ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS MICHAEL CORBALLIS July 13, 2022 RECURSIVE MIND: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization by Michael Corballis. Princeton University Press, 2014 revised edition (312 pages) Quote = "This book challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for 'recursion': the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. 'I think, therefore I am,' is an example of recursive thought. This is because the thinker has inserted himself or herself into his or her thought process. The intellectual process of 'recursion' enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of 'mental time travel' — which is the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from publisher's summary) BOOK OUTLINE Note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages FOREWORD TO THE 2014 PAPERBACK EDITION (vii-ix) PREFACE (xi-xiv) 1) WHAT IS RECURSION? (1-16) PART 1 — LANGUAGE (17-79) 2) LANGUAGE AND RECURSION (19-35) 3) DO ANIMALS HAVE LANGUAGE? (36-54) 4) HOW LANGUAGE EVOLVED FROM HAND TO MOUTH (55-79) PART 2 — MENTAL TIME TRAVEL (81-127) 5) RELIVING THE PAST ABOUT TIME (83-99) 6) ABOUT TIME (100-111) 7) THE GRAMMAR OF TIME (112-127) PART 3 — THEORY OF MIND (129-165) 8) MIND READING (131-150) 9) LANGUAGE AND MIND (151-165) PART 4 — HUMAN EVOLUTION (167-226) 10) THE RECURRING QUESTION (169-226) 11) BECOMING HUMAN (181-207) 12) BECOMING MODERN (208-220) 13) FINAL THOUGHTS (221-226) NOTES (227-252) REFERENCES (253-279) INDEX (281-291) AUTHOR NOTES, SUMMARY, AND BOOK DESCRIPTION AUTHOR NOTES = Michael Corballis was born in New Zealand in 1936, and completed undergraduate and masters degrees there in psychology and mathematics. His PhD in psychology was from McGill University, where he taught from 1968 until 1977. He then returned to the University of Auckland, where he is now Emeritus Pro Michael Corballis fessor of Psychology. He enjoys writing in an accessible way about cognitive science, brain science, and evolution. Books by Corballis include: Psychology of Left and Right: The Ambivalent Mind — The Neuropsychology of Left and Right; A Very Short Tour of the Mind: The Wandering Mind — What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking [2015]; and The Truth About Language — What It Is and Where It Came From [2017]; and most recently, The Recursive Mind — the Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization [2011, 2014]. (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from publisher's blurb) SUMMARY = This book challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel" — the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness. BOOK DESCRIPTION = Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Michael Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neanderthals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world. EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEWS [1] The book is a fascinating and well-grounded exposition of the nature and power of recursion. In its ultra-reasonable way, this is quite a revolutionary book because it attacks key notions about language and thought. Most notably, it disputes the idea, argued especially by linguist Noam Chomsky, that thought is fundamentally linguistic — in other words, you need language before you can have thoughts. – Liz Else, New Scientist. [2] Michael Corballis has written a delightful book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the emergence of our unique capacity to communicate using a verbal generative language. . . . Although I do not agree entirely with all of Corballis' positions, I do subscribe to most of them. More importantly I admire the way in which he formulates issues worth thinking about, which alone makes his contribution very valuable. I am happy to recommend this book to both lay readers and experts in the field. – Robert K. Logan, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. [3] Engaging. (Australian magazine.) [4] The book nicely represents current trends in evolution-based cognitive science and presupposes very little by way of background. – Mark Aronoff, Quarterly Review of Biology [5] Corballis offers a novel synthesis of language, mental time travel, and theory of mind within an evolutionary perspective. The Recursive Mind is very well written for a general readership, but with lots of targeted references for experts. – Michael A. Arbib, coauthor of The Construction of Reality. This is a wonderful book by an expert writer. Corballis tracks the importance of recursion in the context of language, theory of mind, and mental time travel, and concludes that its emergence explains much about how we became human. He proposes a novel answer to an enduring mystery. This book is a significant achievement. – Thomas Suddendorf, University of Queensland. AMAZON READER REVIEWS [1] Matthew Rapaport - Philosophy = A plausible look at the central place of recursive thought in the development of modern consciousness and language. It was sheer coincidence that I read this book after finishing Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". The Jaynes book (which I have also reviewed) was written some 30 years earlier than this one by M. Corballis and yet the two have much to say to one another. Indeed, they cannot both be true. For Jaynes, it is the development and gradual deployment of aural and written language that conditioned the development of consciousness as we experience it today, and this development did not begin to result in consciousness of the modern type, the apparent presence of a subjective self in control, until about the past 3000 years. By contrast, Corballis' theory is that the evolution of consciousness from the type present in the higher primates to modern humans took place between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago. This assumption is based upon the biological evolution of recursive thought in our evolving brains; thought that was itself instrumental in the evolution of language capable of expressing it! Corballis presents this evolutionary hypothesis as a movement from initially gesture-based linguistic expression to vocalization as the human vocal apparatus grows in sophistication and Pleistocene human beings gained advantage by communicating vocally enabling them to convey thought and instruction to those not looking at them directly while at the same time freeing their hands for work as they communicated. For him, consciousness drove linguistic development rather than the other way around. Jaynes theory is partly based on observations of what in the present day are considered pathological conditions like schizophrenia, the "imaginary friends" of children, and also the phenomenon of hypnotism. Corballis does not address these phenomena, but he has the advantage of 30 years of further research on the brain (in particular on the brain's processing of language), primate research, and the development of speech in children. I think Corballis makes a good case for his view which comes across as rather less controversial than that of Jaynes. It is a more conventional exposition of the origin of both modern consciousness and language based on the expanded capacity of human consciousness for recursive thought. According to Corballis' view, humans gained the capacity for recursive thought some 50,000 years in the past and it is that acquisition that drives the subsequent development of language, not the other way around. [2] Trippedonearth - Another must-read book for anthropologists = In the early chapters I could not get the notion of "recursive" but after that, this book was really intriguing. The author explains and tells simply and easily how Homo sapiens, are animals or primates and not special in biology, but could be special in the long history of the earth. [3] A very well written book by Michael Corballis. It is anti-Chomskian according to an original perspective that goes beyond Linguistics. [4] P. Berry - Key insight breezily sketched = The book constructs a plausible prehistory of language from evolutionary development over millions, rather than thousands, or years seems to me an important, necessary, and laudable undertaking. Nevertheless, this book left me disappointed. I felt like I had been cornered at a cocktail party by a loquacious professor eager to summarize for me — in rapid, chatty, dazzling, even flippant prose — everything that has happened in linguistics in the last few hundred years, and especially where some of its practitioners have gone overboard or missed the point. I came away feeling I had learned more than I wanted or needed to know about the history of linguistics (not to mention lots of not-clearly-relevant chatty asides). But I had not learned enough about the sequence of developments by which Prof Corballis speculates that modern language may have arisen — which was billed as the main topic. [5] Readsalot - A good enough book, well worth reading, the author is good at poking fun at himself. = Wheels within wheels (although the author does not speak of "wheels" or even "gears") the power of feedback loops (and he doesn't mention feedback or loops). Recursion is explained as powerful and exciting key idea in human development. A thought provoking book with lots of new and clear ideas and a great thumbnail of human timeline and development. If you are looking for simple introduction to the concept of recursion this is a good place to start. [6] It seems that the theory of recursion as an explanation for human intelligence and language has taken a stronghold in many academic areas such as psycho-linguistics, cognitive science and psychology. A read this book as an introduction to the subject and found it incredibly accessible, interesting and enjoyable. REMEMBER ALWAYS: You Are Your Adaptable Memory! Click or Tap Star to: RETURN TO THE HUMANIST HUB OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas®