#299 Thom Scott-Phillips: The Biological And Cultural Bases Of Language

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Dr. Thomas Scott-Phillips is a Senior Research Scientist in the Social Mind Center and the Department of Cognitive Science, at Central European University, Budapest. In particular he studies communication, and how it makes us human. His first book, Speaking Our Minds, was reviewed as “The most important and the best book ever written on the evolution of language” and “The best linguistics book I’ve read in 10 years”. He’s written short pieces for outlets such as Aeon, Scientific American, The Conversation; and he has given public talks for TEDx, British Humanist Association, Skeptics In The Pub, Digital Science and others. His academic articles and broader interests span cultural evolution, primate communication, language acquisition, philosophy of language, and others.

In this episode, we talk about language and communication. We start with communication from a biological perspective, and then establish a bridge with language, and talk about its evolutionary foundations and the cognitive mechanisms associated with it. We also refer to the cognitive and anatomical tools that an organism needs to produce language. We also address the cultural evolution of languages, and discuss cultural attraction theory and the study of language in the lab. We go through some social aspects of language, referring to Michael Tomasello’s concept of shared intentionality, and phenomena like epistemic vigilance and the argumentative theory of reasoning. Finally, we talk about meaning.

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Follow Dr. Scott-Phillips’ work:

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Research works on ResearchGate: http://bit.ly/2lA03qV

Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special: https://amzn.to/2LKp9O6

Twitter handle: @tscottphillips

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