Humans are a cultural species - we acquire large amounts of knowledge via learning from others. Culture poses several questions for researchers interested in human evolution. What mental apparatus is required to support cultural learning? What evolutionary consequences has this cultural backdrop had for the evolution of the human mind? What aspects of human behaviour can be attributed to processes of cultural evolution?
We will concentrate on the evolutionary consequences of sociality and culture from the perspective of language. The human communication system exhibits a number of unusual or unique structural properties. Can comparative approaches to the study of communication help explain the putative uniqueness of language, in terms of a uniquely human cognitive apparatus? Can fundamental structural properties of language be explained as a consequence of cultural evolution? To what extent has the human mind adapted to its cultural context?
"Evolutionary Approaches to Culture, Cognition and Communication" will bring together an international group of researchers over a series of four seminars, in order to address these and other questions on the evolutionary consequences of human sociality and culture.
The AHRC Culture and the Mind project is a major new five-year interdisciplinary research project, directed by Prof. Stephen Laurence, based in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield.