Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What is Symbolic Cognition?

  • Published:
Topoi Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Humans’ capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and in particular archaeologists, when attempting to explain human cognitive and behavioral uniqueness. But what is meant by “symbolic cognition” is often left underspecified. In this article, I identify and discuss three different ways in which the notion of symbolic cognition might be construed, each of them quite distinct. Getting clear on the nature of symbolic cognition is a necessary first step in determining what symbolic cognition might plausibly explain.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See Chase (2003) for a discussion of this notion, and other, related ways of understanding behavioral modernity.

  2. See Currie and Killin (2019) for an in-depth discussion of the relationship between material remains and hominin cognitive capacities that is likely to prove useful in carrying out this project.

  3. For some prominent examples of evolutionary theorists who have drawn on Peirce’s theory to answer this question, see Deacon (1998), Rossano (2010), and Everett (2017).

  4. See Atkin 2013 for a good summary.

  5. See Planer and Kalkman (2019) for a discussion and an improved definition of iconic signs.

  6. See Skyrms (2010) for an excellent overview of this work.

  7. This idea is very similar to a proposal in Deacon (1998).

  8. A wonderful real-life example of the former kind of system: in many Australian Aboriginal cultures, storytelling makes heavy use of maps drawn in the sand (Wilkins 1997). Events within a story are localized to areas within the simultaneously produced sand map.

  9. See Vicente and Martinez Manrique (2011) for a discussion and references.

  10. Again, see Vicente and Martinez Manrique (2011) for a nice overview.

  11. See, in particular, Vygotsky (2012 [1932]).

  12. Mechanisms, not “modules.” I take it that everyone agrees there are many cognitive mechanisms. Whether many, or most, of these mechanisms are “modular” in some interesting sense remains a highly contentious issue.

  13. Dan Dennett (1991) is perhaps an instance of this view.

  14. There are of course intermediate possibilities. Were one of these true, then inner speech would play a kind of hybrid role.

  15. I am here thinking of those authors who, in McBrearty and Brooks’ (2000) words, see themselves as “search[ing] for the soul, for the inventive spark that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom” (p. 533). Antonio Damasio (2012) would be such an example.

  16. For canonical statements of Classicalism, see, e.g., Fodor (1975), Newell (1980), and Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988).

  17. For a more detailed treatment of these ideas, see Planer (forthcoming).

  18. See also James Hurford (2014) who approvingly cites Gärdenfors, and tells a very similar story.

  19. As recent work by Chomsky (e.g., Berwick and Chomsky 2016) has made clear, language for him just is humans’ language of thought. We alone possess such a language (so the view goes). Fodor, in contrast, would claim that languages of thought are much more widespread in the animal kingdom. Though he would presumably claim, along with Chomsky, that humans’ language of thought has some special formal properties (e.g., hierarchical structure, recursion).

  20. See Prinz and Barsolou (2002) for a response to this kind of worry.

References

  • Atkin A (2013) Peirce’s theory of signs. In: Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, summer edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/peirce-semiotics/

  • Baars BJ (1997) In the theatre of consciousness. Global workspace theory, a rigorous scientific theory of consciousness. J Conscious Stud 4(4):292–309

    Google Scholar 

  • Baars BJ (2005) Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience. Prog Brain Res 150:45–53

    Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou LW (1999) Perceptions of perceptual symbols. Behav Brain Sci 22(4):637–660

    Google Scholar 

  • Berwick RC, Chomsky N (2016) Why only us: language and evolution? MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowles S, Gintis H (2013) A cooperative species: human reciprocity and its evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R (2017) A different kind of animal: how culture transformed our species. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Carruthers P (2006) The architecture of the mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase P (2003) Comment on “The origin of modern behavior: a review and critique of models and test implications” by Henshilwood et al. Curr Anthropol 44(5):637

    Google Scholar 

  • Currie A, Killin A (2019) From things to thinking: cognitive archaeology. Mind Lang 34(2):263–279

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio A (2012) Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain. Vintage, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Deacon TW (1998) The symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. WW Norton & Company, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1991) Consciousness explained. Little, Brown and Company, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Everett D (2017) How language began: the story of humanity’s greatest invention. Profile Books, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Fields C (2002) Why do we talk to ourselves? J Exp Theor Artif Intell 14(4):255–272

