The origins of causal cognition in early hominins

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• 作者：Martin Stuart-Fox (1)
  
  1. School of History ; Philosophy ; Religion and Classics ; The University of Queensland ; St Lucia ; QLD ; 4072 ; Australia
  
• 关键词：Hominin evolution ; Causal cognition ; Natural signs ; Cognitive maps ; Working memory ; Overimitation ; Belief
• 刊名：Biology & Philosophy
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：March 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：30
• 期：2
• 页码：247-266
• 全文大小：215 KB
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• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Philosophy
  Philosophy of Biology
  Evolutionary Biology
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1572-8404

文摘

Studies of primate cognition have conclusively shown that humans and apes share a range of basic cognitive abilities. As a corollary, these same studies have also focussed attention on what makes humans unique, and on when and how specifically human cognitive skills evolved. There is widespread agreement that a major distinguishing feature of the human mind is its capacity for causal reasoning. This paper argues that causal cognition originated with the use made of indirect natural signs by early hominins forced to adapt to variable late Miocene and early Pliocene environments; that early hominins evolved an innate tendency to search for such signs and infer their causes; that causal inference required the existence of incipient working memory; and that causal relationships were stored through being integrated into spatial maps to create increasingly complex causal models of the world.