225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
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The Importance and Development of Language in Human Cognition
Language is critically important for many uniquely human things, and the absence of language would hinder a child on a desert island from achieving fully adult human cognitive capacities. However, the development of language presupposes the existence of other necessary elements. The question of whether there is an innate language capacity, as proposed by Chomsky and Pinker, is subject to critique, with a specific focus on the concept of a generative grammar instinct.
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