ABSTRACT
Human language is powerful because its use exercises and, thereby, enhances—individually and evolutionarily—the very capacities that make language possible. Like some other animals, we have the mental capacities to form basic concepts of objects, events, and relations; to perform basic thinking tasks, such as remembering, analyzing, comparing, synthesizing, and imagining; to perform more complex thinking tasks, such as doubting, wondering, and planning; to perform basic social thinking tasks, such as paying attention to what others are paying attention to; and to perform more complex social thinking tasks, such as attributing mental states to others. But by using language, human beings have exercised these capacities and taken them to places that no other species—and no individuals among those species—can come close to taking them. Human beings can now conceive ‘objects’ and ‘events’ as complex and abstract as universe, existence, and Big Bang and can collectively intend to send a person to Mars within 25 years.
