Sterelny Kim

The Australian National University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Christopher Lean

The University of Sydney

jay odenbaugh

Lewis & Clark College

Yrjö Haila

David M Frank

University of Tennessee Knoxville

José María Rey Benayas

Universidad de Alcala

Guadalupe Williams Linera

Instituto de Ecología, A.C.

Brazeiro Alejandro

Girma Gizachew

Jimma University, Ethiopia

Girma Gizachew

Christoph Kueffer

OST Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences

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Papers by Sterelny Kim

Ecological hierarchy and biodiversity

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Cumulative Cultural Evolution and the Origins of Language

Biological Theory, 2016

In this article, I present a substantive proposal about the timing and nature of the final stage ... more In this article, I present a substantive proposal about the timing and nature of the final stage of the evolution of full human language, the transition from so-called ''protolanguage'' to language, and on the origins of a simple protolanguage with structure and displaced reference; a proposal that depends on the idea that the initial expansion of communicative powers in our lineage involved a much expanded role for gesture and mime. But though it defends a substantive proposal, the article also (perhaps more importantly) defends and illustrates a methodological proposal too. I argue that language is a special case of a more general phenomenon-cumulative cultural evolution-and while we rarely have direct information about communication, we have more direct information about the cumulative cultural evolution of technical skill, ecological strategies, and social complexity. These same factors also enable us to make a reasonable estimate of the intergenerational social learning capacities of these communities (on which rich communication depends) and of the communicative demands these communities face. For example, we can, at least tentatively, identify forms of cooperation that are stable only if third party information is transmitted widely, cheaply, and accurately. So we can use these more direct markers of information accumulation to locate, in broad terms, the period in our evolutionary history during which we became lingual. Keywords Communication and cooperation Á Cumulative cultural evolution Á Evolution of language Á Gestural origins of language Á Protolanguage to language transition

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Contingency and History

Philosophy of Science, 2016

Debates on the contingency of history have largely focused on the history of life. This article t... more Debates on the contingency of history have largely focused on the history of life. This article targets the supposed contingency of human history. It does not defend a global claim about the overall contingency of history. Rather, it aims to identify and explain the difference between robust and fragile historical trajectories. It does so by considering a set of contrasting cases and identifying critical differences among the cases. The analysis shows that one important source of contingency is the historical emergence of command-and-control institutions; one important source of robustness is the existence of population-level processes structured by relatively stable institutions.

Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2014

In this article I develop a big picture of the evolution of human cooperation, and contrast it to... more In this article I develop a big picture of the evolution of human cooperation, and contrast it to an alternative based on group selection. The crucial claim is that hominin history has seen two major transitions in cooperation, and hence poses two deep puzzles about the origins and stability of cooperation. The first is the transition from great ape social lives to the lives of Pleistocene cooperative foragers; the second is the stability of the social contract through the early Holocene transition to complex hierarchical societies. The first of these transitions is driven, at least initially, by individual advantage: cooperation paid off for individual foragers, initially through mutualist interaction, then through reciprocation. This argument leads to a reanalysis of the role of violence and the nature of the freeriding threat to cooperation. But the conditions that select for cooperative individuals in the Pleistocene were eroded in the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. So we need an alternative account of the survival, and indeed the expansion, of cooperation in the Holocene. Group selection driven by intercommunal conflict really may well be central to this second transition.

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Adaptable individuals and innovative lineages

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 19, 2016

This paper suggests (i) that while work on animal innovation has made good progress in understand... more This paper suggests (i) that while work on animal innovation has made good progress in understanding some of the proximate mechanisms and selective regimes through which innovation emerges, it has somewhat neglected the role of the social environment of innovation; a neglect manifest in the fact that innovation counts are almost always counts of resource-acquisition innovations; the invention of social tools is rarely considered. The same is true of many experimental projects, as these typically impose food acquisition tasks on their experimental subjects. (ii) That neglect is important, because innovations often pose collective action problems; the hominin species were technically innovative because they were also socially adaptable. (iii) In part for this reason, there remains a disconnect between research on hominin innovation and research on animal innovation. (iv) Finally, the paper suggests that there is something of a disconnect between the theoretical work on innovation in h...

