LANGUAGE AND REASONING IN HUMANS AND OTHER ANIMALS Tatiana Chernigovskaya St. Petersburg State University Part IV

Yury Lotman Parallels between bi- hemispheric brain and culture Bi-polarity as a minimal necessary structure of semiotic organization … on all the levels of the thinking process

Lev Vygotsky A dialogue between different individuals grows into a dialogue within one brain

Vjach. Vs. Ivanov Information exchange within the brain and within the society… are different aspects of the same process

Mikhail Bakhtin A text only begins to live as a result of interaction of two minds – such as its true nature …The dialogue penetrates the whole domain of the living human thinking

So - The Right and the Left Brains: Hosting different languages=codes=signs Acting separately? - Partly Interpreting differently? - Yes Sharing memory? - Not totally

So, what is our species specific feature – language or broader cognitive abilities, primarily social? Are there any specific faculties?

All agree ToM is central for successful cognitive and social development, while the ability of mind and brain to use recursive rules as a species-specific feature is still under the discussion.

Human beings are able to impute mental states of others. Tomasello treats ToM as a specie-specific endowment. However, anthropologists and primatologists believe apes (and other higher species) also have it I was happy to hear that Tomasello has changed his mind