We argue that language evolution started like the evolution of reading and writing, through
cultural evolutionary processes. Genuinely new behavioural patterns emerged from …

A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in
the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition …

The self-domestication hypothesis suggests that, like mammalian domesticates, humans
have gone through a process of selection against aggression–a process that in the case of …

Cognitive gadgets are distinctively human cognitive mechanisms–such as imitation, mind
reading, and language–that have been shaped by cultural rather than genetic evolution …

The scientific study of consciousness or subjective experiencing is a rapidly expanding
research program engaging philosophers of mind, psychologists, cognitive scientists …

Taking a Waddingtonian system approach, I discuss some of the implications of recent
epigenetic research for the study of social systems. A growing number of investigations …

This book offers an exciting new perspective on the origins of language. Language is
conceptualized as a collective invention, on the model of writing or the wheel, and the book …

Heyes's book is an important contribution that rightly integrates cognitive development and
cultural evolution. However, understanding the cultural evolution of cognitive gadgets …

Attempted answers are given to (a) whether nonhuman great apes (apes) also have evolved
imitation (answer: no);(b) whether humans can transmit imitation as a gadget to apes …

We agree with Heyes that an explanation of human uniqueness must appeal to cultural
evolution, and not just genes. Her account, though, focuses narrowly on internal cognitive …