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Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution

Mapping the Future of Biology

It has long been recognised that phenotypic novelty poses a prima facie problem for evolutionary ... more It has long been recognised that phenotypic novelty poses a prima facie problem for evolutionary theory. For there is a problem in reconciling an incremental conception of evolutionary change with the evolution of qualitatively new structures, especially complex new structures (Nitecki 1990). While it is easy to see how an existing trait could be elaborated incrementally, it is much harder to see there could be (say) an incremental, and incrementally adaptive, shift from a scaled bipedal dinosaur to a feathered and flying bird. In this paper, I shall gnaw away at this problem by weaving together three new developments in evolutionary theory. Those developments, in combination, do not completely resolve the problem of novelty, but they make it more tractable. The argument begins by rehearsing an “evo-devo” argument: the mechanisms that generate variation cannot be black-boxed, for unless those mechanisms are isotropic, generating variation densely and evenly around a lineage’s existing location in phenotype space, the mechanisms that generate variation will influence the trajectory of evolution (Raff 1996; Arthur 2004). And while there are many open questions about variation, there is no a priori expectation that variation is typically isotropic. I then link this now familiar line of argument to an emerging emphasis on the role of phenotypic plasticity in evolution. In different ways, Mary-Jane West-Eberhard and Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart have argued that plasticity is central to evolvability (Gerhart and Kirschner 1997; West-Eberhard 2003; Kirschner and Gerhart 2005). Their idea is this. Phenotypic plasticity pre-adapts lineages to evolutionary change, by connecting the development of distinct organ systems. If organisms are phenotypically plastic, then the functional integration of different systems—for example, those that determine bone growth in limbs and those that lay down the circulatory system—must be sensitive to the contingencies of their development. Limb development requires simultaneous and co-ordinated development in other organs

Optimizing Engines: Rational Choice in the Neolithic?

Philosophy of Science, 2015

This article has both substantive and methodological goals. Methodologically, it shows that ratio... more This article has both substantive and methodological goals. Methodologically, it shows that rational choice theory (in its behavioral ecology form) is an especially important tool for guiding research in contexts in which agents appear to be acting against their best interests. The Neolithic transition is one such case, and the article develops a substantive conception of that transition, illustrating the heuristic power of behavioral ecology.

A Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms

Biological Theory, 2014

Within paleoanthropology, the origin of behavioral modernity is a famous problem. Very large-brai... more Within paleoanthropology, the origin of behavioral modernity is a famous problem. Very large-brained hominins have lived for around half a million years, yet social lives resembling those known from the ethnographic record appeared perhaps 100,000 years ago. Why did it take 400,000 years for humans to start acting like humans? In this article, I argue that part of the solution is a transition in the economic foundations of cooperation from a relatively undemanding form, to one that imposed much more stress on human motivational and cognitive mechanisms. The rich normative, ceremonial, and ideological lives of humans are a response to this economic revolution in forager lives; from one depending on immediate return mutualism to one depending on delayed and third-party reciprocation. Keywords Behavioral modernity Á Evolution of norms Á Forager economics Á Human cooperation and mutualism Á Human cooperation and reciprocation Á Human symbolic behavior Becoming Human Over the last three to four million years, hominin lives have been transformed. Early australopithecines probably did not differ greatly from their Pan relatives in technological sophistication, foraging style, ecological impact, communication skills, or social complexity. By the mid to later Pleistocene that was no longer true. Hominins had expanded out of Africa. A suite of morphological changes 1 beginning over 2 mya strongly suggests that they had access to much richer foods (mya = millions of years ago; kya = thousands of years ago); perhaps through cooking; perhaps through hunting and power scavenging; perhaps both. There is evidence of the control of fire from about 800 kya (Alperson-Afil et al. 2007; Gowlett and Wrangham 2013). As large game was added to the diet, foraging became more collective and coordinated. 2 When armed only with shortrange spears and other close-range, attritional weapons, hominins can kill medium to large game, and drive predators from their kills, only in groups. Their life history strategy was no longer ape-like: mid-Pleistocene hominins lived longer than apes, with longer periods of juvenile dependency (Kaplan et al. 2000; Robson and Wood 2008; Thompson and Nelson 2011). They probably depended on cooperative reproduction, both in requiring assistance at the birth itself, and in provisioning and crèching infants (Hrdy 2009). We do not know the extent of their soft material technology (though if Homo erectus grandmothers were provisioning infants with gathered resources, they must have made containers of some kind), but their stone toolmaking was skilled; perhaps depending on skills so sophisticated that they could be learned only with the aid of social transmission (Stout 2002; Stout and Chaminade 2009; Hiscock 2014, this issue). However, while erectines and their immediate successors were no longer ape-like, in all probability their foraging and social lives were quite different from those of the H. sapiens foragers known from history and ethnography

