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Tree Thinking and the Naturalisation of Language

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Life and Mind

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 8))

Abstract

This paper reconstructs Darwin’s reflections on the evolution of language to underline how his conclusions are fundamental to legitimating an epistemological extension of naturalistic explanations of the origin of language. This extension allows us to overcome difficulties generated by the explanatory approach of evolutionary psychology (Pinker S, Bloom P, Behav Brain Sci 13:707–727, 1990).

Following the pluralistic approach of Darwinian tree thinking, I will try to show that if we want to give contemporary philosophers an epistemological justification for naturalising language, we have to conceive it as a mosaic of interactive components (descended larynx, vocal imitation, protolanguage made up of expressions and gestures etc.) with their own ancient or more recent evolutionary histories. Each component is necessary, but none are central or the most important. Each requires the integration of multiple explanatory processes (natural selection, exaptation, group selection, cultural evolution etc.), but no evolutionary mechanism alone is sufficient. Furthermore, each has to be studied phylogenetically.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This methodological need for linking different epistemological fields to dissect the problem of language has encountered various obstacles over the years. The first and most influential occurred in 1886, when in Article 2 of the statute of the Société de Linguistique of Paris, it was established: ‘La Société n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit l’origine du langage, soit la création d’une langue universelle’. A ban was then also reaffirmed by the Philological Society of London in 1872.

  2. 2.

    The innatism of the linguistic components was claimed by Bickerton (Bickerton 1984) with regard to the transition from Pidgin to Hawaiian Creole and then confirmed by Pinker (Pinker 1994). Pinker himself rules out that chimpanzees can communicate through American Sign Language and are not capable of symbolic thinking (see Tartabini 2011: 33).

  3. 3.

    By language faculty, we mean the physical and mental activities thanks to which it is possible to create languages and use them.

  4. 4.

    For example, although he recognized the equal dignity of all languages and the genealogical classification, Wilhelm von Humboldt believed that comparison of different languages revealed the existence of hierarchy of complexity and different degrees of perfection: the Peruvian language was inferior to the Mexican one, while the Delaware language was presented as superior to the Burmese language (see Humboldt 2000: CI, 8, 16, 20–21).

  5. 5.

    Darwin had read On the Origin of Language (Wedgwood 1859), Dictionary of English Etymology (Wedgwood 1862) and chapters on language in An Essay on the Origin of Language (Farrar 1860): in these works he found the thesis that human language originated in the imitation of natural sounds.

  6. 6.

    Gould and Vrba coined the term exaptation for results of an evolutionary change in function (Gould and Vrba 1982).

  7. 7.

    In the second part of the Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac maintains that it existed a language made up of natural gestures of the first men and women that also involved natural cries: the gestures became a collection of communications handed down and remembered. This would have been the basis for the development of the intellect and thinking that would have led to verbal language.

  8. 8.

    According to Stephen Anderson, a system of hierarchical, recursive syntactic combination has ever been found in animal communication (Anderson 2008).

  9. 9.

    We can find the idea that the faculty of language is what makes humanity unique in ancient philosophy, with Aristotle, till the modern age, with René Descartes, and although Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed a study of the ‘causes naturelles’ of words, he conceived language as an element of distinction of humanity, excluding any continuity between animal language and human articulate expression (see Rousseau 1781: 5). But we also find it after Darwin’s publications, for example, with Martin Heidegger who, in Unterwegs zur Sprache, states that humanity becomes humanity because of the innate and constitutive character of language (see Heidegger 1973: 27). In Cartesian Linguistics (Chomsky 1966), the author will take up this species-specific conception to found the intellectual organization obtained exclusively by humanity.

  10. 10.

    The answer to this question forced Darwin to face the skepticism of all philosophers who considered continuist positions as a reduction of human culture and moral to animal life. Johann Gottfried Herder had claimed with incisiveness that language as human invention is possible only when humanity is endowed with thought and rationality as species-specific qualities. Animals are devoid of reason and thinking, and they cannot lay the foundations of language: this philosophical attitude convinced philologists like Max Müller: ‘Now I take my stand against Darwin on language, because language is the necessary condition of every other mental activity, religion not excluded, and I am able to prove that this indispensable condition of all mental growth is entirely absent in animals’ (Letter from Max Müller to Duke of Argyll, 4 February 1875; see Müller 1902: 508–509).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Antonio Danese

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  1. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    José Manuel Viejo

  2. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Mariano Sanjuán

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Danese, A. (2023). Tree Thinking and the Naturalisation of Language. In: Viejo, J.M., Sanjuán, M. (eds) Life and Mind. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30304-3_10

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