Human–dog interactions are a great way to demonstrate what I call the behaviour of language: that is, a fundamental difference between human and nonhuman communication and, consequently, between human and nonhuman cognition. Imagine a situation in which your dog is barking and whining at you (signalling) because it wants an item of food that only […]
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The Acquisition of Kinship
Originally published in Babel – The Language Magazine Shortly after our first daughter was born in 2005, I wrote in my diary: Everything feels like it has changed. I am a mother now. In less than a year there will be a little voice calling me mummy. Actually already it has started: one of the […]
Who Domesticated Humans?
I’ve long entertained the following hypothesis about the origin of our species: millions of years ago, an ape began to take an active interest in its offspring. Children became a resource. Mothers and others favoured docile, educable young who would stay close and could be shaped into reproductive allies. Human consciousness likely co-evolved with this […]
The Platonic case for Bitcoin
The basic idea of digital money is that digits can represent economic value. This value can be transferred by means of an accounting ledger. For example, ledger A might include: Alice = 0001, Bob = 0000 … Alice = 0000, Bob = 0001 Here, 1 unit of value has been transferred from Alice to Bob. […]
Bitcoin and academia
Paul Krugman once said to Bernard Lietaer, a monetary theorist and one of the architects of the euro, that he should ‘never touch the money system’ because he would kill himself academically. This statement is akin to ‘never question God’ in the academic environment of the middle ages. Indeed, Bitcoin is relevant to academia because […]
On the behaviour of language 3
When someone trains a dog to follow a command, they are actively making the dog respond to signals such as a pointing gesture or a spoken word. As I wrote in my letter, they are establishing a signal–response relationship. This is made easier by dogs’ unusual attentiveness to human signals — a trait far stronger […]