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Constructing the Cooperative Niche

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, 2013

Humans contrast with their great ape relatives in many ways, but one of the most striking is our ... more Humans contrast with their great ape relatives in many ways, but one of the most striking is our richly cooperative social lives. The explanation of this difference is complex and multi-factorial. But this paper argues that one central element is niche construction. Hominins are inveterate and extensive niche constructors. Individually and collectively, we have deeply affected our physical and biological environment, and have used technology to filter and transform the selective effects of the changed physical and biology worlds in which we have lived. But members of our lineage have not just acted on physical and biological environments; they have organised their informational environment too. Not just their own, but that of the next generation. While intensive and active teaching is probably a recent phenomenon, teaching itself is not. Furthermore, adults structure the learning environment of the next generation in many other ways: by acting as models of adult life; by providing supervised, safer environments; by providing toys, tools and props that structure and support trial and error learning. So the skills, values, ideas, information, and expected modes of social interaction and behaviour are made accessible to the next generation. This happens in circumstances which have often been adapted to enhance learning. The main theme of this paper is to show that humans cooperate more than other great apes largely because they reconstruct their environment more than other great apes, and one aspect of that reconstruction has been to make a world in which cooperation could survive and expand.

SNAFUS: An Evolutionary Perspective

Biological Theory, 2007

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Content, Control and Display: The Natural Origins of Content

Philosophia, 2015

Hutto and Satne identify three research traditions attempting to explain the place of intentional... more Hutto and Satne identify three research traditions attempting to explain the place of intentional agency in a wholly natural world: naturalistic reduction; sophisticated behaviourism, and pragmatism, and suggest that insights from all three are necessary. While agreeing with that general approach, I develop a somewhat different package, offering an outline of a vindicating genealogy of our interpretative practices. I suggest that these practices had their original foundation in the elaboration of much more complex representation-guided control structures in our lineage and the support and amplification of those control structures through external resources. Cranes (as Dennett calls them) became increasingly important in the explanation of systematically successful action. These more complex representational engines coevolved with selection to detect and respond to the control structures of others. Since much of that selection was driven by the advantages of cooperation and coordination, in part these control structures were co-opted as external signals and guarantees, in cooperation and coordination. As the time depth of cooperation and coordination extended, these public signals of belief and intent acquired secondary functions, as mechanisms to stabilise and structure control systems, making humans not just more transparent to one another at a time, but more predictable over time. Mindshaping, not just mindreading, became increasingly important in our lineage.

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Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words

Topoi, 2015

A Darwinian theory of the evolution of lan-8 guage must be incremental: to explain the transition... more A Darwinian theory of the evolution of lan-8 guage must be incremental: to explain the transition from a 9 hominin baseline with great ape grade communicative 10 capacities to language-equipped hominins as a series of 11 small steps. This paper takes up that project for the special 12 case of words, giving an incremental model of the call to 13 word transition. The model is embedded in a general 14 conception of human social evolution with independent 15 empirical support, but it also depends on some more spe-16 cific assumptions about language and about the earlier 17 forms of hominin communication. Given these assump-18 tions, the paper can be no more than a working draft of a 19 more complete theory. 20 21 Keywords Evolution of language Á Evolution of 22 reference Á Evolution of the lexicon Á Evolution of human 23 social behaviour 24 1 Deacon's Challenge 25 In developing a plausible theory of language evolution, one 26 challenge is that of developing an incremental model of 27 change; one that takes us by small improvements from the 28 baseline communicative and cognitive capacities of great 29 apes to those contemporary humans. We need a lineage 30 explanation of the evolution of language (Calcott 2008). 31 This problem has been canvassed most famously with 32 respect to syntax, with many of those influenced by 33 Chomsky arguing that there is no plausible incremental model of the transition from protolanguage-like communication systems to full human language (Berwick et al. 2013; Miyagawa et al. 2013). This challenge is clearly significant, for syntax, and the productivity it brings, is clearly one fundamental difference between human language and animal call systems (Hauser et al. 2002). But this paper focuses on a different challenge: explaining the evolution of the lexicon. For animal calls are very different indeed from referential terms, and it is not obvious how there could be an incremental transition from calls to words. Terry Deacon identified this issue in his (Deacon 1997). In explaining why there are no simple languages, he showed that animal signals, because they are about the here and the now, could be acquired through associative learning. That is not true of words. Names, for example, are not routinely used in the presence of their bearer, so a naive subject could not learn to associate a distinctive sound with the presence of a particular individual. This paper aims to explain how referential terms emerged from animal calls. In developing this sketch (it is no more), I shall make five framing assumptions. The first is a background assumption about the mechanisms involved in the evolution of language. The second locates the evolution of language in an overall conception of the evolution of hominin social behaviour. The third, fourth and fifth are specific to language: a gesture-first view of the initial expansion of hominin communicative capacities; a specification of some of the cognitive competences required for the use of referential vocabulary; and finally, I assume that ''protolanguage'' is an important intermediate stage in the evolution of language. Let me elaborate. First, I shall assume that language evolved by some version of cultural inheritance and cultural evolution. It is uncontroversial that the storehouses of specific signals in language-like systems are built by individual innovation, as

