Thomas C Scott‐Phillips
Biographic Data
| ID | 5803299 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas C Scott‐Phillips |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas C |
| FAMILY NAME | Scott‐Phillips |
| SIGNATURE | PHILLIPS T C S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Cognition and Communication
Communication is a critical type of interaction for all social species, but especially so for humans. This is because it is a major means by which humans interact with one another and the main means by which cultural items propagate through a community. Humans, and likely only humans, have evolved a type of communication—ostensive communication—that has an essentially unlimited expressive potential. Canonical examples include points, shrugs, and …
A (Simple) Experimental Demonstration that Cultural Evolution is not Replicative, but Reconstructive — and an Explanation of Why this Difference Matters
Two complementary approaches to a naturalistic theory of culture are, on the one hand, mainstream cultural evolution research, and, on the other, work done under the banners of cultural attraction and the epidemiology of representations. There is much agreement between these two schools of thought, including in particular a commitment to population thinking. Both schools also acknowledge that the propagation of culture is not simply a matter of r…
Can cultural evolution bridge scientific continents
The ease and extent of recursive mindreading, across implicit and explicit tasks
Speaking Our Minds
Nonhuman Primate Communication, Pragmatics, and the Origins of Language
Comparisons with the cognition and communication of other species have long informed discussions of the origins and evolution of human communication and language. This research has often focused on similarities and differences with the linguistic code, but more recently there has been an increased focus on the social-cognitive foundations of linguistic communication. However, exactly what these comparisons tell us is not clear because the theoret…
How Darwinian is cultural evolution?
Darwin-inspired population thinking suggests approaching culture as a population of items of different types, whose relative frequencies may change over time. Three nested subtypes of populational models can be distinguished: evolutionary, selectional and replicative. Substantial progress has been made in the study of cultural evolution by modelling it within the selectional frame. This progress has involved idealizing away from phenomena that ma…
Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts
Human cooperative communication involves both an informative intention that the recipient understands the content of the signal and also a (Gricean) communicative intention that the recipient recognizes that the speaker has an informative intention. The degree to which children understand this 2-layered nature of communication is the subject of some debate. One phenomenon that would seem to constitute clear evidence of such understanding is hidde…
Joint attention helps explain why children omit new referents
An evolutionary approach to emotional communication
Evolutionary Theory and the Ultimate–Proximate Distinction in the Human Behavioral Sciences
To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. …
Evolutionary psychology and the origins of language
A naïve observer would be forgiven for assuming that the field of language evolution would, in terms of its scope and methodologies, look much like the field of evolutionary psychology, but with a particular emphasis on language. However, this is not the case. This editorial outlines some reasons why such a research agenda has not so far been pursued in any large-scale or systematic way, and briefly discusses one foundational aspect of that agend…
Nonhuman Primate Communication, Pragmatics, and the Origins of Language
Comparisons with the cognition and communication of other species have long informed discussions of the origins and evolution of human communication and language. This research has often focused on similarities and differences with the linguistic code, but more recently there has been an increased focus on the social-cognitive foundations of linguistic communication. However, exactly what these comparisons tell us is not clear because the theoret…
Joint attention helps explain why children omit new referents
A (Simple) Experimental Demonstration that Cultural Evolution is not Replicative, but Reconstructive — and an Explanation of Why this Difference Matters
Two complementary approaches to a naturalistic theory of culture are, on the one hand, mainstream cultural evolution research, and, on the other, work done under the banners of cultural attraction and the epidemiology of representations. There is much agreement between these two schools of thought, including in particular a commitment to population thinking. Both schools also acknowledge that the propagation of culture is not simply a matter of r…
Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts
Human cooperative communication involves both an informative intention that the recipient understands the content of the signal and also a (Gricean) communicative intention that the recipient recognizes that the speaker has an informative intention. The degree to which children understand this 2-layered nature of communication is the subject of some debate. One phenomenon that would seem to constitute clear evidence of such understanding is hidde…
An evolutionary approach to emotional communication
Can cultural evolution bridge scientific continents
Evolutionary psychology and the origins of language
A naïve observer would be forgiven for assuming that the field of language evolution would, in terms of its scope and methodologies, look much like the field of evolutionary psychology, but with a particular emphasis on language. However, this is not the case. This editorial outlines some reasons why such a research agenda has not so far been pursued in any large-scale or systematic way, and briefly discusses one foundational aspect of that agend…
Evolutionary Theory and the Ultimate–Proximate Distinction in the Human Behavioral Sciences
To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. …
Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts
Human cooperative communication involves both an informative intention that the recipient understands the content of the signal and also a (Gricean) communicative intention that the recipient recognizes that the speaker has an informative intention. The degree to which children understand this 2-layered nature of communication is the subject of some debate. One phenomenon that would seem to constitute clear evidence of such understanding is hidde…
Joint attention helps explain why children omit new referents
An evolutionary approach to emotional communication
How Darwinian is cultural evolution?
Darwin-inspired population thinking suggests approaching culture as a population of items of different types, whose relative frequencies may change over time. Three nested subtypes of populational models can be distinguished: evolutionary, selectional and replicative. Substantial progress has been made in the study of cultural evolution by modelling it within the selectional frame. This progress has involved idealizing away from phenomena that ma…
The ease and extent of recursive mindreading, across implicit and explicit tasks
Speaking Our Minds
Nonhuman Primate Communication, Pragmatics, and the Origins of Language
Comparisons with the cognition and communication of other species have long informed discussions of the origins and evolution of human communication and language. This research has often focused on similarities and differences with the linguistic code, but more recently there has been an increased focus on the social-cognitive foundations of linguistic communication. However, exactly what these comparisons tell us is not clear because the theoret…
Can cultural evolution bridge scientific continents
A (Simple) Experimental Demonstration that Cultural Evolution is not Replicative, but Reconstructive — and an Explanation of Why this Difference Matters
Two complementary approaches to a naturalistic theory of culture are, on the one hand, mainstream cultural evolution research, and, on the other, work done under the banners of cultural attraction and the epidemiology of representations. There is much agreement between these two schools of thought, including in particular a commitment to population thinking. Both schools also acknowledge that the propagation of culture is not simply a matter of r…
Cognition and Communication
Communication is a critical type of interaction for all social species, but especially so for humans. This is because it is a major means by which humans interact with one another and the main means by which cultural items propagate through a community. Humans, and likely only humans, have evolved a type of communication—ostensive communication—that has an essentially unlimited expressive potential. Canonical examples include points, shrugs, and …
Psychology (10 works) · Language and cultural evolution (9 works) · Cognitive science (7 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Biology (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Communication (4 works)