‘Speaking Our Minds’ Book Club June-July 2015
From mid-June to mid-July 2015, the ICCI website has hosted a Book Club devoted to Thom Scott-Phillips’ book, Speaking Our Mind. The book has received positive reviews in various media, including
Reflections on the Speaking Our Minds book club
I can say without reservation or qualification that the Speaking Our Minds (SOM) book club was the single most challenging and rewarding intellectual experience of my career to date. Every day for
A closer look at communication among our closest relatives
I am writing this while conducting fieldwork in Zambia, with only very limited access to the internet. Therefore, I could not read already existing posts and the corresponding responses and discuss
Communication without Metapsychology
This is an excellent book. I cannot think of another on this topic that matches its clarity, concision, accessibility, comprehensiveness, and argumentative rigor. I’m quite amazed that Scott-Phil
Cats, tacs and kunvenshuns
First of all, thanks to Thom for his excellent book. I agree completely that pragmatics has been under-represented in discussions of the evolution of language (with the notable exceptions you
Natural language and the language of thought
I found Thom’s book extremely illuminating, insightful and enjoyable. I learned a great deal from it, and look forward to this online discussion, from which I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more.
One
One explanation to rule them all?
The field of language evolution, it seems to me, is a microcosm of the evolutionary behavioral sciences more generally, in the following sense: you can maintain more or less any position you want,
Inferential communication and information theory
Speaking Our Minds is a timely book that very effectively frames many of the current important problems facing researchers interested in the nature of language and communication. Too few scholars
Intending to speak our mind, and speaking our mind
Thom Scott-Phillips' contribution consists in further grounding Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson’s Relevance Theory into an evolutionary and cognitive framework for the advent of human language. I
Alignments across disciplines
By Ira Noveck & Tiffany Morisseau
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This book left a very positive impression on us both. It is practically a manifesto for clear thinking about doing proper Gricean analyses in applied areas
Combinatoriality and codes
I read this book as part of an interdisciplinary reading group at Cardiff. As we found, there’s a lot to agree with in the book, but the commentary below focuses on two points that we found
Enjoyable, but doesn’t solve the mystery
I have read Thom Scott-Philips’ book with great pleasure, but also with a very critical eye. It is extremely well written— I have read most of it during long train rides and had no difficulties
Communication, culture, and biology in the evolution of language
Speaking Our Minds is an enjoyable book, providing an excellent survey of some of the perennial and current issues in the field of language evolution, as well as providing a clear summary of Thom’s
No communication without reputation, no reputation without communication
I chose to organise an ICCI book club around Speaking Our Minds because it is an exceptional book in more than one way. It ties together two research traditions¬—the pragmatic approach to lingui
Cultural attraction, “standard” cultural evolution, and language
Speaking Our Minds (SOM) was a great pleasure to read. This slim book provides even a non expert like myself with an accessible but, at the same time, in-depth treatment of language evolution.
Key notions in the study of communication
I am enthusiastic about Thom Scott-Phillips’ book. It integrates cutting-edge research in several fields, from biology to pragmatics, relevant to the study of the evolution of human communication
A few comments on ‘Speaking Our Minds’
By Paulo Sousa and Karolina Prochownik
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We would like first to thank the ICCI team for the invitation to participate in the book club around Thom Scott-Phillips’ Speaking Our Minds, where a new
Why do children but not apes acquire language?
In his introduction to Thom Scott-Phillips’s Speaking Our Minds, Olivier Morin mentioned my review of the book in the TLS. For reasons of length I could not include more substantive objections to
A précis of ‘Speaking Our Minds’
Communication and language have always been key topics for research at the interface of cognition and culture. Rightly so, given the central role that linguistic communication plays in human social
‘Speaking Our Minds’ Book Club
We are thrilled to open our second book club, devoted to Thom Scott-Phillips’ book Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different [1], and how language evolved to make it special. The