Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Concept Combination and the Origins of Complex Cognition

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Origins of Mind

Part of the book series: Biosemiotics ((BSEM,volume 8))

Abstract

At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain of Homo erectus facilitated the onset of recursive recall: the ability to string thoughts together into a stream of potentially abstract or imaginative thought. This hypo­thesis is supported by a set of computational models where an artificial society of agents evolved to generate more diverse and valuable cultural outputs under conditions of recursive recall. We propose that the capacity to see things in context arose much later, following the appearance of anatomically modern humans. This second transition was brought about by the onset of contextual focus: the capacity to shift between a minimally contextual analytic mode of thought and a highly contextual associative mode of thought conducive to combining concepts in new ways and “breaking out of a rut.” When contextual focus is implemented in an art-generating computer program, the resulting artworks are seen as more creative and appealing. We summarize how both transitions can be modeled using a theory of concepts which highlights how different contexts shift the interpretation of a single concept.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The term mimetic is derived from “mime,” which means “to act out.”

  2. 2.

    The approach can thus be contrasted with computer models of how individual learning affects biological evolution (Hinton and Nowlan 1987; Hutchins and Hazelhurst 1991). For an explanation of why we do not adopt the framework of memetics see (Gabora 1999 b, 2004, 2008d).

  3. 3.

    This is summarized nicely in Isham (1995).

  4. 4.

    In neural net terms, contextual focus amounts to the capacity to spontaneously and subconsciously vary the shape of the activation function, flat for divergent thought and spiky for analytical.