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor JA (1975) The language of thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor JA (1998) Concepts: where cognitive science went wrong. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor JA, Pylyshyn ZW (1988) Connectionism and cognitive architecture: a critical analysis. Cognition 28(1–2):3–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallistel CR, King AP (2011) Memory and the computational brain: why cognitive science will transform neuroscience, vol 6. Wiley, New York, p 2011

    Google Scholar 

  • Gärdenfors P (1995) Cued and detached representations in animal cognition. Behav Proc 35(1–3):263–273

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldstone RL, Barsalou LW (1998) Reuniting perception and conception. Cognition 65(2-3):231–262

    Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood CS et al (2003) The origin of modern human behavior: critique of the models and their test implications. Curr Anthropol 44(5):627–651

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurford JR (2014) Origins of language: a slim guide. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis D (1969) Convention Cambridge. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Malafouris L (2013) How things shape the mind. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • McBrearty S, Brooks AS (2000) The revolution that wasn’t: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. J Hum Evol 39(5):453–563

    Google Scholar 

  • Mercier H, Sperber D (2017) The enigma of reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithen S (1996) The prehistory of the mind: a search for the origins of art, religion and science. Thames & Hudson, Great Britain

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithen S (2005) The singing Neanderthals: the origins of music, language, mind and body. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Great Britain

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell A (1980) Physical symbol systems. Cognit Sci 4(2):135–183

    Google Scholar 

  • Noble W, Davidson I (1991) The evolutionary emergence of modern human behaviour: language and its archaeology. Man 1991:223–253

    Google Scholar 

  • Nowell A (2010) Defining behavioral modernity in the context of Neandertal and anatomically modern human populations. Annu Rev Anthropol 39:437–452

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce CSS (ed) (1883) Studies in logic. By members of the Johns Hopkins University. Little, Brown, and Company, New York

  • Planer RJ (forthcoming) The evolution of languages of thought. Biol Philos

  • Planer RJ, Kalkman D (2019) Arbitrary signals and cognitive complexity. Br J Philos Sci. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axz018

  • Prinz JJ, Barsolou LW (2002) Acquisition and productivity in perceptual symbol systems: an account of mundane creativity. Creativity, cognition, and knowledge: an interaction. Praeger, Santa Barbara, p 105

    Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew C (2004) Towards a theory of material engagement. Rethinking materiality: the engagement of mind with the material world. McDonald Institute, Cambridge, pp 23–31

    Google Scholar 

  • Rossano MJ (2010) Making friends, making tools, and making symbols. Curr Anthropol 51(S1):S89–S98

    Google Scholar 

  • Selfridge OG, Neisser U (1960) Pattern recognition by machine. Sci Am 203(2):60–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Shanon B (1998) What is the function of consciousness? J Conscious Stud 5(3):295–308

    Google Scholar 

  • Skyrms B (2010) Signals: evolution, learning, and information. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Soffer O (2009) Defining modernity, establishing rubicons, imagining the other—and the Neanderthal enigma. Sourcebook of Paleolithic transitions. Springer, New York, pp 43–64

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiner MC (2017) Love and death in the Stone Age: what constitutes first evidence of mortuary treatment of the human body? Biol Theory 12(4):248–261

    Google Scholar 

  • Stringer C, Gamble C (1993) In search of the Neanderthals: solving the puzzle of human origins. Thames and Hudson, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Tattersall I (2008) An evolutionary framework for the acquisition of symbolic cognition by Homo sapiens. Compar Cognit Behav Rev 3:99–114

    Google Scholar 

  • Vicente A, Martinez Manrique F (2011) Inner speech: nature and functions. Philos Compass 6(3):209–219

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky LS (2012 [1932]) Thought and language. MIT Press, Cambridge

  • Wadley L (2001) What is cultural modernity? A general view and a South African perspective from Rose Cottage Cave. Camb Archaeol J 11(2):201–221

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkins DP (1997) Alternative representations of space: arrernte narratives in sand. The visual narrative reader. Bloomsbury, London, pp 252–281

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kim Sterelny and Lauren Reed for comments on an early draft of this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their feedback.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Philosophy and Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Ronald J. Planer

Authors
  1. Ronald J. Planer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ronald J. Planer.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Planer, R.J. What is Symbolic Cognition?. Topoi 40, 233–244 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09670-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09670-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation