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Language enabled by Baldwinian evolution of memory capacity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Thomas K. Landauer
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder and Pearson Knowledge Technologies, Boulder, CO 80301. Landauer@PearsonKT.com

Abstract

The claim that language is shaped by the brain is weakened by lack of clear specification of what necessary and sufficient properties the brain actually imposes. To account for human intellectual superiority, it is proposed that language did require special brain evolution (Deacon 1997), but that what evolved was a merely quantitative change – in representation space – rather than a radically new invention.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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