It is widely held that the gradual development of metarepresentational Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities constituted at least one important hominid upgrade. Are such abilities really needed to explain hominid (i) tool-making, (ii) social cohesion, or even (iii) basic interpretative and language formation/learning capabilities? I propose an alternative explanation of what underlies these sophisticated capacities – the Mimetic Ability Hypothesis (MAH). MAH claims that a vastly increased capacity for recreative imagination best explains the kinds of sophisticated intersubjective engagements of which hominids would have been capable – and that these constituted an important basis for the development of complex language. This proposal puts the idea of the evolution of ToM devices under considerable strain.
How did humans bridge the tremendous gap between symbolic thought and the nonsymbolic forms of intelligence that still dominate the rest of the animal kingdom? Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind
2019. Replacing Epiphenomenalism: a Pluralistic Enactive Take on the Metaplasticity of Early Body Ornamentation. Philosophy & Technology 32:2 ► pp. 215 ff.
Abramova, Ekaterina
2018. The role of pantomime in gestural language evolution, its cognitive bases and an alternative. Journal of Language Evolution 3:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
Garofoli, Duilio
2018. RECkoning with representational apriorism in evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17:5 ► pp. 973 ff.
Garofoli, Duilio
2019. Embodied Cognition and the Archaeology of Mind: A Radical Reassessment. In Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology, ► pp. 379 ff.
Żywiczyński, Przemysław, Sławomir Wacewicz & Marta Sibierska
2018. Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research. Topoi 37:2 ► pp. 307 ff.
Fenici, Marco & Duilio Garofoli
2017. The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 1:2 ► pp. 89 ff.
Unternbäumen, Enrique Huelva
2017. The codification of intersubjectivity in the diachronic change AD locative > A(D) indirect object in Spanish. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16:1 ► pp. 107 ff.
Thibault, Paul J.
2011. First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language: The Distributed Language View. Ecological Psychology 23:3 ► pp. 210 ff.
Zlatev, Jordan
2010. Phenomenology and Cognitive Linguistics. In Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, ► pp. 415 ff.
Hutto, Daniel D.
2007. Folk Psychology Without Theory or Simulation. In Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, ► pp. 115 ff.
Hutto, Daniel D.
2008. The Narrative Practice Hypothesis: clarifications and implications. Philosophical Explorations 11:3 ► pp. 175 ff.
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