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Is there a biologically evolved capacity specific for number? [1]. I say ‘no’ because crucial biocultural phenomena necessary for the realization of exact symbolic quantification – number – occur outside… Click to show full abstract
Is there a biologically evolved capacity specific for number? [1]. I say ‘no’ because crucial biocultural phenomena necessary for the realization of exact symbolic quantification – number – occur outside the realm of natural selection [1]. In his comment, Nieder, whose work on the neural underpinnings of quantity encoding I have long admired, answers with a ‘clear “yes”’ [2]. Our diametrically opposed answers stem from fundamentally different views of the crucial concepts at stake: ‘human evolution’, ‘culture’, ‘number’, and ‘symbolic reference’.
Journal Title: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Year Published: 2017
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