符号以及我们如何成为人类

斐夷所非

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Symbols and How We Came to Be Human

First Online: 01 January 2023

pp 111–123

Abstract 摘要

A longstanding belief commonly mentioned in support of human exceptionalism is that our species is distinct from others in using symbols (a word I use here, as it is in the social sciences, to describe anything with a socially shared meaning that isn’t obvious). Countering the assumption that symbols are a distinct category that’s unique to humans, I propose that they be properly recognized as operating in concert with an impressive number and diversity of less widely meaningful, or outright meaningless, social markers. This chapter critiques the views on symbolism in our species often expressed by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists. I consider how symbolism could have evolved from behaviors of non-human animals, some of which live in societies bound together by more superficial “markers” of identity that do not convey any more profound significance. Such markers, considered broadly, can be essential in holding societies together.
支持人类例外论的一个长期信念是，我们物种在使用符号方面与其他物种不同（我在这里使用的这个词，就像在社会科学中一样，用来描述任何具有社会共享意义但并不明显的事物）。与符号是人类独有的独特类别的假设相反，我建议正确地认识到它们与数量众多且意义不大或完全无意义的社会标记协同运作。本章批评了社会学家、心理学家、人类学家、考古学家和生物学家经常表达的关于我们物种象征主义的观点。我考虑了象征主义是如何从非人类动物的行为演变而来的，其中一些动物生活在由更肤浅的身份“标记”联系在一起的社会中，这些“标记”并没有传达任何更深刻的意义。从广义上讲，这些标志对于维系社会团结至关重要。

1 Introduction 1 引言

People signal their identities in countless ways (Moffett 2013). We wear a ring to pronounce our commitment to marry, buy a Porsche to show off our wealth, don a chef’s hat to let others know the job we do, and give credence to our patriotism as Americans when we stand proud before Lady Liberty. We go out of our way to imbue many such signals with a special symbolic weight through the kind of deliberate labeling that humans turn into an art.
人们以无数种方式表明他们的身份（Moffett 2013）。我们戴戒指来宣布我们对结婚的承诺，买一辆保时捷来炫耀我们的财富，戴上厨师帽让别人知道我们所做的工作，当我们自豪地站在自由女神面前时，我们作为美国人的爱国主义得到了信任。我们不遗余力地通过人类变成一门艺术的刻意标签，为许多这样的信号注入特殊的象征意义。

Though “symbol” has come to be applied in other ways, for example, in computer science and psychoanalysis, I will use the word here, as social scientists and laypeople generally express it, to refer to anything with nonobvious meanings, and indeed with the usual requirement of multiple time-honored meanings, established by social convention through deliberate learning from others. A shamrock is at once a plant in the genus Trifolium, a means for predicting the weather, a good luck sign, a tool Saint Patrick used to teach the pagans about the Holy Trinity, and a symbol of the Irish and Ireland.
尽管“符号”已经以其他方式应用，例如在计算机科学和精神分析中，但我在这里使用这个词，正如社会科学家和外行通常所说的那样，指的是任何具有不明显含义的东西，实际上具有多种历史悠久的含义的通常要求，由社会习俗通过刻意学习他人建立起来。三叶草是三叶草属的一种植物，是预测天气的手段，是吉祥的征兆，是圣帕特里克用来教导异教徒圣三位一体的工具，也是爱尔兰和爱尔兰的象征。

Much of the social sciences dwells on symbols and what they represent. For sociologists and many anthropologists, we structure our societies around a labyrinth of symbols that inform and guide our interactions: a bit of paper has worth as money, and a baptism cleanses us of sins (Blumer 1986). But while Homo sapiens truly is the symbolic animal, this does not mean symbols are all-encompassing. Symbols are not consistently meaningful or consequential. As I will show, they should be regarded as part of a far more extensive system of human signals and cues that indicate our commonalities with other species.
许多社会科学都集中在符号及其所代表的事物上。对于社会学家和许多人类学家来说，我们围绕着一个迷宫般的符号构建我们的社会，这些符号为我们的互动提供信息和指导：一张纸有钱，洗礼可以洗净我们的罪恶（Blumer 1986）。但是，虽然智人确实是象征性的动物，但这并不意味着符号是包罗万象的。符号并非始终有意义或后果性。正如我将要展示的，它们应该被视为一个更广泛的人类信号和线索系统的一部分，这些信号和线索表明我们与其他物种的共同点。

2 “Marking” Our Affiliations 2 “标记”我们的附属机构

A clue to how we came to be a symbolic species can be found in the fact that, while people transmit information with symbols, we also have ways of broadcasting our identities that are not intrinsically symbolic. Of course, we rely on signs that don’t qualify as symbols. Some are icons that resemble their referents, like street signs with a crossed-out sketch of a person indicating no pedestrians. Other representations are understood through cultural conditioning without being explicitly taught: a bubble on a cartoon character’s nostril, which a Westerner might associate with a runny nose, expresses sleepiness in Japan, something the comics researcher Neil Cohn believes the children there generally deduce on their own (Cohn 2013). Less talked about, however, are numerous traits that “mark” who we are yet lack any ordinary meanings that we can call to mind.
我们是如何成为象征物种的线索可以从以下事实中找到：虽然人们用符号传递信息，但我们也有传播我们本质上不是象征性身份的方式。当然，我们依赖的标志不符合符号的条件。有些是类似于其所指对象的图标，例如带有划线的人草图的路标，表示没有行人。其他表现是通过文化条件来理解的，而没有被明确教导：卡通人物鼻孔上的气泡，西方人可能会将其与流鼻涕联系起来，在日本表达困倦，漫画研究员尼尔·科恩（Neil Cohn）认为那里的孩子们通常会自己推断出这一点（Cohn 2013）。然而，较少被谈论的是许多“标记”我们是谁的特征，但缺乏任何我们可以想到的普通含义。

We may not be cognizant of these qualities in daily life, even when the differences are in plain sight. University of Georgetown psychologist Abigail Marsh determined that Americans can spot a fellow citizen with great success from subtle, subliminally acquired traits whose presence usually never reaches their conscious attention, including how he or she walks, waves a hand, or expresses feelings like irritation (despite the universality of human emotions, different societies display them in distinct ways). Tellingly, few people have the faintest notion they have this knack–or that they behave in this manner themselves (Ekman et al. 1987; Marsh et al. 2007, 2003).
我们在日常生活中可能没有意识到这些品质，即使这些差异是显而易见的。乔治城大学心理学家阿比盖尔·马什（Abigail Marsh）确定，美国人可以从微妙的、潜意识中获得的特征中发现取得巨大成功的同胞，这些特征的存在通常永远不会引起他们的意识注意，包括他或她如何走路、挥手或表达恼怒等感受（尽管人类情感具有普遍性，但不同的社会以不同的方式表现出它们）。很能说明问题的是，很少有人对他们有这种诀窍——或者他们自己也有这种行为方式（Ekman 等人，1987 年;Marsh 等人，2007 年，2003 年）。

Another category of largely subconscious signposts concerns the social standing of others, registered from how they dress to their posture and voice, mostly from cues that people are unlikely to put a finger on, let alone ascribe intricate cultural meanings to (Oh et al. 2020; Krämer et al. 2008).
另一类主要是潜意识的路标涉及他人的社会地位，从他们的穿着到他们的姿势和声音，主要是来自人们不太可能指出的线索，更不用说赋予错综复杂的文化含义了（Oh 等人，2020 年;Krämer 等人，2008 年）。

Symbols are a subset of what I call markers, many of which are cues like a walking gait that carry little or no customary meaning. Some of these attributes go undetected until, perhaps, we are confronted by behaviors that run counter to our accepted practices; we don’t observe what is unique about our cuisine until we are startled by the smell of exotic foods; or we realize the nature of our relation to time only when we visit a place where the populace is more punctual than we are or, conversely, likes to show up late (Hall 1959).
符号是我所说的标记的一个子集，其中许多是像走路一样的线索，几乎没有或没有惯常的含义。其中一些属性没有被发现，直到我们可能面临与我们公认的做法背道而驰的行为;我们不会观察我们菜肴的独特之处，直到我们被异国情调食物的气味吓到;或者，只有当我们访问一个民众比我们更准时的地方，或者相反，喜欢迟到时，我们才会意识到我们与时间的关系的本质（Hall 1959）。

The combination of symbols and less overtly meaningful markers transforms our bodies into billboards pointing to who we are, from the styles of our hair to our footwear and toe rings and whether we shake our head or nod it (as Bulgarians habitually do) to say “no.”
符号和不太明显的意义标记的组合将我们的身体变成了指向我们是谁的广告牌，从我们的发型到我们的鞋和脚趾环，以及我们是摇头还是点头（就像保加利亚人习惯的那样）说“不”。

Setting aside the way symbols work and where their power came from, it’s worth asking whether markers, broadly speaking, are exclusively human. Apparently, no. Animal signals such as the elephant’s excited trumpet can relate information about something other than themselves. A few of those signs are markers of identity; the humble ant, for one, differentiates its societies using the insectoid version of a national emblem, an aroma distributed across the colony membership. Learn and give off the correct odiferous sign, and each ant is golden, whether her colony is composed of ten individuals or ten million. Ants identify this colony scent when they reach adulthood and take it on themselves by grooming others (Tsutsui 2004). Social insect identities, distinguishing us from them, are marked by chemistry, plain and simple, an elementary yes/no reaction with no symbolic overtones added. A small minority of vertebrate animals similarly use a marker to set apart their societies, e.g., a scent in the naked mole rat and a sound in the sperm whale and certain birds (Moffett 2019a).
撇开符号的运作方式和它们的力量来源不谈，值得问一下，从广义上讲，标记是否完全是人类的。显然，没有。动物信号（例如大象兴奋的小号）可以将有关自身以外的事物的信息联系起来。其中一些标志是身份的标志;例如，不起眼的蚂蚁使用昆虫版的国徽来区分其社会，这种香气在群落成员中传播。学习并发出正确的 odiferous 标志，每只蚂蚁都是金色的，无论她的蚁群是由 10 只个体还是 1000 万只组成。蚂蚁在成年后会识别这种蚁群的气味，并通过梳理其他蚂蚁来吸收它（Tsutsui 2004）。将我们与它们区分开来的昆虫社会身份以化学为标志，简单明了，是一种基本的是/否反应，没有添加象征性的暗示。少数脊椎动物同样使用标记来区分它们的社会，例如，裸鼹鼠的气味以及抹香鲸和某些鸟类的声音（Moffett 2019a）。

Of course, people are far more versatile in employing markers than ants. An ant’s “flag” usually changes little over her life, while her scent’s sole function is to designate membership. Our markers, on the other hand, whether profoundly significant symbols or unregistered in our awareness like our stride, can be modified over the years (think of the number of stars in an American flag) or serve other, at times, utilitarian functions (consider the rules about driving on the left or right side of the road); and some of them have nothing to do with distinguishing groups (a dove has become a universal symbol for “peace”).
当然，人们在使用标记方面比蚂蚁更灵活。蚂蚁的“旗帜”通常在她的一生中变化不大，而她的气味的唯一功能是指定成员。另一方面，我们的标记，无论是意义深远的符号，还是像我们的步伐一样在我们的意识中未被记录的符号，都可以随着时间的推移而被修改（想想美国国旗上的星星数量）或服务于其他有时是实用的功能（考虑关于在道路左侧或右侧行驶的规则）;其中一些与区分群体无关（鸽子已成为“和平”的通用象征）。

What does our aptitude with such “marking” traits suggest about the origin of symbolism? The earliest markers didn’t need to designate anything obscure like good luck or connections to a deceased relative—they would simply have made our social categorizations unambiguous. Learning to control specific markers to communicate them deliberately, and incorporate symbolic qualities into them, could come about with time.
我们具有这种“标记”特征的能力对象征主义的起源有什么暗示？最早的标记不需要指定任何晦涩难懂的东西，比如好运或与已故亲戚的联系——它们只会让我们的社会分类变得明确。学会控制特定的标记以刻意传达它们，并将象征性品质融入其中，可能会随着时间的推移而出现。

3 Making Sense of Our Actions 3 理解我们的行为

Even though our markers can be vastly more complex than the ant’s binding perfume, we need scant brainpower to recognize even the most Byzantine symbolic ones (Sterelny 2014). A dependable marker can potentially be given and understood by indefinite numbers of individuals with no additional cerebral demands and no obligation to sustain particular relationships (Moffett 2019b). Hence markers simplify life by making social interactions comfortably predictable. So long as unfamiliar persons look and act acceptable, ignorance is bliss: it’s by dint of their personal billboards that ants and people allow strangers to coexist in a society.
尽管我们的标记可能比蚂蚁的结合香水复杂得多，但我们需要很少的脑力来识别即使是最拜占庭式的象征性标记（Sterelny 2014）。一个可靠的标记可能被无限数量的个体提供和理解，没有额外的大脑需求，也没有义务维持特定的关系（Moffett 2019b）。因此，标记通过使社交互动变得舒适可预测来简化生活。只要不熟悉的人看起来和行为可以接受，无知就是福：正是凭借他们的个人广告牌，蚂蚁和人才允许陌生人在一个社会中共存。

By comparison, chimpanzees, who don’t use markers to sort out who their comrades are, can’t readily handle unknown others and must know each animal in their community as an individual. Imagine feeling obliged to introduce yourself to every stranger you meet or perpetually be aware of them as a possible threat. The demands would overwhelm. This fact, and not just human smarts, explains why chimpanzees occur in communities of at most about 200 while New Yorkers swarm by each other each day with hardly a concern (though the pandemic has been keeping them a bit farther apart than normal) (Moffett 2020).
相比之下，黑猩猩不使用标记来区分自己的同伴是谁，它们不能轻易地处理未知的其他人，必须将社区中的每只动物作为一个个体来了解。想象一下，你觉得有义务向你遇到的每一个陌生人介绍自己，或者永远意识到他们是一个可能的威胁。这些要求会让人不知所措。这一事实，而不仅仅是人类的智慧，解释了为什么黑猩猩出现在最多约 200 只黑猩猩的社区中，而纽约人每天都蜂拥而至，几乎没有任何担忧（尽管大流行使它们之间的距离比平时更远）（Moffett 2020）。

Regardless of whether markers have scores of symbolic meanings or none that we can articulate, it’s simplicity itself to detect them—even on each other, attuned as we are to the billboard each of us carries, from skin tones to the cross pendants on our throats. Humans register the physical, cultural, and other traits of those around us without a thought. We categorize anything we come across, including people as group members, reflexively, our positive or negative reactions triggered in milliseconds of an encounter. This occurs before we can put any loaded labels on them such as “working class,” “faithful Christian,” or “American.” (Banaji and Greenwald 2013; Todorov 2017). The typical research subject is shown faces of different racial identities, but these automatic identifications, and responses, will hold as well for a simple abstract marker. So it is that Holocaust survivors needn’t consider the symbolic implications of a swastika for the sight of one to engage the limbic system, setting off sensations of horror (Greenspan and Shanker 2009). National flags have grown so ubiquitous that on an average day we notice them barely more than the air we breathe, yet at some primal level we give them our attention. Yale psychologist Melissa Ferguson and colleagues found that a continual presence of American flags in the background intensifies people’s sense of unity and nationalism (Butz 2009; Hassin et al. 2007).
无论标记是否具有数十种象征意义，或者没有我们可以表达的象征意义，检测它们本身就很简单——即使是在彼此身上，就像我们一样与我们每个人携带的广告牌相协调，从肤色到我们喉咙上的十字架吊坠。人类不假思索地记录我们周围人的身体、文化和其他特征。我们条件反射地对遇到的任何东西进行分类，包括作为群体成员的人，我们在相遇的几毫秒内触发的积极或消极反应。这发生在我们给他们贴上任何加载的标签之前，例如 “工人阶级”、“忠实的基督徒” 或 “美国人”。（Banaji 和 Greenwald 2013 年;Todorov 2017 年）。典型的研究对象是展示不同种族身份的面孔，但这些自动识别和反应也适用于简单的抽象标记。因此，大屠杀幸存者不需要考虑纳粹标志的象征意义，即看到一个人参与边缘系统，引发恐怖感（格林斯潘和尚克 2009 年）。国旗已经变得无处不在，以至于在平均每天里，我们注意到它们的次数几乎不会超过我们呼吸的空气，但在某种原始层面上，我们会关注它们。耶鲁大学心理学家梅丽莎·弗格森（Melissa Ferguson）及其同事发现，背景中持续出现的美国国旗会增强人们的团结感和民族主义（Butz 2009;Hassin 等人，2007 年）。

Only when called on to explain ourselves afterward do we justify our conduct or emotions, often by spelling out what a marker imparts to us—in short, by crediting it with a symbolic value. Such research findings bring to mind views expressed by the 19th-century sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, who saw most behavior originating below the everyday awareness that we make sense of afterward via verbal accounts (Pareto 1935). Only at the stage of these rationalizations do we make full use of our cognitive powers, in part by dredging up the meanings we have been taught to associate with a particular situation, a predilection tracing back to when humans first tried to make sense of the attributes they held in common.
只有当事后被要求解释自己时，我们才会证明我们的行为或情感是合理的，通常是通过阐明一个标记赋予我们什么——简而言之，赋予它象征价值。这样的研究结果让人想起 19 世纪社会学家维尔弗雷多·帕累托（Vilfredo Pareto）表达的观点，他认为大多数行为都源于我们事后通过口头叙述理解的日常意识之下（帕累托 1935）。只有在这些合理化的阶段，我们才能充分利用我们的认知能力，部分是通过挖掘我们被教导与特定情况相关联的意义，这种偏好可以追溯到人类第一次试图理解他们所拥有的共同属性时。

4 “Belonging” Isn’t About Knowledge 4 “归属感”与知识无关

I contend that our ancestors increasingly incorporated symbolic qualities into their markers and that we continue to build on such meanings to explain our shared behaviors. Actually, symbols are flimsy constructs since our rationalizations don’t require their meanings to be deeply and consistently embedded in our thinking. As pointed out for people’s knee-jerk revulsion to a swastika, a symbol doesn’t need to be profound, or for that matter to possess a conventional meaning, let alone layered meanings, for us to be sensitive to it, or to its absence. The marker on its own, even if we are blind to its specific connotations, can give us an intense emotional ride. Americans well up with pride while fumbling through “The Star-Spangled Banner” without recalling its words or having the foggiest notion of what it is to be spangled. “It is likely that even people who are expert in the use of symbols—shamans, priests, or sorcerers—cannot state precisely what a particular symbol is all about,” the anthropologist Mari Womack reminds us (Womack 2005, p. 51).
我认为，我们的祖先越来越多地将象征品质融入他们的标记中，我们继续以这些意义为基础来解释我们的共同行为。实际上，符号是脆弱的结构，因为我们的合理化不需要它们的含义深深地、一致地嵌入我们的思维中。正如人们对纳粹标志下意识的厌恶所指出的那样，一个符号不需要深刻，也不需要具有约定俗成的含义，更不用说分层的含义，我们就可以对它或它的缺失保持敏感。即使我们对它的具体含义视而不见，这个标记本身也可以给我们带来强烈的情感体验。美国人在摸索着读完《星条旗》（The Star-Spangled Banner）时，没有回想起它的歌词，也没有对什么是条带旗有最模糊的概念，他们感到自豪。“即使是擅长使用符号的人——萨满、牧师或巫师——也可能无法准确地说出某个特定符号的全部内容，”人类学家 Mari Womack 提醒我们（Womack 2005，第 51 页）。

The less-than-obligatory importance of mutually understood meanings behind symbols is backed up by examples from my interest, which is in how societies hold together. Symbols like anthems are touchstones for patriotism. Yet to earn a passport, immigrants are taught more about the principles and emblems of the adopted country than native-born citizens, who are liable to think little about national symbols despite professing and insisting on devotion to them. No wonder most Americans would fail a U.S. naturalization test (Orgad 2011).
符号背后相互理解的含义并不重要，这得到了我感兴趣的例子的支持，即社会如何团结在一起。像国歌这样的符号是爱国主义的试金石。然而，为了获得护照，移民比土生土长的公民更多地了解被收养国的原则和标志，尽管他们自称并坚持对国家象征的忠诚，但往往很少考虑这些象征。难怪大多数美国人会无法通过美国入籍测试（Orgad 2011）。

This reflects how in the normal course of life, we discern our compatriots less by their memory for facts than by their way of being: they act as expected, whether it’s how they talk, gesture, or share social norms. We needn’t burden our overloaded minds with the meanings behind every facet of our lives. Even if people agree about which markers excite their passions (Americans commemorating the 4th of July or honoring the U.S. Constitution), what message those cherished markers hold—if any—could well reside in the eye of each beholder. Such meaning could be based on his or her personal life experiences, rather than in what the general population makes of them, as a common symbol.
这反映了在正常的人生过程中，我们不是通过对事实的记忆来识别我们的同胞，而是通过他们的存在方式来识别他们的存在方式：他们按照预期行事，无论是他们如何说话、做手势还是分享社会规范。我们不需要用我们生活各个方面背后的意义来负担我们超负荷的头脑。即使人们就哪些标志物激发了他们的激情达成一致（美国人纪念 7 月 4 日或尊重美国宪法），这些珍贵的标志物所传达的信息（如果有的话）很可能存在于每个旁观者的眼中。这种意义可能基于他或她的个人生活经历，而不是普通民众如何看待它们作为一种常见的象征。

Even symbols with meanings that are widely recognized and well thought out evoke sentiments and memories specific to the different people and subgroups of people who value them. Thus, any commonalities the symbols suggest will mask a great deal of diversity, with those interpretations furthermore adapting over time to circumstances (Guibernau 1996). The pledge of allegiance represents something quite different to immigrant communities than anti-immigration activists, yet both revere this symbolic affirmation. While most symbols lodge in our collective memories long enough to give our lives a sense of stability, social cohesion can be imperiled when their meanings diverge so much that distinct social factions emerge within the same society. Consider the contrasting views about the statues of Confederate generals or even about donning a mask during the COVID-19 outbreak.
即使是具有广泛认可和深思熟虑的含义的符号，也会唤起不同人群和重视它们的人的情感和记忆。因此，这些符号所暗示的任何共同点都会掩盖大量的多样性，这些解释会随着时间的推移进一步适应环境（Guibernau 1996）。对于移民社区来说，效忠誓言与反移民活动家所代表的东西完全不同，但两者都崇敬这种象征性的肯定。虽然大多数符号在我们的集体记忆中停留的时间足够长，可以给我们的生活带来稳定感，但当它们的含义差异如此之大，以至于在同一社会中出现不同的社会派别时，社会凝聚力就会受到威胁。想想关于邦联将军雕像，甚至在 COVID-19 爆发期间戴口罩的对比观点。

Once we acknowledge that ascribing standard meanings to symbols isn’t the raison d’être of human life—that people do this poorly and yet still bond around all manner of social signals—the dawn of societies that allowed for the coexistence of strangers becomes easier to envision. After the long march of time tolerance of unfamiliar others with acceptable identities would come to undergird the burgeoning populations of modern nations.
一旦我们承认赋予符号标准含义并不是人类生活存在的理由——人们在这方面做得很差，但仍然围绕着各种社会信号建立联系——允许陌生人共存的社会的曙光就变得更容易想象了。经过时间的漫长征程，对不熟悉的、具有可接受身份的人的宽容将成为现代国家蓬勃发展的人口的基础。

To conclude that the meanings of the markers we call symbols are evoked after the fact, if even then, is not to claim that symbolism is insignificant. Most critically, at some point in our lineage we developed language, a symbolic mode of communication par excellence. (Although even there, children figure out most words from context and exposure, without being explicitly taught their meaning, as the usual definition of a symbol requires (Bloom 2001; Gopnik et al. 1999)). Exactly when language arose is a mystery, given that both gestures and the spoken word leave no trace. But speech has come to dominate our inner thoughts and outer lives, enhancing our capacity to think in the abstract and our ability to share an idea with many others, given a similar-enough interpretation of words. With language, a word like “hawk” can apply to its subject in complex referential ways. I might convey an idea such as hawks can fly even when no hawk is present or bring up the specific hawk you saw yesterday.
得出结论说，我们称为符号的标记的含义是在事后被唤起的，即使那样，也不是说象征意义是微不足道的。最关键的是，在我们血统的某个时刻，我们发展了语言，一种卓越的象征流方式。（尽管即使在那里，孩子们也能从上下文和暴露中弄清楚大多数单词，而没有像通常的符号定义所要求的那样被明确地教导它们的含义（Bloom 2001;Gopnik 等人，1999 年））。语言究竟是何时出现的是一个谜，因为手势和口语都没有留下任何痕迹。但是，语言已经开始主导我们的内心思想和外在生活，增强了我们抽象思考的能力，以及我们与许多人分享想法的能力，只要对文字的解释足够相似。对于语言，像 “hawk” 这样的词可以以复杂的指称方式应用于其主题。我可能会传达一个想法，例如即使没有鹰，鹰也可以飞行，或者提出您昨天看到的特定鹰。

Through speech we exchange details about what we treasure; no wonder that the most adored aspects of our identities are the focus of everything from gossip to grand art. In fact, it’s from such communications that we largely distill the meanings associated with the markers around us, etching them more or less the same way as symbols in every person’s mind.
通过言语，我们交流我们珍视之物的细节;难怪我们身份中最受崇拜的方面成为从八卦到盛大艺术的一切的焦点。事实上，正是从这样的交流中，我们在很大程度上提炼了与我们周围的标记相关的意义，并以或多或少与每个人脑海中的符号相同的方式蚀刻它们。

5 The Prehistory of Symbols—With a Warning 5 符号的史前史——带有警告

A commonplace assumption is that Homo sapiens has always wielded symbolic behavior, and perhaps earlier members of our family tree also did. It is no surprise then that carefully laid-out scratches on bone, eggshell pieces once likely strung into necklaces, and dyes that can be used to decorate human skin have been treated as evidence of early symbol-driven cultures[e.g., (Henshilwood and d’Errico 2011). Caution is in order, though. The hard truth is it might be impossible to ascertain at what juncture in the distant past people began to credit meanings to actions and things, and share the meanings amongst themselves as symbols. After all, we can embellish objects, wear jewelry, or paint ourselves just because such actions give us pleasure or furnish something we enjoy; colorful patterns go in and out of fashion on mass-produced goods merely because the novelty catches the eye for a time. Design elements like paisley endure the ages even though any meaning they were once endowed with is forgotten.
一个普遍的假设是，智人总是使用象征性的行为，也许我们家谱的早期成员也这样做。因此，毫不奇怪，骨头上精心布置的划痕、曾经可能串在项链上的蛋壳碎片以及可用于装饰人类皮肤的染料被视为早期符号驱动文化的证据[例如，（Henshilwood 和 d’Errico 2011）。不过，需要谨慎。残酷的事实是，可能无法确定在遥远的过去的哪个时刻，人们开始将意义赋予行为和事物，并将这些意义作为符号在他们之间分享。毕竟，我们可以装饰物品、佩戴珠宝或为自己绘画，只是因为这些行为给我们带来了快乐或提供了我们喜欢的东西;彩色图案在批量生产的商品上流行和过时，仅仅是因为新奇的东西在一段时间内引起了人们的注意。像佩斯利花纹这样的设计元素经久不衰，即使它们曾经被赋予的任何意义都被遗忘了。

The trouble with analyzing the past is how easily we can assume the existence of symbolism. To wit, when children draw, they independently discover aesthetic geometric designs that can be surprisingly alike from child to child. Yet the similarities don’t signal anything about the children’s identities, let alone have an agreed-on meaning, as the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner described in his 1980 book Artful Scribbles (Gardner 1980). And the meanings they do communicate, like mountains indicated by triangles, might not be arbitrary, as expected for a symbol, but rather show a figurative resemblance to what they stand for, and therefore denote something that a naïve viewer can guess. This applies as well to the intended impact of art. When asked to sketch a line to convey a feeling, adults from all over draw angles to express anger and curves to express positive emotions; uninformed others looking at the drawings describe the same sensations (Winner 2019). In a world of thorns and jagged rock, equating sharpness with a threat makes sense. This brings to mind how people everywhere intuit a dreamed lion as a sign of strength without being taught to do so—and consequentially, from the sociologist’s point of view, it doesn’t constitute a symbol (even if a therapist devoted to Freud’s school of thought might say it is) (Stevens 1998).
分析过去的麻烦在于我们很容易假设象征主义的存在。也就是说，当孩子们画画时，他们会独立发现审美的几何设计，这些设计可能因孩子而异。然而，这些相似之处并不能表明这些孩子的身份，更不用说具有公认的含义，正如哈佛大学心理学家霍华德·加德纳（Howard Gardner）在他 1980 年的著作《巧妙的涂鸦》（Artful Scribbles，Gardner 1980）中所描述的那样。它们所传达的含义，就像三角形所代表的山脉一样，可能不是像符号所期望的那样是任意的，而是显示出与它们所代表的象征性的相似性，因此表示天真的观众可以猜到的东西。这也适用于艺术的预期影响。当被要求画一条线来传达一种情感时，来自各地的成年人画出角度来表达愤怒，画出曲线来表达积极的情绪;不知情的其他人在看这些图画时描述了同样的感觉（Winner 2019）。在一个到处都是荆棘和锯齿状岩石的世界里，将锋利等同于威胁是有道理的。这让人想起了世界各地的人们是如何直觉地将梦中的狮子视为力量的标志，而没有被教导这样做——因此，从社会学家的角度来看，它并不构成一个符号（即使致力于弗洛伊德学派的治疗师可能会说它是）（Stevens 1998）。

Therefore, many recent human creations, let alone a prehistoric drawing of man or beast, didn’t necessarily serve to illustrate something else, that is, act as a symbol for its people, no matter how elegant, abstract, or fanciful that masterpiece might be (e.g., Iliopoulos 2016; Malafouris 2008; Wynn et al. 2009). While sketching it out, or viewing it, doubtless engaged people’s imaginations (Dutton 2009), a Paleolithic painting may simply represent a person; a human figure may have been given a bison head solely as a lark; red body paint could have been beloved for no reason other than that it was pretty. Indeed, Griffith University anthropologist Michelle Langley has proposed that much of what we think of as Paleolithic art may have been devised in play, perhaps for children (Langley 2018).
因此，许多近代的人类创作，更不用说史前人或野兽的图画，并不一定能说明其他东西，也就是说，无论这件杰作多么优雅、抽象或奇特，都充当其人民的象征（例如，Iliopoulos 2016;Malafouris 2008 年;Wynn 等人，2009 年）。在素描或观看它时，无疑激发了人们的想象力（Dutton 2009），旧石器时代的画作可能只是代表一个人;一个人形可能只是作为百灵鸟被赋予了野牛头;Red Body Paint 之所以受到喜爱，除了它很漂亮之外，没有其他原因。事实上，格里菲斯大学人类学家米歇尔·兰利（Michelle Langley）提出，我们认为的旧石器时代艺术大部分可能是在游戏中设计的，也许是为儿童设计的（兰利 2018 年）。

Discussions of symbolism in archaeology are seldom more than hunches that unearthed artifacts might have stood for something and, for all we know, are more of a measure of how symbol-obsessed we are today than an accurate appraisal of our predecessors. Such reports often point to records of living hunter-gatherers doing things like painting a tribal motif with red ochre crayons; or to a repetition of art over generations, or across widely spaced locations, implying at least an abiding aesthetic preference—or perhaps an outcome of what University of Sydney archaeologist Peter Hiscock calls the echo principle. Paleolithic people would rediscover older stenciled handprints or bison paintings, and in all likelihood replicate them much as a college student will copy a Monet. Never losing sight of their forefathers’ practical or aesthetic designs, humans kept returning to them, echoing the past (Hiscock 2007). Whether those recurrent designs originally symbolized something is beyond reckoning. Still, a commonsensical hypothesis would be that among the first artifacts to which people put symbolic meanings were objects their forebears had already delighted in for generations—among the items people brought into caves between 195,000 and 123,000 years ago were the sorts of pretty seashells we are still fond of collecting (Marean 2010).
考古学中关于象征主义的讨论很少只不过是直觉，即出土的文物可能代表着某种东西，而且，据我们所知，这更像是衡量我们今天对符号的痴迷程度，而不是对我们的前辈的准确评价。此类报告通常指向活着的狩猎采集者做一些事情的记录，例如用红赭石蜡笔画部落图案;或者是几代人之间艺术的重复，或跨越遥远的地点，至少意味着一种持久的审美偏好——或者也许是悉尼大学考古学家彼得·希斯科克（Peter Hiscock）所说的回声原则的结果。旧石器时代的人们会重新发现更古老的模版手印或野牛画，并且很可能会复制它们，就像大学生复制莫奈一样。人类从未忘记他们祖先的实用或美学设计，不断回到他们身边，与过去相呼应（Hiscock 2007）。那些反复出现的设计最初是否象征着某种东西，这是无法计算的。尽管如此，一个常识性的假设是，在人们赋予象征意义的第一批文物中，有他们的祖先世世代代都喜欢的物品——在 195,000 到 123,000 年前人们带入洞穴的物品中，有我们仍然喜欢收集的那种漂亮的贝壳（Marean 2010）。

Few have disputed that certain relics held well-established meanings to their makers. Burial of the deceased, which began at least 100,000 years ago in Homo sapiens and was done by Neanderthals, too, suggests a mourning process now richly symbolic (Zilhão et al. 2016). Yet around the globe, depending on the person and the situation, human corpses can be disposed of for reasons other than as a mortuary ritual: feeling disgust around rotting flesh for one. Objects carefully interred with the dead are another matter. Ochre, found near some ancient remains, might have meant something to the living. Less open to question are the clothes of two children buried near Moscow 30 millennia ago, adorned with thousands of ivory beads that must have taken years, and great motivating force, to produce—evidence of the spiritual significance of their death, their high social rank or both (Trinkaus et al. 2014). But even a clue of someone’s importance needn’t be associated with a widespread symbolic meaning.
很少有人质疑某些遗物对它们的制作者具有公认的意义。死者的埋葬始于至少 100,000 万年前的智人，也是由尼安德特人完成的，这表明现在的哀悼过程具有丰富的象征意义（Zilhão 等人，2016 年）。然而，在全球范围内，根据个人和情况，人类尸体可以被丢弃，原因不是作为殡葬仪式：对一个人的腐肉感到厌恶。与死者一起小心埋葬的物品是另一回事。在一些古代遗迹附近发现的赭石可能对活着的人来说意味着什么。不太值得质疑的是 30 千年前埋葬在莫斯科附近的两个孩子的衣服，上面装饰着成千上万的象牙珠子，这肯定是经过数年时间和巨大动力才能产生的——证明他们死亡的精神意义、他们的高社会地位或两者兼而有之（Trinkaus 等人，2014 年）。但是，即使是某人重要性的线索，也不需要与广泛的象征意义相关联。

All this is to say that because the meanings of symbols are by definition not obvious to the eye, ascribing symbolic importance to artifacts from the remote past can be wishful thinking, despite the bold assertions that have often been made about archeological findings.
所有这一切都是为了说，因为根据定义，符号的含义并不明显，所以赋予遥远过去的文物象征重要性可能是一厢情愿的想法，尽管人们经常对考古发现做出大胆的断言。

6 The Origins of Markers and, Eventually, Symbols 6 标记的起源，最终是符号的起源

Nowadays people are inspired by so many symbols with common meanings accrued over centuries that it’s a struggle to imagine some proto-human population with no idea-laden symbols at all. Acknowledging that the construal of prehistoric artifacts as symbols will always be a debatable business, we must nevertheless ask how people first came to have markers, let alone deeply appreciated symbolic ones?
如今，人们受到许多几个世纪以来积累的具有共同含义的符号的启发，以至于很难想象一些根本没有充满思想的符号的原始人类群体。承认将史前文物解释为符号永远是一个值得商榷的事情，但我们必须问，人们最初是如何拥有标记的，更不用说深深欣赏的象征性标记了？

Underlying the evolution of our first social markers may have been an urge to match others. Our predecessors would have excelled at learning from each other, an ability in reach of some animals; consider the novel song that swept across Canadian populations of white throated sparrows over the last 20 years (Otter et al. 2020). This talent can generate cultures, that is, the sum total of socially transmitted information, including such traditions as exist in meerkat clans that prefer to sleep late or chimpanzees that pick rocks versus sticks to open tasty nuts (Whiten and Schaik 2007).
我们最初的社交标志演变的背后可能是与他人相匹配的冲动。我们的前辈们会擅长相互学习，这种能力是某些动物所能达到的;想想过去 20 年席卷加拿大白喉麻雀种群的小说歌曲（Otter 等人，2020 年）。这种才能可以产生文化，即社会传播信息的总和，包括喜欢睡得晚的猫鼬氏族或捡石头而不是棍子打开美味坚果的黑猩猩中存在的传统（Whiten 和 Schaik 2007）。

While languages enable us to combine symbols in complex ways, symbols, or at least their rudimentary antecedents, could have materialized prior to speech, as is intimated by what some monkeys accomplish. Certain species give different vocalizations to warn of danger, depending, in the case of vervets, on whether the threat is a snake, a hawk, or a leopard. The primates respond to the calls as if they had seen the predator themselves, for instance, strategically descending to earth should they be in a tree or hiding in a bush if they are on the ground after hearing an eagle alarm. Moreover, while the calls vary little from troop to troop, the vervets learn from their fellow troop members which snake, bird of prey, and predatory mammal species the sounds apply to locally, and prefer to cry out when their friends or family happen to be in earshot (Cheney and Seyfarth 2008).
虽然语言使我们能够以复杂的方式组合符号，但符号，或者至少是它们的基本前因，可能在语言之前就已经存在，正如一些猴子所完成的事情所暗示的那样。某些物种会发出不同的发声来警告危险，就 vervet 而言，这取决于威胁是蛇、鹰还是豹。灵长类动物对呼叫的反应就像它们亲眼看到捕食者一样，例如，如果它们在树上，它们会战略性地下降到地面，如果它们在听到老鹰警报后在地上，则躲在灌木丛中。此外，虽然不同部队的叫声差异不大，但长尾鸫会从他们的其他部队成员那里了解这些声音适用于当地的蛇、猛禽和掠食性哺乳动物物种，并且当他们的朋友或家人碰巧在耳边时更喜欢哭泣（Cheney 和 Seyfarth 2008）。

Monkey vocalizations are of restricted utility: a vervet can’t describe a hawk seen yesterday or point out that hawks fly, as we can with language. That’s because no matter how smart the animal, a signal like a hawk call given on its own isn’t likely to convey such details. Whatever’s going on in the monkey mind, lacking a method for combining words, as people do, to the nth degree, with language, it can just express what’s happening in the here and now (contrast that to a person shaking her head when uttering the word hawk to say no hawk is around). More generally, rather than an utterance symbolizing something, vervets may be responding to the sounds of a troopmate as a matter of simple association: they learn to connect a particular cry to a snake being present much the same way they connect lightning with thunder. In fact, in the view of University of California anthropologist Terrence Deacon, nothing should be designated a symbol that exists in isolation. He argues that symbols must exist in combination with other symbols as part of a system (Deacon 1997).
猴子的发声效用有限：长尾不能描述昨天看到的鹰或指出鹰会飞，就像我们对语言所做的那样。这是因为无论动物多么聪明，像鹰叫这样的信号本身都不太可能传达这些细节。无论猴子的头脑中发生了什么，缺乏一种将词语与语言结合到 n 度的方法，它就可以表达此时此地发生的事情（这与一个人在说出 hawk 这个词时摇头说没有 hawk 在身边形成对比）。更一般地说，长尾鸥不是象征某物的话语，而是对队友的声音做出简单的联想反应：它们学会了将特定的叫声与蛇的出现联系起来，就像它们将闪电与雷声联系起来一样。事实上，在加利福尼亚大学人类学家特伦斯·迪肯（Terrence Deacon）看来，没有任何东西应该被指定为孤立存在的符号。他认为，符号必须作为系统的一部分与其他符号一起存在（Deacon 1997）。

There’s evidence that various animals have some capacity to use symbols even in this restrictive sense. In her years of studying parrots, ethologist Irene Pepperberg has shown that tame birds can put together words they memorized, providing insights into their comprehension of what’s being communicated (Pepperberg and Call 2017). And one monkey species is known to do this in nature, with sequences of calls that both point out a predator and indicate how much of a hazard it represents at the moment (Arnold and Zuberbühler 2006).
有证据表明，即使在这种限制性的意义上，各种动物也有一定的使用符号的能力。在她研究鹦鹉的多年中，行为学家艾琳·佩珀伯格（Irene Pepperberg）表明，驯服的鸟类可以将它们记住的单词放在一起，从而深入了解它们对所传达内容的理解（Pepperberg 和 Call 2017）。已知一种猴子在自然界中会这样做，其一系列叫声既指出了捕食者，又表明了它目前代表的危险程度（Arnold 和 Zuberbühler 2006）。

As for chimpanzees, while I’ve already mentioned these apes don’t pick out comrades based on any sort of identifying marker, that isn’t to say they lack anything we can think of as symbolic. As it happens, the behaviors they master by observing one another connote distinct things in different communities. A chimpanzee’s vocal cords generate only a limited array of sounds; it makes sense for this species to rely heavily on arbitrary actions or gestures, often after the communicator makes sure the desired individual or group is watching (Pollick and Waal 2007; Bard et al. 2017; Pika and Fröhlich 2019).
至于黑猩猩，虽然我已经提到过，这些猿类不会根据任何类型的识别标记来挑选同伴，但这并不是说它们缺乏任何我们可以认为是象征性的东西。碰巧的是，他们通过相互观察所掌握的行为在不同社区中意味着不同的事物。黑猩猩的声带只产生有限的声音;这个物种严重依赖任意动作或手势是有道理的，通常是在沟通者确保所需的个人或群体正在观看之后（Pollick 和 Waal 2007;Bard 等人，2017 年;Pika 和 Fröhlich 2019 年）。

For instance, noisily tearing foliage with the teeth is given as an invitation for sex in one community, for play in another, and for aggression in a third. Meanwhile, in a community where ripping twigs denotes something else, willingness to play can be signaled by making nests on the ground. (Boesch and Valsiner 2012) More is going on than mere association. To get the message across, a nest-maker can repeat the act until its persistence pays off while adding a “play face,” smile, or other signs of wanting to frolic, indicators of intentional communication (Andrews 2020; Waal et al. 2012).
例如，用牙齿吵闹地撕扯树叶，在一个社区被当作性邀请，在另一个社区里被邀请玩耍，在第三个社区被邀请去侵略。同时，在一个扯掉树枝表示其他东西的社区中，可以通过在地上筑巢来表示玩耍的意愿。（Boesch 和 Valsiner 2012）不仅仅是联想。为了传达信息，筑巢者可以重复该行为，直到其持久性得到回报，同时添加“玩脸”、微笑或其他想要嬉戏的迹象，这些是有意交流的指标（安德鲁斯 2020 年;Waal 等人，2012 年）。

In addition to using languages, what people do that no other primate does is take the step of connecting such cultural signs with their societies, in extreme cases rejecting those who act inappropriately, say by disrespecting the flag. A chimpanzee loudly chomping greenery for the “wrong” reason isn’t attacked for this act since the apes don’t perceive the behavior as indicative of belonging to their community (Gruber et al. 2015). Still, we can imagine that at least one highly variable chimpanzee call, the pant-hoot, could readily evolve to serve this purpose, if the members of each group were able to learn a particular pant hoot from one another to create community dialects (as was once thought likely, and still might be the case in some populations: Desai et al. 2021).
除了使用语言之外，人们所做的其他灵长类动物没有做的事情是采取将这些文化符号与他们的社会联系起来的步骤，在极端情况下拒绝那些行为不当的人，比如不尊重国旗。黑猩猩出于“错误”的原因大声咀嚼绿色植物不会因此行为而受到攻击，因为猿类不认为这种行为表明属于他们的社区（Gruber 等人，2015 年）。尽管如此，我们可以想象，如果每个群体的成员能够从彼此那里学习特定的 pant 叫声以创造社区方言（曾经认为可能，并且在某些种群中仍然可能如此），那么至少一种高度可变的黑猩猩叫声，即 pant-hoot，可以很容易地进化到达到这个目的： Desai 等人，2021 年）。

A signal to which our forebears responded in this way could have been the precursor of our symbols, for example, if they gave it as a greeting (Tsutsui 2004). Such a primal marker would represent a kind of password that we duplicated from one another, which at first needn’t have been more meaningful than an ant’s home scent. This protoword for us would have become interlinked over time with other group differences of the sort found in chimpanzees, as these started to be used a identity markers as well, thereby creating a prototype of the billboards that proclaim human affiliations. The evolution of this transformative attribute of human identification with groups likely initiated our symbolic existence.
我们的祖先以这种方式回应的信号可能是我们符号的前身，例如，如果他们将其作为问候来表达（Tsutsui 2004）。这样的原始标记将代表一种我们彼此复制的密码，起初它不需要比蚂蚁的家气味更有意义。随着时间的推移，这个原型词会与黑猩猩中发现的其他群体差异相互关联，因为这些也开始被用作身份标记，从而创造了宣告人类归属的广告牌的原型。人类对群体的认同这一变革性属性的演变可能开启了我们的象征性存在。

7 The Human Relationship to Symbols 7 人与符号的关系

I have examined symbols from the perspective of a range of disciplines to conclude that much of the human universe is not mediated by symbols per se but rather by simpler, at times subconscious markers of the general sort found in some other species. Our initial markers would have served to reinforce categories of social significance to early humans, notably to the societies that those markers helped keep intact; from such markers would have emerged the first human symbols—indeed, entire systems of symbols.
我从一系列学科的角度研究了符号，得出的结论是，人类宇宙的大部分并不是由符号本身介导的，而是由其他物种中发现的更简单的、有时是潜意识的标记来调节。我们最初的标记将有助于加强对早期人类的社会意义类别，特别是对这些标记帮助保持完整的社会;从这些标记中会出现第一批人类符号——事实上，整个符号系统。

What does all this intimate for people and their potent relationship with symbols? Tool making lost its privileged status as a defining trait for humans after other species, notably our chimpanzee relatives, were seen modifying objects to carry out such tasks as collecting termites with a stick or mopping water using crushed foliage as a sponge (Sanz et al. 2013). Self-awareness was believed to separate people from animals, too, but we have since learned that chimps, dolphins, and elephants recognize themselves in their mirrored reflections (Reiss et al. 2017). Symbol making similarly falls short as a trait elevating us above “the animals” (Heyes and Frith 2014; Grice 1989).Footnote 1
这一切对人们及其与符号的强大关系有什么亲密关系？在其他物种，特别是我们的黑猩猩亲戚，被看到修改物体以执行诸如用棍子收集白蚁或使用碎叶作为海绵拖水等任务之后，工具制造失去了作为人类定义特征的特权地位（Sanz 等人，2013 年）。人们也认为自我意识可以将人与动物区分开来，但后来我们了解到，黑猩猩、海豚和大象会在它们的镜像中认出自己（Reiss 等人，2017 年）。符号制作同样不足，因为它将我们提升到“动物”之上（Heyes 和 Frith 2014;Grice 1989 年）。脚注 1

That said, humans undeniably take the employment of symbols to extremes. Much as our increasingly complicated tools have come to play a role in nearly all our activities and our self-awareness now influences every human relationship, our symbols have likewise grown in sophistication and importance, with languages ultimately bringing to bear vast numbers of interconnected symbols that relate to matters beyond the here and now. The payoffs for turning just about anything into a symbol were likely amplified as our comprehension of the state of mind of others improved, making it possible for us to wittingly express who we are in our interactions with individuals or groups (Tomasello 2014). An outcome of this collective mastery of meaning is it opened up higher levels of reasoning about our relationships to the world (Penn et al. 2008), and a reassuring sense that life is predictable and meaningful (Baumeister and Hippel 2020).
也就是说，不可否认，人类将符号的使用推向了极端。正如我们日益复杂的工具几乎在我们的所有活动中都发挥了作用，我们的自我意识现在影响着每个人际关系，我们的符号也同样在复杂性和重要性上增长，语言最终带来了大量相互关联的符号，这些符号与此时此地以外的事物有关。随着我们对他人心理状态的理解的提高，将几乎任何东西变成符号的回报可能会被放大，使我们能够在与个人或群体的互动中有意识地表达我们是谁（Tomasello 2014）。这种对意义的集体掌握的一个结果是，它为我们与世界的关系开辟了更高层次的推理（Penn 等人，2008 年），以及一种令人放心的感觉，即生活是可预测的和有意义的（Baumeister 和 Hippel 2020）。

Symbols, however, should be properly recognized as operating in concert with a striking diversity of less broadly meaningful, or outright meaningless, social markers (Tsutsui 2004). All told, these cultural guideposts constitute the intricate web that sociology rightly depicts as the core of the human way of life, contributing vastly to the richness of our experience.
然而，应该正确地认识到符号与具有较少广泛意义或完全无意义的社会标志的显着多样性协同运作（Tsutsui 2004）。总而言之，这些文化路标构成了社会学正确地描述为人类生活方式核心的错综复杂的网络，极大地促进了我们经验的丰富性。

Notes 笔记

A currently favored criterion for human distinctiveness is a grasp of each other’s mental states so refined we readily decipher the intentions and goals of our fellows and overtly express our intentions to them, such that we not only communicate what we wish but express our desire to convey that idea (e.g., Heyes and Frith 2014, Grice 1989).
目前流行的人类独特性标准是对彼此心理状态的把握，如此精细，以至于我们很容易破译我们同伴的意图和目标，并公开向他们表达我们的意图，这样我们不仅传达了我们想要的东西，而且表达了我们想要传达该想法的愿望（例如，Heyes 和 Frith 2014， Grice 1989 年）。

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Acknowledgements

For advice and comments on drafts of this article I thank Deirdre Barrett, Paul Bloom, Siobhan Chapman, Terrence Deacon, Lee Dugatkin, Adar Eisenbruch, Howard Gardner, Daniel Kelly, Barbara King, Nathan Lents, Richard Machalek, Curtis Marean, W.C. McGrew, Aniruddh Patel, Irene Pepperberg, Michael Shermer, Paul Smaldino, Frank Sulloway, Jared Taglialatela, Jonathan Turner, Bill von Hippel, Tim White, Edward O. Wilson, and Richard Wrangham. This publication was made possible through the support of Grant 61819 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.