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Neolithization in Southwest Asia in a Context of Niche Construction Theory

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2015

The term ‘neolithization’ as it is generally used in relation to southwest Asia narrows the focus... more The term ‘neolithization’ as it is generally used in relation to southwest Asia narrows the focus of research, and works against our efforts to envision explanations of the process in terms of the long-term evolution of human societies. Here, we re-frame the neolithization process, setting it within the framework of niche construction theory. We argue that the concept of cultural niche construction fits the purpose, but needs to be extended to encompass the more complex social worlds of the Holocene in the form of the cognitive-cultural niche.

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The Triumph of a Reasonable Man: Stich, Mindreading, and Nativism

Stich, 2009

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From hominins to humans: howsapiensbecame behaviourally modern

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011

This paper contributes to a debate in the palaeoarchaeological community about the major time-lag... more This paper contributes to a debate in the palaeoarchaeological community about the major time-lag between the origin of anatomically modern humans and the appearance of typically human cultural behaviour. Why did humans take so long—at least 100 000 years—to become ‘behaviourally modern’? The transition is often explained as a change in the intrinsic cognitive competence of modern humans: often in terms of a new capacity for symbolic thought, or the final perfection of language. These cognitive breakthrough models are not satisfactory, for they fail to explain the uneven palaeoanthropological record of human competence. Many supposed signature capacities appear (and then disappear) before the supposed cognitive breakthrough; many of the signature capacities disappear again after the breakthrough. So, instead of seeing behavioural modernity as a simple reflection of a new kind of mind, this paper presents a niche construction conceptual model of behavioural modernity. Humans became b...

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Language, gesture, skill: the co-evolutionary foundations of language

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2012

This paper defends a gestural origins hypothesis about the evolution of enhanced communication an... more This paper defends a gestural origins hypothesis about the evolution of enhanced communication and language in the hominin lineage. The paper shows that we can develop an incremental model of language evolution on that hypothesis, but not if we suppose that language originated in an expansion of great ape vocalization. On the basis of the gestural origins hypothesis, the paper then advances solutions to four classic problems about the evolution of language: (i) why did language evolve only in the hominin lineage? (ii) why is language use an evolutionarily stable form of informational cooperation, despite the fact that hominins have diverging evolutionary interests? (iii) how did stimulus independent symbols emerge? (iv) what were the origins of complex, syntactically organized symbols? The paper concludes by confronting two challenges: those of testability and of explaining the gesture-to-speech transition; crucial issues for any gestural origins hypothesis

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Minds: extended or scaffolded?

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2010

This paper discusses two perspectives, each of which recognises the importance of environmental r... more This paper discusses two perspectives, each of which recognises the importance of environmental resources in enhancing and amplifying our cognitive capacity. One is the Clark-Chalmers model, extended further by Clark and others. The other derives from niche construction models of evolution, models which emphasise the role of active agency in enhancing the adaptive fit between agent and world. In the human case, much niche construction is epistemic: making cognitive tools and assembling other informational resources that support and scaffold intelligent action. I shall argue that extended mind cases are limiting cases of environmental scaffolding, and while the extended mind picture is not false, the niche construction model is a more helpful framework for understanding human action.

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A Glass Half-Full: Brian Skyrms's Signals

Economics and Philosophy, 2012

Brian Skyrms's Signals has the virtues familiar from his Evolution of the Social Contract (19... more Brian Skyrms's Signals has the virtues familiar from his Evolution of the Social Contract (1996) and The Stag Hunt (2003). He begins with a very simple model of agents in interaction, and in a series of brief and beautifully clear chapters, this model and its successors are explored, elaborated, connected and illustrated through biological theory and the social sciences. Signals borrows its core model from David Lewis: it is Lewis's signalling game. In this game, two agents interact. One agent can observe which of two equi-probable states the world is in, but that agent cannot act directly and profitably on that information. However, the informed agent can act in a way that will be perceptually salient to a second agent: say, by raising a red or a green flag. The second agent does have the capacity to respond appropriately to each state of the world. If that second agent chooses the right option, given the state of the world, both are rewarded. If the second agent fails to c...

Editorial: David Hull 1935–2010

Biology & Philosophy, 2010

He played a foundational role in making philosophy of biology a respected field of philosophy of ... more He played a foundational role in making philosophy of biology a respected field of philosophy of science, and respected in the life sciences. He was a critical early supporter of this journal, helping and supporting Michael Ruse in a myriad of ways. He was justly famous within the field for his professional and personal generosity. I can testify to this personally; in the very early days of my career in philosophy of biology, on my first study leave, he hosted me (rent-free!) in his house for 3 months; he made sure I met everyone there was to meet in the Chicago philosophy of biology world; and he read and commented on every line that I wrote. He was a wonderful man, and fine philosopher, one who played a vital role in shaping the field. Unfortunately, I met him only after the AIDS epidemic that drank the joy from his life, and some of the vitality from his work. We begin this issue with two tributes; one from his companion in arms from the early days of the field, Michael Ruse. The other is a representative of the matured field, Peter Godfrey-Smith.

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Conservation Biology

What Is Biodiversity?

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Ecological hierarchy and biodiversity

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Cumulative Cultural Evolution and the Origins of Language

Biological Theory, 2016

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Contingency and History

Philosophy of Science, 2016

Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2014

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Adaptable individuals and innovative lineages

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 19, 2016

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Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution

Mapping the Future of Biology

Optimizing Engines: Rational Choice in the Neolithic?

Philosophy of Science, 2015

A Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms

Biological Theory, 2014

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Constructing the Cooperative Niche

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, 2013

SNAFUS: An Evolutionary Perspective

Biological Theory, 2007

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Content, Control and Display: The Natural Origins of Content

Philosophia, 2015

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Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words

Topoi, 2015

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Neolithization in Southwest Asia in a Context of Niche Construction Theory

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2015

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The Triumph of a Reasonable Man: Stich, Mindreading, and Nativism

Stich, 2009

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From hominins to humans: howsapiensbecame behaviourally modern

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011

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Language, gesture, skill: the co-evolutionary foundations of language

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2012

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Minds: extended or scaffolded?

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2010

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A Glass Half-Full: Brian Skyrms's Signals

Economics and Philosophy, 2012

Editorial: David Hull 1935–2010

Biology & Philosophy, 2010

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Conservation Biology

What Is Biodiversity?

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From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language

by Ronald Planer and Sterelny Kim

MIT Press, 2021

From Publisher (MIT Press) website: "In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny p... more From Publisher (MIT Press) website:

"In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny propose a novel theory of language, proposing that modern language is the product of a long series of increasingly rich protolanguages evolving over the last two million years. Arguing that language and cognition coevolved, they give a central role to archaeological evidence and they attempt to infer cognitive capacities on the basis of that evidence, which they link in turn to communicative capacities.

Countering other accounts, which move directly from archaeological traces to language, Planer and Sterelny show that rudimentary forms of many of the elements on which language depends can be found in the great apes and were part of the equipment of the earliest species in our lineage. After outlining the constraints a theory of the evolution of language should satisfy and filling in the details of their model, they take up the evolution of words, composite utterances, and hierarchical structure. They consider the transition from a predominantly gestural to a predominantly vocal form of language and discuss the economic and social factors that led to language. Finally, they evaluate their theory in terms of the constraints previously laid out."

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Sterelny Kim

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