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Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking

There has been a reappraisal of phylogenetic issues in cognitive science, as reconstructing cognitive phylogenies has been considered a key for unveiling the cognitive novelties that set the stage for what makes humans special. In our opinion, the studies made until now have approached cognitive phy...

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Autores principales: Theofanopoulou, Constantina, Boeckx, Cedric
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604326/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528479
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2015.00064
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author Theofanopoulou, Constantina
Boeckx, Cedric
author_facet Theofanopoulou, Constantina
Boeckx, Cedric
author_sort Theofanopoulou, Constantina
collection PubMed
description There has been a reappraisal of phylogenetic issues in cognitive science, as reconstructing cognitive phylogenies has been considered a key for unveiling the cognitive novelties that set the stage for what makes humans special. In our opinion, the studies made until now have approached cognitive phylogenies in a non-optimal way, and we wish to both highlight their problems, drawing on recent considerations in philosophy of biology. The inadequacy of current visions on cognitive phylogenies stems from the influence of the traditional “linear cladograms,” according to which every seemingly new or more sophisticated feature of a cognitive mechanism, viewed as a novelty, is represented as a node on top of the old and shared elements. We claim that this kind of cladograms does not succeed in depicting the complexity with which traits are distributed across species and, furthermore, that the labels of the nodes of these traditional representational systems fail to capture the “tinkering” nature of evolution. We argue that if we are to conceive of cognitive mechanisms in a multi-dimensional, bottom-up perspective, in accordance with the Darwinian logic of descent, we should rather focus on decomposing these mechanisms into lower-level, generic functions, which have the additional advantage of being implementable in neural matter, which ultimately produces cognition. Doing so renders current constructions of cognitive phylogenies otiose.
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spelling pubmed-46043262015-11-02 Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking Theofanopoulou, Constantina Boeckx, Cedric Front Cell Dev Biol Ecology and Evolution There has been a reappraisal of phylogenetic issues in cognitive science, as reconstructing cognitive phylogenies has been considered a key for unveiling the cognitive novelties that set the stage for what makes humans special. In our opinion, the studies made until now have approached cognitive phylogenies in a non-optimal way, and we wish to both highlight their problems, drawing on recent considerations in philosophy of biology. The inadequacy of current visions on cognitive phylogenies stems from the influence of the traditional “linear cladograms,” according to which every seemingly new or more sophisticated feature of a cognitive mechanism, viewed as a novelty, is represented as a node on top of the old and shared elements. We claim that this kind of cladograms does not succeed in depicting the complexity with which traits are distributed across species and, furthermore, that the labels of the nodes of these traditional representational systems fail to capture the “tinkering” nature of evolution. We argue that if we are to conceive of cognitive mechanisms in a multi-dimensional, bottom-up perspective, in accordance with the Darwinian logic of descent, we should rather focus on decomposing these mechanisms into lower-level, generic functions, which have the additional advantage of being implementable in neural matter, which ultimately produces cognition. Doing so renders current constructions of cognitive phylogenies otiose. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4604326/ /pubmed/26528479 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2015.00064 Text en Copyright © 2015 Theofanopoulou and Boeckx. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Ecology and Evolution
Theofanopoulou, Constantina
Boeckx, Cedric
Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title_full Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title_fullStr Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title_full_unstemmed Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title_short Cognitive phylogenies, the Darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
title_sort cognitive phylogenies, the darwinian logic of descent, and the inadequacy of cladistic thinking
topic Ecology and Evolution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604326/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528479
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2015.00064
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