionary thinking, that can explain all of an organism’s phylogenetic and ontogenetic evolution. (1) EE is sketched as an inter- and transdisciplinary field that evolved out of naturalized epistemology as a reaction against logical empiricism and sociology of knowledge. (2) Different schools of evolutionary epistemological thinking are examined and compared. (3) It is argued that within EE today, the search for a normative evolutionary framework is narrowed down to the development of a framework based upon Neo-Darwinian theory. Because of this, other evolutionary theories that are very useful to explain certain phenomena are neglected. (4) These theories are briefly discussed. (5) It is shown how EE can be implemented in the scientific study of language and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]