"If you could map cognitive science onto physics, Pinker's world operates like Newtonian mechanics: clean lines, predictable trajectories, universal laws. Language, in his framework, is an instinct, a distinct module that evolved in our species. It works in clear causal chains and direct relationships. Common knowledge (that recursive structure where I know that you know that I know) is something we can identify, analyze, and deliberately construct to solve coordination problems."
"Language, to me, is composed of bits and pieces cobbled together from our evolutionary history. As Elizabeth Bates noted, "It is a new machine built out of old parts," fragments borrowed from tool use, the lucky accident of our vocal anatomy, the expansion of our brains. These elements converged into something we call language, but it's fundamentally messy, embodied, and emergent."
Two opposing cognitive frameworks are contrasted. One treats language as an evolved instinctic module governed by clear causal chains and universal laws, allowing identification and deliberate construction of common knowledge to solve coordination problems. The other treats language as an emergent, embodied system cobbled from older functions—tool use, vocal anatomy, brain expansion—resulting in messiness and rapid change. Norms that become shared knowledge can shift unpredictably due to a fast-moving flow of information. The phenomenon called the informational singularity makes recognition of shared truth treacherous and complicates efforts to stabilize coordination based on assumed mutual knowledge.
Read at Psychology Today
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