Computational Phenotypes

This book confronts the hotly debated claim that language is a species specific trait of humans. It also considers the notion that disentangling the evolutionary history of language is one of science's hardest problems. Building on the recent conceptual breakthroughs of the EvoDevo paradigm, Balari and Lorenzo argue that language is not so exceptional after all. It is, rather, just the human version of a fairly common and conservative organic system which they call the Central Computational Complex. The authors also propose that interspecies variation of this organ is restricted to (i) accessible memory resources, and (ii) patterns of external connectivity, both being the result of perturbations on the system underlying its development. The book, written accessibly for both biologists and linguists, offers a fresh perspective on language as a naturally evolved phenomenon.1. The Pains of Being Owenians/Chomskyans/Cartesians at heart ; 2. My Beloved Monster ; 3. The Dead End of Communication ; 4. On True Homologues ; 5. Computational Homology ; 6. Introducing Computational Evo Devo ; 7. Other Minds ; 8. Conclusions ; Appendix ; References ; Index