Merlin Donald

Merlin Wilfred Donald (born November 17, 1939) is an emeritus Canadian professor of psychology, neuroanthropology, and cognitive neuroscience,[1] at Case Western Reserve University, and in the Department of Psychology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.[2] He is noted for the position that evolutionary processes need to be considered in determining how the mind deals with symbolic information and language. In particular, he suggests that explicit, algorithmic processes (the computational theory of mind) may be inadequate to understanding how the mind works.[3]

He is also known as the proponent of the mimetic theory of speech origins.[4]

  1. ^ "Merlin Donald-Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science". Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  2. ^ "Merlin Donald-Emeritus Professor at Queens University". Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  3. ^ Merlin Donald (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674644830. quote: The problem of symbolic reference has always been the Achilles heel of computational approaches to language. The difficulty is this : to understand or use a symbol appropriately in context you must first understand what it represents, and this referential understanding is inherently nonsymbolic.
  4. ^ Hans Joas, Daniel R. Huebner (eds.), The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead, University of Chicago Press, 2016, p. 326.