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A Natural History of Human Thinking
A Wall Street Journal Favorite Read of the Year
A Guardian Top Science Book of the Year
Tool-making or culture, language or religious ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
“Michael Tomasello is one of the few psychologists to have conducted intensive research on both human children and chimpanzees, and A Natural History of Human Thinking reflects not only the insights enabled by such cross-species comparisons but also the wisdom of a researcher who appreciates the need for asking questions whose answers generate biological insight. His book helps us to understand the differences, as well as the similarities, between human brains and other brains.”
―David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal
A Guardian Top Science Book of the Year
Tool-making or culture, language or religious ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
“Michael Tomasello is one of the few psychologists to have conducted intensive research on both human children and chimpanzees, and A Natural History of Human Thinking reflects not only the insights enabled by such cross-species comparisons but also the wisdom of a researcher who appreciates the need for asking questions whose answers generate biological insight. His book helps us to understand the differences, as well as the similarities, between human brains and other brains.”
―David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2014
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March 8, 2025
İnsan düşünüşünün nasıl ortaya çıktığına dair, ilk çağlardan başlayıp türe özgü yollarla, insan bilişinin gelişmesinde iletişimin-sosyalliğin katkısı, aralarındaki ilişki üzerine düşüncelerini aktarıyor yazar, avcı toplayıcılardan başlayıp varoluş tarzıyla insanın iletişim kuran, işbirliğine dayalı, kültürel ve dilsel gelişiminin ve sosyal katılımının insanın düşünüşünü nasıl geliştirdiği anlatılıyor.
Yazarın kendi hipotezi "ortak maksatlılık"; üç aşamadan bahsediyor; bilişsel temsil, çıkarım ve davranışsal öz izleme. Başta bireysel rekabete dayalı iletişim, sonra ortak maksatlı ve iki katmanlı(işbirlikçi ortağın bakış açısındanda kendi düşüncelerini dönüştürme) işbirliği iletişimi, son olarakta kolektif grup yanlısı kültürel ve uzlaşımsal iletişim. İnsanın kendi düşüncelerini başkalarının-grubun normatif bakış açısı ve sebeplerine göre izleyip değerlendirdiği, nasıl değiştirip geliştirdiği aktarılıyor. Kitabın adı düşünce gelişiminde dilin ve iletişimin rolüde olabilirmiş.
Ben kitabı niye okudum, ahlakın yeni soy ağacı kitabını okuyup sonrasında tomasellonun ahlakın gelişimi kitabını almıştım, onunda girişinde bu kitabın devamı olduğunu görünce bunuda okumuş bulundum, bilgi tazelemesi gibi oldu. Herkese keyifli okumalar.
"insanlar söz konusu olduğunda düşünmek, bir caz müzisyeninin kendi odasının mahremiyetinde yeni bir melodiyi doğaçlama çalmasına benzer.İnsan düşünüşü de sosyokültürel bir ağla sarılmış bireysel bir doğaçlamadır."syf13
Yazarın kendi hipotezi "ortak maksatlılık"; üç aşamadan bahsediyor; bilişsel temsil, çıkarım ve davranışsal öz izleme. Başta bireysel rekabete dayalı iletişim, sonra ortak maksatlı ve iki katmanlı(işbirlikçi ortağın bakış açısındanda kendi düşüncelerini dönüştürme) işbirliği iletişimi, son olarakta kolektif grup yanlısı kültürel ve uzlaşımsal iletişim. İnsanın kendi düşüncelerini başkalarının-grubun normatif bakış açısı ve sebeplerine göre izleyip değerlendirdiği, nasıl değiştirip geliştirdiği aktarılıyor. Kitabın adı düşünce gelişiminde dilin ve iletişimin rolüde olabilirmiş.
Ben kitabı niye okudum, ahlakın yeni soy ağacı kitabını okuyup sonrasında tomasellonun ahlakın gelişimi kitabını almıştım, onunda girişinde bu kitabın devamı olduğunu görünce bunuda okumuş bulundum, bilgi tazelemesi gibi oldu. Herkese keyifli okumalar.
"insanlar söz konusu olduğunda düşünmek, bir caz müzisyeninin kendi odasının mahremiyetinde yeni bir melodiyi doğaçlama çalmasına benzer.İnsan düşünüşü de sosyokültürel bir ağla sarılmış bireysel bir doğaçlamadır."syf13
June 7, 2019
Michael Tomasello is a psychologist, with expertise in child development, anthropology, and familiarity with modern philosophical theories of mind and language. He puts it all together here to give a speculative answer to the question, what makes human thinking so unique by comparison to other animals?
That human thinking is dramatically different from that of even other “intelligent” animals (chimpanzees and bonobos, dolphins, elephants, . . . ) may seem obvious. Humans have social organizations and practices — cultures, languages, . . — and intellectual achievements — sciences, literature, technologies, . . . If other animals have any of these, they seem to have them at a vastly lesser scale and different, less developed, character.
A simple, maybe naive theory would be that the development of intelligence leads the way. Humans evolved a more or “higher” intelligence. Somehow humans, maybe via some starter change (e.g., “mirror neurons”, although those are not the exclusive possession of humans), got onto an evolutionary track that changed some initial difference into a vast one. That initially small change then enabled us to do the things we do that differentiate us so markedly.
Thus the development of intelligence would lead the way.
Tomasello reverses the order. His hypothesis here is that it is social cooperation, our social behaviors themselves and a key development he terms “joint intentionality,” that compels, along with ecological pressures, the development of what we call intelligence and the distinctive way that humans think. Cooperation is also the key, for Tomasello, to the development of language, morality, and the shared view of reality that we call “objectivity.”
One very helpful thing about his writing is that he summarizes his main points repeatedly. Here in his own words is his core “joint intentionality hypothesis:”
“And so, in the current view, the most plausible evolutionary scenario is that new ecological pressures (e.g., the disappearance of individually obtainable foods and then increased populations sizes and competition from other groups) acted directly on human social interaction and organization, leading to the evolution of more cooperative human lifeways (e.g., collaboration for foraging and then cultural organization for group coordination and defense). Coordinating the newly collaborative and cultural lifeways communicatively required new skills and innovations for co-operating with others, first via joint intentionality, and then via collective intentionality. Thinking for cooperating.”
By “joint intentionality” Tomasello means a cognitive development in which it became possible for two individuals to share a single common goal and to adopt distinctive roles to achieve it together. For example, in hunting, two individuals share a common goal of catching their prey, with one taking on the role of forcing the animal out of its protective cover and the other spearing it where it comes into the open.
To accomplish such shared goals, individuals must be able to discern each other’s respective intentional states. The one must understand what the other is thinking and how it will respond to actions and events. This is a prerequisite for true cooperation, on Tomasello’s theory — adoption of a common goal and a kind of division of labor to achieve it.
Joint intentionality, though, is not the end of the story. Joint intentionality is individual-to-individual, maintained in that predominantly dyadic relationship. By contrast, “collective intentionality” or “we-intentionality” is normative across a community. Rather than discerning how my partner in the hunt understands actions and events, now I understand how anyone (within my community) understands actions and events.
Collective intentionality, on Tomasello’s theory, becomes the springboard for the capacities most distinctive of human cognitive experience. Those capacities include maybe most notably the ability to participate in shared understandings of symbols — gestures, pictures, and eventually what we recognize as language.
Human cognitive distinctiveness is due then, not simply to the development of bigger or more active brains, but, first to the emergence of cooperation. Tomasello doesn’t have a detailed story of how cooperation itself emerged — he refers, as above, to “ecological pressures” such as the availability of food, population growth, and competition from other species. Whatever those pressures might have been, they were either themselves distinctive to humans or they were responded to distinctively by humans.
Humans then, as distinct from the ancestors they share with the great apes, adapted for cooperation, which in turn led to the development of the capacities associated with complex intentional cognitive behavior.
I won’t try to repeat the details of Tomasello’s theory on the origin of language, or other aspects of complex cognition from the evolutionary imperative to cooperate, but this is the strength of his book. In particular, he sketches out how the very concept of “objectivity” could have evolved as a product of normative, collective intentionality — a single, community-wide understanding of how to understand the world and how to act in the world. Such normative standards of understanding and acting would then set the stage for communal bodies of knowledge and moral practices.
As presented, Tomasello’s claim about the distinctiveness of human thought depends on humans having gone down an evolutionary track that was unavailable to other species. Cooperation, and the ecological pressures to express it, are at the root of human distinctiveness. As evidence, he cites experiments and studies that contrast human performance in cognitive tasks, especially children, with that of our closest relatives, apes, especially chimpanzees.
His claim is that chimps’ cognitive behaviors are “most profoundly” shaped by competition, not cooperation, while even in very young children, cooperation is prevalent. He doesn’t of course deny that chimps do cooperate in some sense, e.g., in hunts, but that their cooperation does not exhibit evidence of joint intentionality. In the case of the hunt, for example, he maintains that each chimp has an individual goal of capturing its prey and that cooperation emerges as a matter of each separately pursuing its own goals and reacting intelligently to the actions, and results of the actions, of others. The chimps are not discerning each others’ intentional states, although they are reacting in complementary, cooperative ways.
Distinguishing joint intentionality from that kind of complementarity is hard experimentally, and Tomasello’s claims are disputed, particularly in the experiments and observations of Frans de Waal (see especially his books, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, and his most recent, Mama’s Last Hug). Tomasello does not address de Waal’s work directly in this book. I wish he had — as it stands, he gives the impression that his own conclusions about chimpanzee cognition are relatively unchallenged.
As presented, like I said, Tomasello’s argument really does depend on chimpanzees and other apes not having the adaptations for cooperation that are the key to human cognitive development. According to his account, that adaptation had to occur after the last shared human/chimpanzee ancestor. Otherwise, he would need some account of why, given the similarities between the two species, chimpanzees didn’t develop more complex cognitive behaviors than they have.
Given that we don’t even have any identified fossils to study that last human/chimpanzee ancestor, much of this argument is necessarily speculative, relying on indirect evidence. Studying modern chimpanzees, and comparing them with human children, is certainly relevant, but we have to keep in mind that chimpanzees have been on a separate evolutionary journey from ours for 7 million years or more. Tomasello’s assumption is that the absence of an adaptation for cooperation in modern chimps would provide good evidence for an absence of that adaptation prior to the branching, so that the adaptation must have happened on the resulting distinctively human branch that followed it.
I’m not sure that Tomasello’s argument absolutely requires such a hard line on chimpanzee cooperation, as against the work of de Waal. I don’t know enough about evolutionary biology to speak confidently, but it would seem as though chimpanzees could have reversed, under their own ecological pressures, an initial adaptation for cooperation, never expressed the relevant genetic modification, or they could have participated in only some part of the adaptation. One or another of those possibilities might account for what evidence of true cooperation (as opposed to what I’m calling complementary cooperation) de Waal has found. Then, placing the adaptation earlier on the branch that still included chimpanzees and humans could both allow for the distinctiveness of human cognition and for instances of true cooperation among chimpanzees.
Still, the great merit, I think, of Tomasello’s book is the (admittedly speculative) story he weaves of the origin of complex, human-style cognition. He’s actually given a naturalistic sketch of where language, moral norms, and objectivity come from. To do so, he’s drawn upon a vast scope of anthropological, psychological, and philosophical work. He’s particularly adept and creative in placing the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein, Searle, and Grice into a theoretical context that makes the work of each take on new significance (not to mention finding complementariness among those thinkers that the thinkers themselves had not seen). He’s also drawn much from Vygotsky on education, Sperber on anthropology and psychology, and many, many more provocative thinkers in their own rights.
Who would be interested in this book? It’s hard to think of who wouldn’t be. Tomasello finds the seed of such a vast scope of human experience in joint intentionality that his work should be of interest to anthropologists, philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, . . . and anyone who is just plain interested in how we got to be who we are.
That human thinking is dramatically different from that of even other “intelligent” animals (chimpanzees and bonobos, dolphins, elephants, . . . ) may seem obvious. Humans have social organizations and practices — cultures, languages, . . — and intellectual achievements — sciences, literature, technologies, . . . If other animals have any of these, they seem to have them at a vastly lesser scale and different, less developed, character.
A simple, maybe naive theory would be that the development of intelligence leads the way. Humans evolved a more or “higher” intelligence. Somehow humans, maybe via some starter change (e.g., “mirror neurons”, although those are not the exclusive possession of humans), got onto an evolutionary track that changed some initial difference into a vast one. That initially small change then enabled us to do the things we do that differentiate us so markedly.
Thus the development of intelligence would lead the way.
Tomasello reverses the order. His hypothesis here is that it is social cooperation, our social behaviors themselves and a key development he terms “joint intentionality,” that compels, along with ecological pressures, the development of what we call intelligence and the distinctive way that humans think. Cooperation is also the key, for Tomasello, to the development of language, morality, and the shared view of reality that we call “objectivity.”
One very helpful thing about his writing is that he summarizes his main points repeatedly. Here in his own words is his core “joint intentionality hypothesis:”
“And so, in the current view, the most plausible evolutionary scenario is that new ecological pressures (e.g., the disappearance of individually obtainable foods and then increased populations sizes and competition from other groups) acted directly on human social interaction and organization, leading to the evolution of more cooperative human lifeways (e.g., collaboration for foraging and then cultural organization for group coordination and defense). Coordinating the newly collaborative and cultural lifeways communicatively required new skills and innovations for co-operating with others, first via joint intentionality, and then via collective intentionality. Thinking for cooperating.”
By “joint intentionality” Tomasello means a cognitive development in which it became possible for two individuals to share a single common goal and to adopt distinctive roles to achieve it together. For example, in hunting, two individuals share a common goal of catching their prey, with one taking on the role of forcing the animal out of its protective cover and the other spearing it where it comes into the open.
To accomplish such shared goals, individuals must be able to discern each other’s respective intentional states. The one must understand what the other is thinking and how it will respond to actions and events. This is a prerequisite for true cooperation, on Tomasello’s theory — adoption of a common goal and a kind of division of labor to achieve it.
Joint intentionality, though, is not the end of the story. Joint intentionality is individual-to-individual, maintained in that predominantly dyadic relationship. By contrast, “collective intentionality” or “we-intentionality” is normative across a community. Rather than discerning how my partner in the hunt understands actions and events, now I understand how anyone (within my community) understands actions and events.
Collective intentionality, on Tomasello’s theory, becomes the springboard for the capacities most distinctive of human cognitive experience. Those capacities include maybe most notably the ability to participate in shared understandings of symbols — gestures, pictures, and eventually what we recognize as language.
Human cognitive distinctiveness is due then, not simply to the development of bigger or more active brains, but, first to the emergence of cooperation. Tomasello doesn’t have a detailed story of how cooperation itself emerged — he refers, as above, to “ecological pressures” such as the availability of food, population growth, and competition from other species. Whatever those pressures might have been, they were either themselves distinctive to humans or they were responded to distinctively by humans.
Humans then, as distinct from the ancestors they share with the great apes, adapted for cooperation, which in turn led to the development of the capacities associated with complex intentional cognitive behavior.
I won’t try to repeat the details of Tomasello’s theory on the origin of language, or other aspects of complex cognition from the evolutionary imperative to cooperate, but this is the strength of his book. In particular, he sketches out how the very concept of “objectivity” could have evolved as a product of normative, collective intentionality — a single, community-wide understanding of how to understand the world and how to act in the world. Such normative standards of understanding and acting would then set the stage for communal bodies of knowledge and moral practices.
As presented, Tomasello’s claim about the distinctiveness of human thought depends on humans having gone down an evolutionary track that was unavailable to other species. Cooperation, and the ecological pressures to express it, are at the root of human distinctiveness. As evidence, he cites experiments and studies that contrast human performance in cognitive tasks, especially children, with that of our closest relatives, apes, especially chimpanzees.
His claim is that chimps’ cognitive behaviors are “most profoundly” shaped by competition, not cooperation, while even in very young children, cooperation is prevalent. He doesn’t of course deny that chimps do cooperate in some sense, e.g., in hunts, but that their cooperation does not exhibit evidence of joint intentionality. In the case of the hunt, for example, he maintains that each chimp has an individual goal of capturing its prey and that cooperation emerges as a matter of each separately pursuing its own goals and reacting intelligently to the actions, and results of the actions, of others. The chimps are not discerning each others’ intentional states, although they are reacting in complementary, cooperative ways.
Distinguishing joint intentionality from that kind of complementarity is hard experimentally, and Tomasello’s claims are disputed, particularly in the experiments and observations of Frans de Waal (see especially his books, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, and his most recent, Mama’s Last Hug). Tomasello does not address de Waal’s work directly in this book. I wish he had — as it stands, he gives the impression that his own conclusions about chimpanzee cognition are relatively unchallenged.
As presented, like I said, Tomasello’s argument really does depend on chimpanzees and other apes not having the adaptations for cooperation that are the key to human cognitive development. According to his account, that adaptation had to occur after the last shared human/chimpanzee ancestor. Otherwise, he would need some account of why, given the similarities between the two species, chimpanzees didn’t develop more complex cognitive behaviors than they have.
Given that we don’t even have any identified fossils to study that last human/chimpanzee ancestor, much of this argument is necessarily speculative, relying on indirect evidence. Studying modern chimpanzees, and comparing them with human children, is certainly relevant, but we have to keep in mind that chimpanzees have been on a separate evolutionary journey from ours for 7 million years or more. Tomasello’s assumption is that the absence of an adaptation for cooperation in modern chimps would provide good evidence for an absence of that adaptation prior to the branching, so that the adaptation must have happened on the resulting distinctively human branch that followed it.
I’m not sure that Tomasello’s argument absolutely requires such a hard line on chimpanzee cooperation, as against the work of de Waal. I don’t know enough about evolutionary biology to speak confidently, but it would seem as though chimpanzees could have reversed, under their own ecological pressures, an initial adaptation for cooperation, never expressed the relevant genetic modification, or they could have participated in only some part of the adaptation. One or another of those possibilities might account for what evidence of true cooperation (as opposed to what I’m calling complementary cooperation) de Waal has found. Then, placing the adaptation earlier on the branch that still included chimpanzees and humans could both allow for the distinctiveness of human cognition and for instances of true cooperation among chimpanzees.
Still, the great merit, I think, of Tomasello’s book is the (admittedly speculative) story he weaves of the origin of complex, human-style cognition. He’s actually given a naturalistic sketch of where language, moral norms, and objectivity come from. To do so, he’s drawn upon a vast scope of anthropological, psychological, and philosophical work. He’s particularly adept and creative in placing the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein, Searle, and Grice into a theoretical context that makes the work of each take on new significance (not to mention finding complementariness among those thinkers that the thinkers themselves had not seen). He’s also drawn much from Vygotsky on education, Sperber on anthropology and psychology, and many, many more provocative thinkers in their own rights.
Who would be interested in this book? It’s hard to think of who wouldn’t be. Tomasello finds the seed of such a vast scope of human experience in joint intentionality that his work should be of interest to anthropologists, philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, . . . and anyone who is just plain interested in how we got to be who we are.
November 6, 2021
In this book, Tomasello offers an account of how human thinking may have evolved to what it is today. He starts with the hypothesis that the thinking skills we have in common with the other great apes are likely to be close to those of our common ape ancestors (some 6 million years ago). The gap from them to modern human thinking was somehow bridged by our ancestors since then (from australopithecines to modern humans). Tomasello proposes how this gap may have been bridged or, at least, what are some necessary steps that must have happened during this process.
To do this, he draws upon experimental and observational data on non-human primate cognition and the cognition of human children (12 months and 3 years of age) and human adults, as well as ideas from psychologists (like Piaget and Vygotsky) and philosophers (from Peirce and Wittgenstein to Searle). Eventually, this book offers a very interesting – and rather compelling – case for the unique aspects of human thinking being fundamentally cooperative/social.
Tomasello begins by examining the cognition of the other great apes. He establishes that they do, in fact, think in a deliberate and flexible manner (“system 2” thinking, as opposed to the quick – instinctive and emotional – but inflexible – “system 1”). Their thinking have to involve the following processes:
1. Cognitive representation and schematization of the environment. An organism recognizes and builds an internal picture of the environmental data that are relevant to it – opportunities (like the presence of food) and obstacles (like the presence of enemies) toward its goals/values – i.e. of the relevant situation. Then it schematizes the various relevant situations it encounters, so when it encounters a situation that is similar to others in its past experience it goes “this is another one of those situations” (it generalizes and categorizes the various situations and their components so it can learn from its experience and better respond to similar situations in the future).
2. Causal simulation and inference (causal and intentional). Mentally manipulating/connecting the components of a cognitive representation in various ways and drawing inferences (“what would happen if…”). For example, if a chimpanzee sees that a stick he wants is under a big rock and he decides to push the rock before pulling the stick: this is an inference based on understanding of natural causation (which is also related to chimpanzee’s abilities to use tools). Connecting the various components of a cognitive representation will also involve some type of “logical operation”: Tomasello provides examples of specific experiments showing chimpanzees exhibit some logical abilities, namely conditional (“this this then that”) and negation (understanding of polar opposites – “if something is absent it cannot be present”) operations.
But, other than physical causes, chimpanzees can also make inferences about others’ intentions (i.e. they have some degree of theory of mind). If a chimpanzee sees a monkey feeding in a banana tree he may infer that there are no leopards nearby (inference based on understanding of others’ intentions – which is related to their skills at navigating their social world). Tomasello provides examples of experiments showing how a chimpanzee’s choices differ according to another chimpanzee’s cognitive status (e.g. whether the rival chimpanzee has an unobstructed line of sight towards a food source, or even previous knowledge of it). Here, again, chimpanzees utilize logical operations to simulate and produce novel solutions to complex social problems.
3. Cognitive self-monitoring. This involves whether the outcomes of an organism’s actions in simulated situations match its desired goals/values. Furthermore, it may involve the organism assessing the information it has available (and whether it’s enough to make a successful prediction). Studies seem to show that great apes can delay gratification, inhibit a previously successful response in favor of a new one in a changed situation, and there are experiments showing non-human primates being aware of being uncertain (e.g. opting for a smaller reward rather than risking a higher one).
But, crucially, Tomasello argues that social interactions of non-human great apes are mainly competitive (or, at most, joining sides in social conflicts based on a kind of self-serving Machiavellian intelligence) and utilize their most sophisticated skills of social cognition in contexts involving competition or exploitation of others (as opposed to cooperation). All great apes communicate using gestures, facial expressions and vocalizations; but if seems this communication is limited to each individual interacting with/manipulating his social environment in order to achieve its individual goal. Chimpanzees’ group hunting of monkeys seems to be an exception to this general pattern, but Tomasello argues it is more likely that each individual is attempting to capture the monkey on its own while taking into account the behavior/intentions of other chimpanzees as these affect their own chances of capture, similar to the group hunting of lions and other social mammals. This is what he calls “individual intentionality”.
So chimpanzees engage in flexible/deliberated thought: they form cognitive representations of situations and schematize them, they mentally manipulate the components of these situations and simulate possible actions and outcomes (including both physical cause and effect and the intentional actions of others) using some degree of logical operations, and they self-monitor (both in actual behavior but also in mental simulation… which probably amounts to some degree of self-reflection). But they do all this solely from the perspective of individual intentionality.
But modern humans have symbolic thought, language, reason, social norms and institutions… how could we have gotten here from there?
Tomasello posits that, after having already developed the highly sophisticated skills of social cognition and manipulation for the purposes of social competition (as well as the highly sophisticated cognitive skills for manipulating physical causality and using tools), a change in our ancestors’ evolutionary environment must have taken place that provided the pressure for early human thinking to evolve in novel ways. His hypothesis is that around 2 million years ago there was an expansion of terrestrial monkeys (like baboons) that outcompeted humans for their normal food sources (fruits and other vegetation) causing them to switch to a different niche that required collaborative foraging. At first, that could perhaps involve scavenging meat (which would require a coalition of individuals to scare off the animals that made the initial kill) or collaborate in order to gather plant foods and, eventually, the collaborative hunting of large game. These types of early collaboration would have required two individuals to somehow coordinate their efforts while sharing a common goal under a common situation – something that other great apes never engage in.
You and I sharing a common goal would necessitate in us having a “common ground”: I must have the goal to capture the stag with you, you must have the goal to capture the stag with me, and we both must know that we both know each other’s goal (crucially, I will have attend not to my individual goal but to our common goal). So now we have joint attention to a common goal, but we have differing perspectives: we are both in the same situation, but we have different points of the same situation and different roles to play in it. This means that, in order to coordinate my actions with yours, I will have to form a cognitive representation of the situation from both mine and your perspective: I will have to understand your own point of view, anticipate your actions and coordinate with them (and, if I can, help you in your role). So we have situations with joint goals and individual roles, and joint attention and individual perspectives (and, since you and I both understand there, they constitute our “common ground”).
Furthermore, now my individual success depends not only on my skills but also on finding a good partner. At the same time, this means I need to be a good collaborator (in order for good partners to pick me). So now I must now only be skilled, but do my share of the work, help my collaborator and share the spoils of the common work. This means early humans had to develop an understanding/concern for how other individuals in their group were evaluating them as potential collaborative partners, and regulate their actions accordingly. In addition to the aforementioned “cognitive self-monitoring”, there is no “social self-monitoring” (which other great apes don’t appear to engage in). So now there is evolutionary pressure for early humans to develop skills and motivation for “joint intentionality” (as opposed to the aforementioned “individual intentionality”).
Cooperating in these novel and complicated ways (coordinating our actions and attention based on our common ground) requires – and creates the motive for – new types of communications (beyond the gestures and vocalizations of ancient great apes, which were geared towards self-serving goals). Tomasello argues that the first forms of uniquely human communication were pointing and pantomiming gestures used to inform others of objects/situations relevant to them. This communication has to be collaborative: I want to inform you of something relevant to you and you want to understand what I am trying to convey (because, due to our common ground, you understand what I am trying to convey is relevant to you), so we both have a motive to collaborate in our communication (help one another in transmitting/receiving the information). Whereas other great apes are predominantly motivated engage in directive communication (“I want you to give me that”), early humans also developed a motive to engage in informative communication (“you will want to look at that”), which creates a commitment for truthful (honest and accurate) communication, the need to be able to infer what is relevant for you, and the need to somehow relay my motivation for communicating with you (am I requesting or am I informing?).
Proceeding in this fashion, Tomasello touches upon the following points:
– New ways of communication require new ways of thinking – most importantly recursive inferences: you think that I think that you think/need X.
– Using iconic gestures (pantomime) not only to refer to things (“this rock”) but to refer to different perspectives of things (“rock”, “hard”, “big”). Iconic gestures are symbolic, with semantic content and are – at least potentially – categorical.
– Combining pointing and iconic gestures (for instance pantomiming a snake followed by pointing to a cave, or pantomiming eating followed by pointing to a particular piece of food). This is the beginning down to the path to propositions with subject-predicate organization.
All of these build the picture of “joint intentionality” arising in early humans (it may have started to arise around 2 million years ago and be fully formed by around 400 thousand years ago). This clearly constitutes uniquely human thinking and it sets the foundations for the development of the thinking we find in modern humans.
The third step, from the “individual intentionality” of our common ancestors to our great ape cousins and the addition of “joint intentionality” of our early human ancestors, is what Tomasello calls “collective intentionality”.
As humans became more dominant in their environment, human groups started competing with other human groups and this created the evolutionary pressure for greater-scale collaboration (group cohesion and division-of-labor towards the end of group towards the end of group survival).* In parallel to that, as human populations increased, groups tended to split into smaller groupings which made marking cultural identity more important (because only members of our cultural group can be counted on to share our skills and values and be good and trustworthy collaborative partners). Teaching others (particularly children) to do things became a good way to assist their functioning in the group (“this is how to do this”) and, in that process, created even more conformity by creating conventions (“this is how this is done”) and, ultimately, long-lasting “conventional cultural practices” (one can wear this clothing or that clothing or nothing at all but, whatever one wears, it is now a cultural choice that will either conform to or violate the expectations of others in the group). In other words, human groups began to think of themselves as groupmates and the sense of “we” emerged.
This created a new “cultural common ground”: things we all in the group know that we all know even if we did not experience them together as individuals. This also means that evaluating others, from the second-personal mode of evaluating if you are a good foraging partner based on my direct knowledge of you, became conventionalized: do you fit the “objective” standards of the community even if I don’t know you personally? Thus I will want to punish you not only if you harm me in our interactions but also if I see you breaking our social conventions towards someone I don’t know: social norms of what you “should” and “shouldn’t” do arose. Correspondingly, social self-monitoring changed from second-personal (me in relation to you) to normative (me vs the “objective” standards of the group, i.e. the norms): I will now have the motivation to conform to social norms (I will feel ashamed if some “illicit” activity/habit of mine is made public), monitor myself in respect to them and self-regulate my behavior accordingly. Group-minded individuals view nonconformity in general as potentially harmful to the group in general. Conventions and norms, as well as institutions (like the political organization of the group), are handed down to us and we come to know them as parts of “objective” reality. Crucially, there is now an “objective” point of view, where previously there was only an individual and a second-personal point of view.
A process of creating conventions must have taken place in the realm of communication, as well. Iconic gestures (i.e. mimicking with our hands or vocalizations what we refer to) would gradually come to be standardized and simplified, turning icons (signs which bear direct similarity to what they refer to) into symbols (signs that bear no similarity to what they refer to, but which all members of the group know what they refer to – i.e. they are conventions). Communicative conventions would thus become “arbitrary” and this process would ultimately culminate into a full-blown language: a set of conventions that connect arbitrary symbols to specific things/ideas. This is an extremely crucial moment in the history of human thinking. In Tomasello’s words:
“Children were now born into a group of people using a set of communicative conventions that their ancestors had previously found useful in coordinating their referential acts, and everyone was expected to acquire and use exactly these conventions. Individuals thus did not have to invent their own ways of conceptualizing things; they just had to learn those of others, which embodied, as it were, the entire collective intelligence of the entire cultural group over much historical time.”
This arbitrariness leads to higher levels of abstractness, both in terms of what different symbols mean (the pantomime for “opening a door” is different to “opening a jar”, but the arbitrary convention “open” is now a single symbol that can be used in “opening door” or “opening jar”, and also in “opening a conversation”, allowing for productive use of metaphor) and also in terms of creating conventional symbols for highly complex situations (conveying the idea of “justice” in pantomime would require acting out an entire narrative).
Needless to say, language changes the entire game. It can be used to derive not just causal but also formal inferences (in other words Aristotle’s logic). It can interact with the speakers’ common ground to create meaning (if I told you “I saw your brother with a woman” you could infer it was not his wife even though his wife is a woman). Meaning can also be encoded in linguistic structures (e.g. conventions regarding word order, e.g. “man ate lion” as opposed to “lion ate man”), perspectives/conceptualizations/judgements/epistemic attitudes can be explicitly expressed (“John broke the window” vs “it was probably John who broke the window”), and so on.
Now the author is ready to address to a very important point:
“With modern humans and their skills of conventional linguistic communication, we get to full-bloodied reasoning, where “reasoning” means not just to think about something but to explicate in conventional form – for others of oneself – the reasons why one is thinking what one is thinking. This conflicts with the traditional view that human reasoning is a private affair.”
The proposal is that human reasoning, including individual human reasoning, has a social-communicative origin. For instance, in a “cooperative argumentation” situation where we cooperate towards the common goal of hunting an antelope, neither of us wants to convince the other if we are in fact wrong about the location of the antelopes; each would rather lose the argument and eat tonight than win the argument and go hungry. Therefore, it is implicit in our common ground that we both agree that we will go in the direction for which there are the “best reasons” – that is what being reasonable is all about. Seen this way, reason is a tool for linking our brains together and thinking cooperatively.
This also allows for the concept of “objectivity” to arise: it is an agent-neutral way of thinking – what any reasonable individual (of my social group) would agree to. Starting from the first-personal (of our great ape ancestors) and going to the second-personal (how my collaborator things/feels), we modern humans can now also access an “objective” point of view to monitor ourselves and our thinking process from: how any person in my social group would judge this. In the author’s words:
“In this formulation, “objectivity” is the result of being able to think of things from ever wider perspectives and also recursively, as one embeds one’s perspective within another, more encompassing perspective. In the current view, more encompassing means simply for the perspective of an ever wider, more transpersonally constitutes generic individual or social group – the view for anyone.”
To do this, he draws upon experimental and observational data on non-human primate cognition and the cognition of human children (12 months and 3 years of age) and human adults, as well as ideas from psychologists (like Piaget and Vygotsky) and philosophers (from Peirce and Wittgenstein to Searle). Eventually, this book offers a very interesting – and rather compelling – case for the unique aspects of human thinking being fundamentally cooperative/social.
Tomasello begins by examining the cognition of the other great apes. He establishes that they do, in fact, think in a deliberate and flexible manner (“system 2” thinking, as opposed to the quick – instinctive and emotional – but inflexible – “system 1”). Their thinking have to involve the following processes:
1. Cognitive representation and schematization of the environment. An organism recognizes and builds an internal picture of the environmental data that are relevant to it – opportunities (like the presence of food) and obstacles (like the presence of enemies) toward its goals/values – i.e. of the relevant situation. Then it schematizes the various relevant situations it encounters, so when it encounters a situation that is similar to others in its past experience it goes “this is another one of those situations” (it generalizes and categorizes the various situations and their components so it can learn from its experience and better respond to similar situations in the future).
2. Causal simulation and inference (causal and intentional). Mentally manipulating/connecting the components of a cognitive representation in various ways and drawing inferences (“what would happen if…”). For example, if a chimpanzee sees that a stick he wants is under a big rock and he decides to push the rock before pulling the stick: this is an inference based on understanding of natural causation (which is also related to chimpanzee’s abilities to use tools). Connecting the various components of a cognitive representation will also involve some type of “logical operation”: Tomasello provides examples of specific experiments showing chimpanzees exhibit some logical abilities, namely conditional (“this this then that”) and negation (understanding of polar opposites – “if something is absent it cannot be present”) operations.
But, other than physical causes, chimpanzees can also make inferences about others’ intentions (i.e. they have some degree of theory of mind). If a chimpanzee sees a monkey feeding in a banana tree he may infer that there are no leopards nearby (inference based on understanding of others’ intentions – which is related to their skills at navigating their social world). Tomasello provides examples of experiments showing how a chimpanzee’s choices differ according to another chimpanzee’s cognitive status (e.g. whether the rival chimpanzee has an unobstructed line of sight towards a food source, or even previous knowledge of it). Here, again, chimpanzees utilize logical operations to simulate and produce novel solutions to complex social problems.
3. Cognitive self-monitoring. This involves whether the outcomes of an organism’s actions in simulated situations match its desired goals/values. Furthermore, it may involve the organism assessing the information it has available (and whether it’s enough to make a successful prediction). Studies seem to show that great apes can delay gratification, inhibit a previously successful response in favor of a new one in a changed situation, and there are experiments showing non-human primates being aware of being uncertain (e.g. opting for a smaller reward rather than risking a higher one).
But, crucially, Tomasello argues that social interactions of non-human great apes are mainly competitive (or, at most, joining sides in social conflicts based on a kind of self-serving Machiavellian intelligence) and utilize their most sophisticated skills of social cognition in contexts involving competition or exploitation of others (as opposed to cooperation). All great apes communicate using gestures, facial expressions and vocalizations; but if seems this communication is limited to each individual interacting with/manipulating his social environment in order to achieve its individual goal. Chimpanzees’ group hunting of monkeys seems to be an exception to this general pattern, but Tomasello argues it is more likely that each individual is attempting to capture the monkey on its own while taking into account the behavior/intentions of other chimpanzees as these affect their own chances of capture, similar to the group hunting of lions and other social mammals. This is what he calls “individual intentionality”.
So chimpanzees engage in flexible/deliberated thought: they form cognitive representations of situations and schematize them, they mentally manipulate the components of these situations and simulate possible actions and outcomes (including both physical cause and effect and the intentional actions of others) using some degree of logical operations, and they self-monitor (both in actual behavior but also in mental simulation… which probably amounts to some degree of self-reflection). But they do all this solely from the perspective of individual intentionality.
But modern humans have symbolic thought, language, reason, social norms and institutions… how could we have gotten here from there?
Tomasello posits that, after having already developed the highly sophisticated skills of social cognition and manipulation for the purposes of social competition (as well as the highly sophisticated cognitive skills for manipulating physical causality and using tools), a change in our ancestors’ evolutionary environment must have taken place that provided the pressure for early human thinking to evolve in novel ways. His hypothesis is that around 2 million years ago there was an expansion of terrestrial monkeys (like baboons) that outcompeted humans for their normal food sources (fruits and other vegetation) causing them to switch to a different niche that required collaborative foraging. At first, that could perhaps involve scavenging meat (which would require a coalition of individuals to scare off the animals that made the initial kill) or collaborate in order to gather plant foods and, eventually, the collaborative hunting of large game. These types of early collaboration would have required two individuals to somehow coordinate their efforts while sharing a common goal under a common situation – something that other great apes never engage in.
You and I sharing a common goal would necessitate in us having a “common ground”: I must have the goal to capture the stag with you, you must have the goal to capture the stag with me, and we both must know that we both know each other’s goal (crucially, I will have attend not to my individual goal but to our common goal). So now we have joint attention to a common goal, but we have differing perspectives: we are both in the same situation, but we have different points of the same situation and different roles to play in it. This means that, in order to coordinate my actions with yours, I will have to form a cognitive representation of the situation from both mine and your perspective: I will have to understand your own point of view, anticipate your actions and coordinate with them (and, if I can, help you in your role). So we have situations with joint goals and individual roles, and joint attention and individual perspectives (and, since you and I both understand there, they constitute our “common ground”).
Furthermore, now my individual success depends not only on my skills but also on finding a good partner. At the same time, this means I need to be a good collaborator (in order for good partners to pick me). So now I must now only be skilled, but do my share of the work, help my collaborator and share the spoils of the common work. This means early humans had to develop an understanding/concern for how other individuals in their group were evaluating them as potential collaborative partners, and regulate their actions accordingly. In addition to the aforementioned “cognitive self-monitoring”, there is no “social self-monitoring” (which other great apes don’t appear to engage in). So now there is evolutionary pressure for early humans to develop skills and motivation for “joint intentionality” (as opposed to the aforementioned “individual intentionality”).
Cooperating in these novel and complicated ways (coordinating our actions and attention based on our common ground) requires – and creates the motive for – new types of communications (beyond the gestures and vocalizations of ancient great apes, which were geared towards self-serving goals). Tomasello argues that the first forms of uniquely human communication were pointing and pantomiming gestures used to inform others of objects/situations relevant to them. This communication has to be collaborative: I want to inform you of something relevant to you and you want to understand what I am trying to convey (because, due to our common ground, you understand what I am trying to convey is relevant to you), so we both have a motive to collaborate in our communication (help one another in transmitting/receiving the information). Whereas other great apes are predominantly motivated engage in directive communication (“I want you to give me that”), early humans also developed a motive to engage in informative communication (“you will want to look at that”), which creates a commitment for truthful (honest and accurate) communication, the need to be able to infer what is relevant for you, and the need to somehow relay my motivation for communicating with you (am I requesting or am I informing?).
Proceeding in this fashion, Tomasello touches upon the following points:
– New ways of communication require new ways of thinking – most importantly recursive inferences: you think that I think that you think/need X.
– Using iconic gestures (pantomime) not only to refer to things (“this rock”) but to refer to different perspectives of things (“rock”, “hard”, “big”). Iconic gestures are symbolic, with semantic content and are – at least potentially – categorical.
– Combining pointing and iconic gestures (for instance pantomiming a snake followed by pointing to a cave, or pantomiming eating followed by pointing to a particular piece of food). This is the beginning down to the path to propositions with subject-predicate organization.
All of these build the picture of “joint intentionality” arising in early humans (it may have started to arise around 2 million years ago and be fully formed by around 400 thousand years ago). This clearly constitutes uniquely human thinking and it sets the foundations for the development of the thinking we find in modern humans.
The third step, from the “individual intentionality” of our common ancestors to our great ape cousins and the addition of “joint intentionality” of our early human ancestors, is what Tomasello calls “collective intentionality”.
As humans became more dominant in their environment, human groups started competing with other human groups and this created the evolutionary pressure for greater-scale collaboration (group cohesion and division-of-labor towards the end of group towards the end of group survival).* In parallel to that, as human populations increased, groups tended to split into smaller groupings which made marking cultural identity more important (because only members of our cultural group can be counted on to share our skills and values and be good and trustworthy collaborative partners). Teaching others (particularly children) to do things became a good way to assist their functioning in the group (“this is how to do this”) and, in that process, created even more conformity by creating conventions (“this is how this is done”) and, ultimately, long-lasting “conventional cultural practices” (one can wear this clothing or that clothing or nothing at all but, whatever one wears, it is now a cultural choice that will either conform to or violate the expectations of others in the group). In other words, human groups began to think of themselves as groupmates and the sense of “we” emerged.
This created a new “cultural common ground”: things we all in the group know that we all know even if we did not experience them together as individuals. This also means that evaluating others, from the second-personal mode of evaluating if you are a good foraging partner based on my direct knowledge of you, became conventionalized: do you fit the “objective” standards of the community even if I don’t know you personally? Thus I will want to punish you not only if you harm me in our interactions but also if I see you breaking our social conventions towards someone I don’t know: social norms of what you “should” and “shouldn’t” do arose. Correspondingly, social self-monitoring changed from second-personal (me in relation to you) to normative (me vs the “objective” standards of the group, i.e. the norms): I will now have the motivation to conform to social norms (I will feel ashamed if some “illicit” activity/habit of mine is made public), monitor myself in respect to them and self-regulate my behavior accordingly. Group-minded individuals view nonconformity in general as potentially harmful to the group in general. Conventions and norms, as well as institutions (like the political organization of the group), are handed down to us and we come to know them as parts of “objective” reality. Crucially, there is now an “objective” point of view, where previously there was only an individual and a second-personal point of view.
A process of creating conventions must have taken place in the realm of communication, as well. Iconic gestures (i.e. mimicking with our hands or vocalizations what we refer to) would gradually come to be standardized and simplified, turning icons (signs which bear direct similarity to what they refer to) into symbols (signs that bear no similarity to what they refer to, but which all members of the group know what they refer to – i.e. they are conventions). Communicative conventions would thus become “arbitrary” and this process would ultimately culminate into a full-blown language: a set of conventions that connect arbitrary symbols to specific things/ideas. This is an extremely crucial moment in the history of human thinking. In Tomasello’s words:
“Children were now born into a group of people using a set of communicative conventions that their ancestors had previously found useful in coordinating their referential acts, and everyone was expected to acquire and use exactly these conventions. Individuals thus did not have to invent their own ways of conceptualizing things; they just had to learn those of others, which embodied, as it were, the entire collective intelligence of the entire cultural group over much historical time.”
This arbitrariness leads to higher levels of abstractness, both in terms of what different symbols mean (the pantomime for “opening a door” is different to “opening a jar”, but the arbitrary convention “open” is now a single symbol that can be used in “opening door” or “opening jar”, and also in “opening a conversation”, allowing for productive use of metaphor) and also in terms of creating conventional symbols for highly complex situations (conveying the idea of “justice” in pantomime would require acting out an entire narrative).
Needless to say, language changes the entire game. It can be used to derive not just causal but also formal inferences (in other words Aristotle’s logic). It can interact with the speakers’ common ground to create meaning (if I told you “I saw your brother with a woman” you could infer it was not his wife even though his wife is a woman). Meaning can also be encoded in linguistic structures (e.g. conventions regarding word order, e.g. “man ate lion” as opposed to “lion ate man”), perspectives/conceptualizations/judgements/epistemic attitudes can be explicitly expressed (“John broke the window” vs “it was probably John who broke the window”), and so on.
Now the author is ready to address to a very important point:
“With modern humans and their skills of conventional linguistic communication, we get to full-bloodied reasoning, where “reasoning” means not just to think about something but to explicate in conventional form – for others of oneself – the reasons why one is thinking what one is thinking. This conflicts with the traditional view that human reasoning is a private affair.”
The proposal is that human reasoning, including individual human reasoning, has a social-communicative origin. For instance, in a “cooperative argumentation” situation where we cooperate towards the common goal of hunting an antelope, neither of us wants to convince the other if we are in fact wrong about the location of the antelopes; each would rather lose the argument and eat tonight than win the argument and go hungry. Therefore, it is implicit in our common ground that we both agree that we will go in the direction for which there are the “best reasons” – that is what being reasonable is all about. Seen this way, reason is a tool for linking our brains together and thinking cooperatively.
This also allows for the concept of “objectivity” to arise: it is an agent-neutral way of thinking – what any reasonable individual (of my social group) would agree to. Starting from the first-personal (of our great ape ancestors) and going to the second-personal (how my collaborator things/feels), we modern humans can now also access an “objective” point of view to monitor ourselves and our thinking process from: how any person in my social group would judge this. In the author’s words:
“In this formulation, “objectivity” is the result of being able to think of things from ever wider perspectives and also recursively, as one embeds one’s perspective within another, more encompassing perspective. In the current view, more encompassing means simply for the perspective of an ever wider, more transpersonally constitutes generic individual or social group – the view for anyone.”
May 1, 2021
While on the whole I admire Tomasello's empirical work very much and believe this is a great summary of it, I would note one criticism. He often cites philosophers in piecemeal ways to illustrate how what they said is like what he has found in empirical work but without ever following through what else adopting that philosopher's ideas would commit one to in future empirical work: he just picks and chooses here and there between philosophers who would on the whole challenge his commonsense Cartesian foundations. Searle, Millikan and Davidson do not make a happy marriage.
April 9, 2018
This engaging, robustly grounded book summarizes Michael Tomasello's team experimental works at Max Planck Institute, comparing apes and preschool child in both practical and ethical-moral reasoning tasks.
Objectivity, normativity, and self-reflection : following Tomasello's main hypothesis, these major features of human thinking are species-typical, tied to, and flowing from, cooperative engagement, in a two-step developmental sequence (face-to-face interactions in Joint intentionality, then global, group-minded convention-building and -enforcing or Collective intentionality). Both steps emerge around a common conceptual ground, acting as meaning-endowing.
Detailed experiments show subject's ability, or lack of, to individualize roles and perspectives under a common intent, to catch up with the relevance of signs and signals, to read the intention of others, to re-engage a departing collaborative partner, to work until other participant gets his reward too, etc. Skills of this sort arise in human only, and at a fairly low age, allowing no prior internalization of parental-cultural enticement to account satisfactorily for them.
The work done is far-ranging. I have read comments from practitioners of different fields, rejoicing Tomasello's contributions to psychotherapy, economics, management, social sciences' philosophy and the like. The taking down of the Language Idol (which dates at least from the Old Testament) is one way in which Tomasello can shed new and powerful lights on our common sense, and on the handling of collective concepts, among other things.
Common interpersonal and cultural basis mediates our way to relate to ourself, to other and to the world : this count among anthropologists' and sociologists' basic, and dearest, claims, and yet, claims for which supports could have been lacking (if no longer today, then at least back in Durkheim' or even Franz Boas' time).
Together with a overall clear writing, sense of modesty, and openness, a dense and rich empirical set of evidences help make Tomasello's book great and admirable. Not many scientist can rival him on this ground.
I have kept track of Tomasello for several years, from my doctoral dissertation in updating classical anthropologists' holism, to my present day work in public management. I set him next to Rousseau, Adam Smith and René Descartes among the most significant Western intellectual acheviements.
Objectivity, normativity, and self-reflection : following Tomasello's main hypothesis, these major features of human thinking are species-typical, tied to, and flowing from, cooperative engagement, in a two-step developmental sequence (face-to-face interactions in Joint intentionality, then global, group-minded convention-building and -enforcing or Collective intentionality). Both steps emerge around a common conceptual ground, acting as meaning-endowing.
Detailed experiments show subject's ability, or lack of, to individualize roles and perspectives under a common intent, to catch up with the relevance of signs and signals, to read the intention of others, to re-engage a departing collaborative partner, to work until other participant gets his reward too, etc. Skills of this sort arise in human only, and at a fairly low age, allowing no prior internalization of parental-cultural enticement to account satisfactorily for them.
The work done is far-ranging. I have read comments from practitioners of different fields, rejoicing Tomasello's contributions to psychotherapy, economics, management, social sciences' philosophy and the like. The taking down of the Language Idol (which dates at least from the Old Testament) is one way in which Tomasello can shed new and powerful lights on our common sense, and on the handling of collective concepts, among other things.
Common interpersonal and cultural basis mediates our way to relate to ourself, to other and to the world : this count among anthropologists' and sociologists' basic, and dearest, claims, and yet, claims for which supports could have been lacking (if no longer today, then at least back in Durkheim' or even Franz Boas' time).
Together with a overall clear writing, sense of modesty, and openness, a dense and rich empirical set of evidences help make Tomasello's book great and admirable. Not many scientist can rival him on this ground.
I have kept track of Tomasello for several years, from my doctoral dissertation in updating classical anthropologists' holism, to my present day work in public management. I set him next to Rousseau, Adam Smith and René Descartes among the most significant Western intellectual acheviements.
February 27, 2014
Tomaello's examination of the social/shared intentionality basis for modern human thinking is compelling. He explores the topic in a way that draws on our understanding of great ape cognition and communication to show where the "gaps" in the evolutionary process must be and uses a reasonable mechanism to bridge those gaps. Using examples from Apes, and children at various stages of cognitive development Tomasello provides a lens through which to look at the topic of how we evolved to think the way we do.
May 23, 2016
Plausible
Well written speculations. Brings advances in interdisciplinary research together to explain how human thinking emerged from prior forms. Page turner.
Well written speculations. Brings advances in interdisciplinary research together to explain how human thinking emerged from prior forms. Page turner.
January 4, 2020
Myślimy nieustannie. Ale co sprawia, że u ludzi ten proces jest wyjątkowy? Czy i w jakim stopniu jest inny jakościowo i ilościowo, gdy porównamy go z myśleniem pozostałych człowiekowatych? Psycholog rozwojowy Michael Tomasello w "Historii naturalnej ludzkiego myślenia" zaprezentował kilka koncepcji w ramach poszukiwań odpowiedzi na te pytania z punktu widzenia społecznych przemian i ewolucji złożoności struktur natury psychologiczno-socjologicznych, które na przestrzeni ostatnich kilku milionów lat zbudowały finalnie nasz język i kulturę.
Psycholog główną tezę postawił już na początku i wytrwale bronił na każdej stronie pracy. Można hasłowo wysłowić ją tak: większość skomplikowanych procesów myślowych uformowała się z potrzeb natury egzystencjalnej by w efekcie rozwinąć się w wachlarz interakcji społecznych budując wielopoziomowe relacje grupowe. Do prześledzenia kluczowych punktów zwrotnych, Tomasello powołał kilkuetapowy proces pogłębiającej się z czasem intencjonalności. Za podstawowe mechanizmy budujące to zjawisko uznał kooperację, rekurencję myślenia i samokontrolę. Dzięki nim człowiek dopracował się złożonych form komunikacji.
Opowieść Tomasello jest fascynująca, bo jeśli prawdziwa, to pozwala zrozumieć źródła naszej wyjątkowości i jednocześnie dojść do wniosku, że myślenie jest zupełnie naturalne (choć, jako proces zaawansowany, jest raczej wyjątkowe na naszej planecie). Objawiło się ono, jako potrzeba przeżycia i w konsekwencji pełniejszego analizowania świata – mamy intencjonalność współdzieloną – etap rozwoju z pogłębiającą się koordynacją działań z innymi. Ten etap rozwoju jest już nieosiągalny dla innych człowiekowatych. Wypracowano w nim pomocne i coraz bardziej skomplikowane gesty oraz przekazywanie informacji z intencją dzielenia się faktami. Następnie człowiek rozwija gesty ikoniczne, abstrakcyjność i kontekst informacji. Jednostki pogłębiają rekurencję (wiem, że on wie, że ja wiem, że on wie,…) i budują zbiorowe normy dla grup – pojawia się intencjonalność kolektywna. Ostatecznie człowiek zaczął posługiwać się językiem, jako nośnikiem treści zaawansowanych, budując przy okazji struktury moralne i racjonalność zbiorową. Mamy Homo sapiens sapiens.
Ta piękna historia kładzie nacisk na adaptacje mające swoje źródła w presji ewolucyjnej, w której człowiekowate wybrały akurat drogę socjalizacji. Ciekawe hipotezy stawia autor, pytając o możliwości rozwojowe współczesnego dziecka, które całe życie spędziłoby na bezludnej wyspie (efekt ‘Robinsona Crusoe’), albo grupie izolowanej (efekt ‘Władcy much’). Jakie wnioski wysuwa autor o możliwościach umysłowych tak rozwijających się ludzi? Po odpowiedź zapraszam do książki. Bardzo ciekawe przemyślenia.
Niewiele jest w książce dywagacji odnoszących się do typowych badawczych faktów materialnych. Dominuje narracja hipotez, argumentacji na gruncie teorii języka, antropologii kultury i socjologiczno-psychologicznych narzędzi teoretycznych. Jest trochę opisów eksperymentów zachowań dzieci w wieku do 3 lat, jako bazy do budowania historycznej zmienności procesów poznawczych naszego gatunku. To rodzi jednak sporo pytań o podstawy takiej metody, które wymagają dyskusji – bo w jakim stopniu możemy porównywać zachowanie dwulatka z domniemanym poziomem myślenia naszych przodków przed milionem lat? Sam autor widzi w tym niebezpieczeństwo, choć nie przeprowadza nad tym dyskusji. Podobne pytania nasuwają się przy porównywaniu behawioru małp z dziećmi i wyciąganiu wniosków o stanie umysłu naszych antenatów. Założeniem autora było unikanie przypisania opisywanych zjawisk do konkretnego okresu z historii ewolucji. Są co prawda wspominanie trzy istotne punkty – oddzielenie linii Homo od reszty człowiekowatych, pojawienie się Homo heidelbergensisa i neandertalczyka – do których autor jakoś przypisuje kluczowe zmiany społecznej organizacji, lecz robi to tylko zdawkowo. Widać, jest jeszcze sporo pracy przy nadawaniu przemianom kognitywnym konkretnych znaczników czasu.
Książka jest momentami trudna. Autor używa pojęć z teorii języka (np. konstrukcje ergatywne czy akuzatywne), które akurat mi były często obce. Nie można jednak powiedzieć, że ma ‘ciężkie pióro’. Ostatnie strony (233-262) to wspaniałe podsumowanie, gdzie wszystko jest jasno wyłożone. Jeśli ktoś nie chce się męczyć nad detalami, może skupić się na tych fragmentach. Tam jest istota myśli autora.
"Historia naturalna ludzkiego myślenia" to bardzo dobra książka. Jest trochę detalicznych analiz, które będąc codziennością autora, mogą męczyć swą hermetycznością, ale chyba i tak warto. Dla mnie to uzupełnienie poszukiwań odpowiedzi o ludzki umysł, myślenie i świadomość, które do tej pory poznawałem raczej od strony biologicznej czy filozofii kognitywistyki. Tu mamy narrację z dominującym komponentem socjologiczno-lingwistycznym.
Polecam.
BARDZO DOBRA - 7.5/10
Psycholog główną tezę postawił już na początku i wytrwale bronił na każdej stronie pracy. Można hasłowo wysłowić ją tak: większość skomplikowanych procesów myślowych uformowała się z potrzeb natury egzystencjalnej by w efekcie rozwinąć się w wachlarz interakcji społecznych budując wielopoziomowe relacje grupowe. Do prześledzenia kluczowych punktów zwrotnych, Tomasello powołał kilkuetapowy proces pogłębiającej się z czasem intencjonalności. Za podstawowe mechanizmy budujące to zjawisko uznał kooperację, rekurencję myślenia i samokontrolę. Dzięki nim człowiek dopracował się złożonych form komunikacji.
Opowieść Tomasello jest fascynująca, bo jeśli prawdziwa, to pozwala zrozumieć źródła naszej wyjątkowości i jednocześnie dojść do wniosku, że myślenie jest zupełnie naturalne (choć, jako proces zaawansowany, jest raczej wyjątkowe na naszej planecie). Objawiło się ono, jako potrzeba przeżycia i w konsekwencji pełniejszego analizowania świata – mamy intencjonalność współdzieloną – etap rozwoju z pogłębiającą się koordynacją działań z innymi. Ten etap rozwoju jest już nieosiągalny dla innych człowiekowatych. Wypracowano w nim pomocne i coraz bardziej skomplikowane gesty oraz przekazywanie informacji z intencją dzielenia się faktami. Następnie człowiek rozwija gesty ikoniczne, abstrakcyjność i kontekst informacji. Jednostki pogłębiają rekurencję (wiem, że on wie, że ja wiem, że on wie,…) i budują zbiorowe normy dla grup – pojawia się intencjonalność kolektywna. Ostatecznie człowiek zaczął posługiwać się językiem, jako nośnikiem treści zaawansowanych, budując przy okazji struktury moralne i racjonalność zbiorową. Mamy Homo sapiens sapiens.
Ta piękna historia kładzie nacisk na adaptacje mające swoje źródła w presji ewolucyjnej, w której człowiekowate wybrały akurat drogę socjalizacji. Ciekawe hipotezy stawia autor, pytając o możliwości rozwojowe współczesnego dziecka, które całe życie spędziłoby na bezludnej wyspie (efekt ‘Robinsona Crusoe’), albo grupie izolowanej (efekt ‘Władcy much’). Jakie wnioski wysuwa autor o możliwościach umysłowych tak rozwijających się ludzi? Po odpowiedź zapraszam do książki. Bardzo ciekawe przemyślenia.
Niewiele jest w książce dywagacji odnoszących się do typowych badawczych faktów materialnych. Dominuje narracja hipotez, argumentacji na gruncie teorii języka, antropologii kultury i socjologiczno-psychologicznych narzędzi teoretycznych. Jest trochę opisów eksperymentów zachowań dzieci w wieku do 3 lat, jako bazy do budowania historycznej zmienności procesów poznawczych naszego gatunku. To rodzi jednak sporo pytań o podstawy takiej metody, które wymagają dyskusji – bo w jakim stopniu możemy porównywać zachowanie dwulatka z domniemanym poziomem myślenia naszych przodków przed milionem lat? Sam autor widzi w tym niebezpieczeństwo, choć nie przeprowadza nad tym dyskusji. Podobne pytania nasuwają się przy porównywaniu behawioru małp z dziećmi i wyciąganiu wniosków o stanie umysłu naszych antenatów. Założeniem autora było unikanie przypisania opisywanych zjawisk do konkretnego okresu z historii ewolucji. Są co prawda wspominanie trzy istotne punkty – oddzielenie linii Homo od reszty człowiekowatych, pojawienie się Homo heidelbergensisa i neandertalczyka – do których autor jakoś przypisuje kluczowe zmiany społecznej organizacji, lecz robi to tylko zdawkowo. Widać, jest jeszcze sporo pracy przy nadawaniu przemianom kognitywnym konkretnych znaczników czasu.
Książka jest momentami trudna. Autor używa pojęć z teorii języka (np. konstrukcje ergatywne czy akuzatywne), które akurat mi były często obce. Nie można jednak powiedzieć, że ma ‘ciężkie pióro’. Ostatnie strony (233-262) to wspaniałe podsumowanie, gdzie wszystko jest jasno wyłożone. Jeśli ktoś nie chce się męczyć nad detalami, może skupić się na tych fragmentach. Tam jest istota myśli autora.
"Historia naturalna ludzkiego myślenia" to bardzo dobra książka. Jest trochę detalicznych analiz, które będąc codziennością autora, mogą męczyć swą hermetycznością, ale chyba i tak warto. Dla mnie to uzupełnienie poszukiwań odpowiedzi o ludzki umysł, myślenie i świadomość, które do tej pory poznawałem raczej od strony biologicznej czy filozofii kognitywistyki. Tu mamy narrację z dominującym komponentem socjologiczno-lingwistycznym.
Polecam.
BARDZO DOBRA - 7.5/10
November 6, 2014
Humans have been asking what makes our thought processes more advanced than those of the primates’ since western society has been able to interact with primates through the development of zoos in the mid-19th century. Michael Tomasello uses his and his colleagues’ research at the Max Planck Institute to address these queries with a relatively simple hypothesis: that human need for survival through modified intentionality- joint and eventually community intentionality led to our cognitive progress. Though Tomasello’s hypothesis is simple, his argument in his latest book, A natural history of human thinking, is not. He spoke in a convoluted, academic manner that was, at times, difficult to follow, only to then follow-through by describing his ideas two or three times in a row, including mundane examples. This made me wonder who he believed his audience was- if he was writing to those familiar with scholastic jargon and similar ideas, the reader would likely have become bored or annoyed with his reiteration. If he was writing to a more general population, the reader may have become lost and confused with his research-specific vocabulary and multifaceted ideas.
Not only is Tomasello’s writing repetitive, but also it is also extremely polarizing throughout the book. An example of this is on page 136, where he states that “these [mannerisms or utterances produced by great apes raised in human contexts] are all requests…” only to later stipulate that “over 95% of the communicative acts produced by the individuals [great apes] are some form of imperative…the other 5% are questionable.” This makes his first statement misleading- as he used a blanket generalization (“all”) as an attempt to make his argument stronger, only to later state that 5% of those great ape communications were actually unclear. Tomasello used the words "all," "always," "never," and "none" 239 times throughout the book in total- a large number considering that I have been taught to beware of my use of such strong language, as one can usually find an exception to a general rule. Another interesting characteristic of Tomasello’s writing is that he used feminine pronouns, especially possessive pronouns, in his examples more frequently than masculine pronouns. For example, the word “his” is used 69 times throughout the book, while the word “her” is used 84 times. Though this might not seem totally unbalanced, it was noticeable- pronouns in academic literature are almost always masculine. I am unsure of the purpose of this, but it is certainly worthy of thought.
Despite having found Tomasello’s writing to be lengthy and confusing, I found the topic to be intriguing, especially from chapter four to the end. I was employing some of Tomasello’s ideas about metacognition and adaption to think about my thoughts on the book. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the second half of the book more interesting and applicable because I had adapted to Tomasello’s style of writing- the same way that he argues that humans adapt to pressing situations by further developing cognitive processes. As I read, I become more and more invested in Tomasello’s argument and desired to continue reading. I then wondered- according to Tomasello “the main function of reasoning is to convince others…” (page 141) yet, I was using logic and reasoning techniques simply because I was interested in the result- not necessarily to convince others of my opinions (like I am right now). I thought of the games of chess which Tomasello frequently uses as examples, mythological storytelling dating back to ancient times, and simple wonder that seems innate since birth- with children continuously asking “why” regardless of the circumstance. My response to this is that perhaps this phenomenon can be explained by Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” which states that one must satisfy basic physiological and safety needs before one can address more complex needs- relational, esteem, and self-actualization. It is possible that earlier humans, like Homo heidellbergensis or even Homo neanderthalensis could not participate in this type of higher level thought due to unmet needs of survival and safety being more pressing concerns, with no time or energy left to invest into more frivolous thought. Though it would be hard to gather data to support these ideas either way, I would argue that humans all have an innate interest in each other’s perspectives and experiences and use communication to gain a greater understanding rather that convince each other of our own beliefs. It is curious that Tomasello implicitly states otherwise, despite identifying himself as both an anthropologist and a psychologist.
This book inspired a lot of thought on the information that can be deducted on the “nature vs. nurture” debate regarding human cognition and communication. Although Tomasello’s background is in psychology, he failed to discuss many psychological theorists related to his ideas regarding human development, including Erickson. Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development state that as humans develop from infantry to adulthood, they undergo orderly psychosocial crises that promote development into the next stage. The stage that Erickson labels specifically for children between two to four years of age is considered “Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt” (Crain, 291). It was interesting that Tomasello did not mention Erickson specifically because at several points in the book (specifically pages 112-115 and 180-185) he argues that at age three, human children develop social norms and normative self-monitoring. What Erickson states is that at ages two to four, children are becoming more independent in activities of daily living and exploring their environments. If children are not allowed to experience this freedom due to restrictive parenting, the children will experience doubt and shame regarding their abilities to complete tasks. Tomasello states that the main mode of learning is through social norms and normative self-monitoring as compared to a community standard. I would argue that there is a strong connection that can be made between this increased independence in completion of tasks, as recognized by Erickson, and the development of normative self-monitoring, as recognized by Tomasello. Thus, it is not pure independence that leads to the “autonomous” learning, but rather the influence of community and social norms on children this age that influences development to either increased autonomy in everyday tasks or shame and doubt.
Throughout his book, Tomasello relies on a dualistic perspective to prove his points. There was a heavy implication that things are either “black” or “white,” or grouped together throughout his discussion of data and research. Tomasello’s argument itself was founded upon two assumptions- that great apes are entirely competitive and that modern humans are “almost entirely,” if not completely cooperative. Regardless of these assumptions, both apes and humans interact and live primarily in groups. As a reader, I interpreted Tomasello’s writing to indicate that all groups/cohorts (human or non-human) are fundamentally the same and/or “black” or “white” with regards to purpose (to aide in survival), roles (apes- competitors, humans-assistants), and interactions. This is also true of early human cognition and communication- a question brought to my own mind being how humans are able to make different choices and come to different conclusions within the same environment, with the same goals, and the same “common ground” information (see page 140 for the example Tomasello gave that inspired these questions).
