Dr Richard Moore, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship
The Communicative Mind
There are five species of great ape: Humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. However only humans acquire language. Why is this?
According to a standard view, only humans acquire language because we possess biological adaptations for Theory of Mind ('ToM') – the ability to think about others' mental states – that great apes lack.
Since great apes lack ToM, they can neither attribute communicative intentions nor acquire language.
Problematically for the standard view, ToM seems to develop only as a result of language acquisition.
If ToM is language dependent, then it cannot explain language acquisition in itself.
Since new empirical data shows that the ToM of great apes is similar to that of pre-verbal infants, the standard view also leaves the absence of language in great apes unexplained.
New data shows that the Theory of Mind of great apes is similar to that of pre-verbal infants - leaving the lack of language in great apes unexplained.
The project will aim to establish that socio-cognitive differences between humans and apes are culturally learned, not biologically inherited.
The evolution of language: Cultural or biological?
To dissolve these explanatory puzzles, Dr Richard Moore’s Fellowship, entitled The Communicative Mind, will develop a new account of the relationship between ToM, language and communication.
From the starting assumption that both great apes and human infants can show communicative intent, the project will set out to establish that key socio-cognitive differences between humans and apes are culturally learned, not biologically inherited.
They emerge because unlike apes, humans can use syntactically structured utterances to communicate. As a result of this ability, generations of language-users have developed linguistic tools for theorising about mental states.
In other words, it is not ToM that explains the development of language, but syntax and the cultural evolution of language that explains the development of ToM. Using ideas and methods drawn from Philosophy, Linguistics, and Developmental and Comparative Psychology, The Communicative Mind will develop new accounts of the evolution of language in phylogeny, and of the development of ToM.
By showing that uniquely human cognitive traits emerge through language and communicative interaction, the Fellowship aims to demonstrate the fundamentally social foundations of human thinking.