Relational core cognition is for understanding the meaning of social life, not just enduring interpersonal relationships
Abstract
Understanding innate core cognition for social relations as a deep, generative social grammar that helps solve the learnability problem of discovering who relates to whom in what ways "amounts to asking how human social life is understandable, and hence possible" (Thomsen & Carey, , p.17). Expanding the focus beyond enduring interpersonal relationships allows us to understand how social and societal meaning (e.g., in ideology) reflect fundamental forms of relational coordination ultimately grounded in cross-species affordances.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Embodied and Extended Cognition
Language and cultural evolution
Child and Animal Learning Development
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Volume
- 49
- Pages
- e52–e52
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN