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Defining Communication and Language from Within a Pluralistic Evolutionary Worldview

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Abstract

New definitions are proposed for communication and language. Communication is defined as the evolution of physical, biochemical, cellular, community, and technological information exchange. Language is defined as community communication whereby the information exchanged comprises evolving individual and group-constructed knowledge and beliefs, that are enacted, narrated, or otherwise conveyed by evolving rule-governed and meaningful symbol systems, that are grounded, interpreted, and used from within evolving embodied, cognitive, ecological, sociocultural, and technological niches. These definitions place emphasis on the evolutionary aspects of communication and language, and they are here differentiated from four older paradigms that instead focus either on the referential or social aspects of language, or the informational or semantic aspects of communication. In contrast with these paradigms, the definitions proposed here for communication and language are in line with a pluralistic evolutionary worldview, one that necessitates the recognition that a multitude of units, levels, mechanisms and processes are involved in bringing forth communication and language.

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Funding

Written with the financial support of the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon) and FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), Grant ID DL57/2016/CP1479/CT0066.

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  1. Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab & Centro de Filosofia das Ciências, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal

    Nathalie Gontier

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Gontier, N. Defining Communication and Language from Within a Pluralistic Evolutionary Worldview. Topoi 41, 609–622 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09811-3

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