Publications by Type: Book Chapter

2019

2006

Pinker, S. (2006). Deep Commonalities Between Life and Mind. In Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think: reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers. Oxford University Press, USA.

2003

Pinker, S. (2003). Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. In S. Kirby & M. Christiansen (Eds.), Language evolution: States of the Art (pp. 16-37). Oxford University Press.

This chapter outlines the theory (first explicitly defended by Pinker and Bloom 1990), that the human language faculty is a complex biological adaptation that evolved by natural selection for communication in a knowledge- using, socially interdependent lifestyle. This claim might seem to be any- one’s first guess about the evolutionary status of language, and the default prediction from a Darwinian perspective on human psychological abilities. But the theory has proved to be controversial, as shown by the commentaries in Pinker and Bloom (1990) and the numerous debates on language evolution since then (Fitch 2002; Hurford et al. 1998). In the chapter I will discuss the design of the language faculty, the theory that language is an adaptation, alternatives to the theory, an examination of what language might an adaptation for, and how the theory is being tested by new kinds of analyses and evidence.

1990

1985

Pinker, S., & Downing, C. J. (1985). The spatial structure of visual attention. In M. Posner and O. Marin (Eds.), Attention and Performance XI: Mechanisms of attention and visual search. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. M. Posner and O. Marin (Eds.), Attention and Performance XI: Mechanisms of attention and visual search. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.