The Human Mind through the Lens of Language: Generative Explorations

Most living forms in nature display various cognitive abilities in their behaviour. However, except for humans, no other animal builds fires and wheels, navigates with maps and tells stories to other conspecifics. We can witness this unique feature of the human mind in almost everything humans do, such as painting, singing and cooking; there is an underlying sense of unity in the generative part of these systems despite wide differences in what they are about. This book introduces, defends and develops a novel philosophical approach to the study of the generative mind. Nirmalangshu Mukherji argues for a single, species-specific generative principle that accounts for the human ability to combine symbolic forms without bound in each domain that falls under the generative mind.