References

  • Aerts, D. (2009). Quantum structure in cognition. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 53, 314–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aerts, D., Aerts, S., Broekaert, J., & Gabora, L. (2000). The violation of Bell inequalities in the macroworld. Foundations of Physics, 30(9), 1387–1414.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aerts, D., & Gabora, L. (2005a). A state-context-property model of concepts and their combinations I: The structure of the sets of contexts and properties. Kybernetes, 34(1&2), 167–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aerts, D., & Gabora, L. (2005b). A state-context-property model of concepts and their combinations II: A Hilbert space representation. Kybernetes, 34(1&2), 192–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aiello, L. C. (1996). Hominine pre-adaptations for language and cognition. In P. Mellars & K. Gibson (Eds.), Modeling the early human mind (pp. 89–99). Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ambrose, S. H. (1998). Chronology of the later stone age and food production in East Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science, 25, 377–392.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bar-Yosef, O. (1994). The contribution of southwest Asia to the study of the origin of modern humans. In M. Nitecki & D. Nitecki (Eds.), Origins of anatomically modern humans,Ý Plenum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (Eds.). (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentley, R. A., Ormerod, P., & Batty, M. (2011). Evolving social influence in large populations. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 65, 537–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Best, M. (1999). How culture can guide evolution: An inquiry into gene/meme enhancement and opposition. Adaptive Behavior, 7(3), 289–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Best, M. (2006). Adaptive value within natural language discourse. Interaction Studies, 7(1), 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruza, P. D., Kitto, K., Nelson, D., & McEvoy, C. (2009). Is there something quantum-like about the human mental lexicon? Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 53, 362–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buller, D. J. (2005). Adapting minds. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buss, D. M. (1999/2004). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind. Boston: Pearson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1981). Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cloak, F. T., Jr. (1975). Is a cultural ethology possible? Human Ecology, 3, 161–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deacon, T. W. (1997). The symbolic species: The coevolution of language and the brain. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiPaola, S. (2009). Exploring a parameterized portrait painting space. International Journal of Art and Technology, 2(1–2), 82–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DiPaola, S., & Gabora, L. (2007, July 7–11). Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm. In D. Thierens (Ed.), Proceedings of the genetic and evolutionary computing conference (pp. 2442–2449). University College London, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiPaola, S., & Gabora, L. (2009). Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, 10(2), 97–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donald, M. (1998). Hominid enculturation and cognitive evolution. In C. Renfrew & C. Scarre (Eds.), Cognition and material culture: The archaeology of symbolic storage (pp. 7–17). Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dugatkin, L. A. (2001). Imitation factor: Imitation in animals and the origin of human culture. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunbar, R. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size, and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(4), 681–735.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B., & Smith, S. M. (1992). Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1994, July 4–6). A computer model of the evolution of culture. In R. Brooks & P. Maes (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th international conference on artificial life, Boston, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1995). Meme and variations: A computer model of cultural evolution. In L. Nadel & D. Stein (Eds.), 1993 lectures in complex systems (pp. 471–486). Reading: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1996). A day in the life of a meme. Philosophica, 57, 901–938.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1998). Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the origin of culture. Psycoloquy, 9(67).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1999a, May 3–5). Conceptual closure: Weaving memories into an interconnected worldview. In G. Van de Vijver & J. Chandler (Eds.), Proceedings of closure: An international conference on emergent organizations and their dynamics, held by the Research Community on Evolution and Complexity and the Washington Evolutionary Systems Society, University of Gent, Belgium.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (1999b). To imitate is human: A review of ‘The Meme Machine’ by Susan Blackmore. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Systems 2(2). Reprinted with permission in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(5), 77–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2003, July 31–August 2). Contextual focus: A cognitive explanation for the cultural transition of the Middle/Upper Paleolithic. In R. Alterman & D. Hirsch (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 432–437). Boston: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2004). Ideas are not replicators but minds are. Biology and Philosophy, 19(1), 127–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2008a). Mind. In R. A. Bentley, H. D. G. Maschner, & C. Chippindale (Eds.), Handbook of theories and methods in archaeology (pp. 283–296). Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2008b). EVOC: A computer model of cultural evolution. In V. Sloutsky, B. Love, & K. McRae (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1466–1471). North Salt Lake: Sheridan Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2008c). Modeling cultural dynamics. In Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Fall symposium 1: Adaptive agents in a cultural context (pp. 18–25). Menlo Park: AAAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L. (2008d). The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1–2), 104–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Aerts, D. (2002). Contextualizing concepts using a mathematical generalization of the quantum formalism. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 14(4), 327–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Aerts, D. (2009). A mathematical model of the emergence of an integrated worldview. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 53, 434–451.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Saab, A. (2011). Creative interference and states of potentiality in analogy problem solving. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3506–3511). July 20–23, 2011, Boston MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Leijnen, S. (2009). How creative should creators be to optimize the evolution of ideas? A computational model. Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, 9, 108–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Russon, A. (2011). The evolution of human intelligence. In R. Sternberg & S. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of intelligence (pp. 328–350). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Saberi, M. (2011). How did human creativity arise? An agent-based model of the origin of cumulative open-ended cultural evolution. In Proceedings of the ACM conference on cognition & creativity (pp. 299–306). Atlanta, GA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., & Firouzi, H. (2012). Society functions best with an intermediate level of creativity. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1578–1583). August 1-4, Sapporo Japan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabora, L., Leijnen, S., & von Ghyczy, T. (in press). The relationship between creativity, imitation, and cultural diversity. International Journal of Software and Informatics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, C. (1994). Timewalkers: The prehistory of global colonization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hampton, J. (1987). Inheritance of attributes in natural concept conjunctions. Memory & Cognition, 15, 55–71.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hartley, J. (2009). From cultural studies to cultural science. Cultural Science, 2, 1–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood, C., d’Errico, F., Vanhaeren, M., van Niekerk, K., & Jacobs, Z. (2004). Middle stone age shell beads from South Africa, Science, 304, 404.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood, C. S., & Marean, C. W. (2003). The origin of modern human behavior. Current Anthropology, 44, 627–651.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, C. M. (1998). Theory of mind in nonhuman primates. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 211, 104–134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgs, P. (2000). The mimetic transition: A simulation study of the evolution of learning by imitation. Proceedings: Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 267, 1355–1361.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hinton, G. E., & Nowlan, S. J. (1987). How learning can guide evolution. Complex Systems, 1, 495–502.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holland, J. K. (1975). Adaptation in natural and artificial systems. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howard-Jones, P.A., & Murray, S. (2003). Ideational productivity, focus of attention, and context. Creativity Research Journal, 15(2&3), 153–166.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchins, E., & Hazelhurst, B. (1991). Learning in the cultural process. In C. Langton, J. Taylor, D. Farmer, & S. Rasmussen (Eds.), Artificial life II. Redwood City: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isham, C. (1995). Lectures on quantum theory. London: Imperial College Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerison, H. J. (1973). Evolution of the brain and intelligence. New York, NY: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science, MIT Press. Boston, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirby, S. (2001). Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure: An iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 5(2), 102–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kitto, K. (2006). Modelling and generating complex emergent behaviour. PhD thesis, School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences, The Flinders University of South Australia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitto, K. (2008a). High end complexity. International Journal of General Systems, 37(6), 689–714.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kitto, K. (2008b). Why quantum theory? In Proceedings of the second quantum interaction symposium (pp. 11–18). London: College Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitto, K., Ramm, B., Sitbon, L., & Bruza, P. (2011). Quantum theory beyond the physical: Information in context. Axiomathes, 21(2), 331–345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kitto, K., Bruza, P., & Gabora, L. (2012, June 10–15). A quantum information retrieval approach to memory. In Proceedings of the 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2012), WCCI 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, IEEE (pp. 932–939). Brisbane: Brisbane Convention Centre.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, R. (1989). Biological and behavioral perspectives on modern human origins in South Africa. In P. Mellars & C. Stringe (Eds.), The human revolution. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, R. G. (1999). The human career: Human biological and cultural origins. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, R. G. (2003). Whither the Neanderthals? Science, 299, 1525–1527.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krasnegor, N., Lyon, G. R., & Goldman-Rakic, P. S. (1997). Prefrontal cortex: Evolution, development, and behavioral neuroscience. Baltimore, MD: Brooke.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leakey, R. (1984). The origins of humankind. New York, NY: Science Masters Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leijnen, S., & Gabora, L. (2009). How creative should creators be to optimize the evolution of ideas? A computational model. Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, 9, 108–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leijnen, S., & Gabora, L. (2010, August 11–14). An agent-based simulation of the effectiveness of creative leadership. In Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 955–960). Portland, Oregon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martindale, C. (1995). Creativity and connectionism. In S. M. Smith, T. B. Ward, & R. A. Finke (Eds.), The creative cognition approach (pp. 249−268). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McBrearty, S., & Brooks, A. S. (2000). The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution, 39, 453–563.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mellars, P. (1973). The character of the middle-upper transition in south-west France. In C. Renfrew (Ed.) The explanation of culture change. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mellars, P. (1989a). Technological changes in the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition: Economic, social, and cognitive perspectives. In P. Mellars & C. Stringer (Eds.), The human revolution. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mellars, P. (1989b). Major issues in the emergence of modern humans. Current Anthropology, 30, 349–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. (2004). Toward a unified science of cultural evolution. Evolution, 58(1), 1–11.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. (2006). Toward a unified science of cultural evolution. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 329–383.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind: A search for the origins of art, science, and religion. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithen, S. (1998). Creativity in human evolution and prehistory. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osherson, D., & Smith, E. (1981). On the adequacy of prototype theory as a theory of concepts. Cognition, 9, 35–58.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Padian, K. (2008). Darwin’s enduring legacy. Nature, 451, 632–634.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Premack, D. (1988). “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” revisited. In R. W. Byrne & A. Whiten (Eds.), Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes and humans (pp. 160–179). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 515–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruff, C., Trinkaus, E., & Holliday, T. (1997). Body mass and encephalization in Pleistocene Homo. Nature, 387, 173–176.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rumbaugh, D. M. (1997). Competence, cortex, and primate models: A comparative primate perspective. In N. A. Krasnegor, G. R. Lyon, & P. S. Goldman-Rakic (Eds.), Development of the prefrontal cortex: Evolution, neurobiology, and behavior (pp. 117– 139). Baltimore, MD: Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, W. M., Ward, T. B., & Finke, R. A. (1995). The creative cognition approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soffer, O. (1994). Ancestral lifeways in EurasiaóThe Middle and Upper Paleolithic records. In M. Nitecki & D. Nitecki, (Eds.), Origins of anatomically modern humans. New York: Plenum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stringer, C. & Gamble, C. (1993). In search of the Neanderthals. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M., Kruger, A., & Ratner, H. (1993). Cultural learning. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 495–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wexler, B. (2006). Brain and culture: Neurobiology, ideology and social change. New York: Bradford Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, R. (1989a). Production complexity and standardization in early Aurignacian bead and pendant manufacture: Evolutionary implications. In P. Mellars & C. Stringer (Eds.), The human revolution: Behavioral and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans (pp. 366–90). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, R. (1989b). Toward a contextual understanding of the earliest body ornaments. In E. Trinkhaus (Eds.), The emergence of modern humans: Biocultural adaptations in the later Pleistocene. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whiten, A., Hinde, R., Laland, K., & Stringer, C. (2011). Culture evolves. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366, 938–948.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This project was supported in part by the Australian Research Council Discovery grant DP1094974, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders, Belgium.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, Arts Building, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada

    Liane Gabora

  2. Information Systems School, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, 4000, Australia

    Kirsty Kitto

Authors
  1. Liane Gabora
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kirsty Kitto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liane Gabora .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sunset Street 424, Longmont, 80501, Colorado, USA

    Liz Swan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gabora, L., Kitto, K. (2013). Concept Combination and the Origins of Complex Cognition. In: Swan, L. (eds) Origins of Mind. Biosemiotics, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5419-5_19

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation