No Naturalization without Evolution

The advent of cognitive science has been characterized by the need to answer the traditional questions about the nature of the mind by inquiring about the actual elaboration processes that under- lie it. This means that beyond the conceptual analysis traditionally pursued by philosophers, cognitive scientists claim the need to con- strain the theoretical investigation to a key empirical criterion, namely the psychological plausibility of the interpretative models. In the case of human language, the application of this methodology leads to analyze the actual processes of comprehension and produc- tion that are implemented by speakers when they communicate. Taking this into account, recently a transition from classical cognitive science to the so-called post-classical cognitive science has been characterized by the attention to evolutionary issues. In par- ticular, the conceptual core of this transition is to adopt a new methodology that imposes constraints to evaluate the plausibility of a certain model of the mind and language in the light of its com- patibility with the theory of natural evolution. The adoption of the constraint of evolutionary plausibility has been the heartland of the debate in cognitive science in the past years. In this contribution we propose to examine the implications of adopting the evolutionary constraint on discussions on the nature of language.