While Tomasello’s book is overly complex and wordy, it is clear that he made an effort to reach and convince the general population of his arguments regarding the development of uniquely human cognition and communication. Though this argument may not be entirely convincing, it was still fascinating and worthwhile. It definitely stimulated a lot of thought and attention to this topic as a reader with very little background in natural history and evolution.
Not only is Tomasello’s writing repetitive, but also it is also extremely polarizing throughout the book. An example of this is on page 136, where he states that “these [mannerisms or utterances produced by great apes raised in human contexts] are all requests…” only to later stipulate that “over 95% of the communicative acts produced by the individuals [great apes] are some form of imperative…the other 5% are questionable.” This makes his first statement misleading- as he used a blanket generalization (“all”) as an attempt to make his argument stronger, only to later state that 5% of those great ape communications were actually unclear. Tomasello used the words "all," "always," "never," and "none" 239 times throughout the book in total- a large number considering that I have been taught to beware of my use of such strong language, as one can usually find an exception to a general rule. Another interesting characteristic of Tomasello’s writing is that he used feminine pronouns, especially possessive pronouns, in his examples more frequently than masculine pronouns. For example, the word “his” is used 69 times throughout the book, while the word “her” is used 84 times. Though this might not seem totally unbalanced, it was noticeable- pronouns in academic literature are almost always masculine. I am unsure of the purpose of this, but it is certainly worthy of thought.
Despite having found Tomasello’s writing to be lengthy and confusing, I found the topic to be intriguing, especially from chapter four to the end. I was employing some of Tomasello’s ideas about metacognition and adaption to think about my thoughts on the book. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the second half of the book more interesting and applicable because I had adapted to Tomasello’s style of writing- the same way that he argues that humans adapt to pressing situations by further developing cognitive processes. As I read, I become more and more invested in Tomasello’s argument and desired to continue reading. I then wondered- according to Tomasello “the main function of reasoning is to convince others…” (page 141) yet, I was using logic and reasoning techniques simply because I was interested in the result- not necessarily to convince others of my opinions (like I am right now). I thought of the games of chess which Tomasello frequently uses as examples, mythological storytelling dating back to ancient times, and simple wonder that seems innate since birth- with children continuously asking “why” regardless of the circumstance. My response to this is that perhaps this phenomenon can be explained by Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” which states that one must satisfy basic physiological and safety needs before one can address more complex needs- relational, esteem, and self-actualization. It is possible that earlier humans, like Homo heidellbergensis or even Homo neanderthalensis could not participate in this type of higher level thought due to unmet needs of survival and safety being more pressing concerns, with no time or energy left to invest into more frivolous thought. Though it would be hard to gather data to support these ideas either way, I would argue that humans all have an innate interest in each other’s perspectives and experiences and use communication to gain a greater understanding rather that convince each other of our own beliefs. It is curious that Tomasello implicitly states otherwise, despite identifying himself as both an anthropologist and a psychologist.
This book inspired a lot of thought on the information that can be deducted on the “nature vs. nurture” debate regarding human cognition and communication. Although Tomasello’s background is in psychology, he failed to discuss many psychological theorists related to his ideas regarding human development, including Erickson. Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development state that as humans develop from infantry to adulthood, they undergo orderly psychosocial crises that promote development into the next stage. The stage that Erickson labels specifically for children between two to four years of age is considered “Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt” (Crain, 291). It was interesting that Tomasello did not mention Erickson specifically because at several points in the book (specifically pages 112-115 and 180-185) he argues that at age three, human children develop social norms and normative self-monitoring. What Erickson states is that at ages two to four, children are becoming more independent in activities of daily living and exploring their environments. If children are not allowed to experience this freedom due to restrictive parenting, the children will experience doubt and shame regarding their abilities to complete tasks. Tomasello states that the main mode of learning is through social norms and normative self-monitoring as compared to a community standard. I would argue that there is a strong connection that can be made between this increased independence in completion of tasks, as recognized by Erickson, and the development of normative self-monitoring, as recognized by Tomasello. Thus, it is not pure independence that leads to the “autonomous” learning, but rather the influence of community and social norms on children this age that influences development to either increased autonomy in everyday tasks or shame and doubt.
Throughout his book, Tomasello relies on a dualistic perspective to prove his points. There was a heavy implication that things are either “black” or “white,” or grouped together throughout his discussion of data and research. Tomasello’s argument itself was founded upon two assumptions- that great apes are entirely competitive and that modern humans are “almost entirely,” if not completely cooperative. Regardless of these assumptions, both apes and humans interact and live primarily in groups. As a reader, I interpreted Tomasello’s writing to indicate that all groups/cohorts (human or non-human) are fundamentally the same and/or “black” or “white” with regards to purpose (to aide in survival), roles (apes- competitors, humans-assistants), and interactions. This is also true of early human cognition and communication- a question brought to my own mind being how humans are able to make different choices and come to different conclusions within the same environment, with the same goals, and the same “common ground” information (see page 140 for the example Tomasello gave that inspired these questions).
While Tomasello’s book is overly complex and wordy, it is clear that he made an effort to reach and convince the general population of his arguments regarding the development of uniquely human cognition and communication. Though this argument may not be entirely convincing, it was still fascinating and worthwhile. It definitely stimulated a lot of thought and attention to this topic as a reader with very little background in natural history and evolution.
November 25, 2019
The idea is this: Human thinking evolved collectively by interaction and a shared goals of the individuals of the group which lead to more organizational requirements which lead to objective facts which lead to what we consider thinking. It is a great idea which is backed by a lot of experiments done on great apes and 2-3 year old kids. There are a lot of examples of how this could happen and why it would happen as well. The evolution fascinates me and I have been reading quite a lot about it but never from the psychological point of view and never in the scope of groups (compared to individual or gene level).
This book is super hard to read. There are roughly 150 pages in this book and it took me a month to read it! The book reads really like it was not written for the general public. It reads like the book written by professor for the professors. I had to google a lot of the stuff in this book and thank god for the built-in dictionary in the kindle app. But what bothered me the most was actually the structure of the sentences in the book:
By the time I was done with the sentence I have forgotten how it started. There are no bullet points in this book even thought there are desperately needed.
Overall I think it is a book worth of reading but prepare that author will not help you too much if you are a novice to psychology.
This book is super hard to read. There are roughly 150 pages in this book and it took me a month to read it! The book reads really like it was not written for the general public. It reads like the book written by professor for the professors. I had to google a lot of the stuff in this book and thank god for the built-in dictionary in the kindle app. But what bothered me the most was actually the structure of the sentences in the book:
Conventional communication became fully propositional, not only because of its conventional, normative, “objective” format and topic-focus structuring, but also because the speaker’s communicative motives and epistemic/modal attitudes could be independently controlled in conventional signs, which meant that the propositional content was conceptualized independent of the motives and attitudes of particular individuals.
By the time I was done with the sentence I have forgotten how it started. There are no bullet points in this book even thought there are desperately needed.
Overall I think it is a book worth of reading but prepare that author will not help you too much if you are a novice to psychology.
August 19, 2023
What makes human thinking different from our ancestors like apes? Cooperation and collective minded approaches to the world. Perspective taking appears to be uniquely human. Tomasello argues that while primates can act jointly they do not cooperate to meet goals.
This book posits that before humans had language and culture they were able first to think together jointly and then collectively. Individuals are out for themselves. Then there is room for collaboration and cooperative communication like gestures and pointing. “Second personal self monitoring” happens when a person takes on the perspective of another and thinks about what they think you are thinking. This level of remove allows for deeper and more complex coordination.
To get to more modern thinking, we need to be able to think in groups and enforce norms. Over time, these norms create distinct cultures. Folks and ideas can be reified. Morality can evolve. Objectivity and thinking from the perspective of no one and nowhere is now possible.
A lot to think about and unpack. I liked the clear development of the chapters and the summaries. It was difficult to follow at times but the ideas were justified by some interesting science comparing apes and children in similar settings. 3 year old children appear to start moving toward this more complex thinking and communicating.
This book posits that before humans had language and culture they were able first to think together jointly and then collectively. Individuals are out for themselves. Then there is room for collaboration and cooperative communication like gestures and pointing. “Second personal self monitoring” happens when a person takes on the perspective of another and thinks about what they think you are thinking. This level of remove allows for deeper and more complex coordination.
To get to more modern thinking, we need to be able to think in groups and enforce norms. Over time, these norms create distinct cultures. Folks and ideas can be reified. Morality can evolve. Objectivity and thinking from the perspective of no one and nowhere is now possible.
A lot to think about and unpack. I liked the clear development of the chapters and the summaries. It was difficult to follow at times but the ideas were justified by some interesting science comparing apes and children in similar settings. 3 year old children appear to start moving toward this more complex thinking and communicating.
December 21, 2019
Dense but insightful book about how human thinking - representation, inference and self-monitoring - resulted from joint (and later collective) intentionality. Although it has a clear evolutionary underpinning, its focus is mostly cognitive, so the evolutionary arguments are often somewhat underdeveloped. But Tomasello's naturalistic (and especially functional) approach to human thinking is thoroughly scientific, which is refreshing and moves his thesis beyond mere theory, as it is richly supported by (often his own) work on primates and young children.
January 6, 2021
Awesome. Great read.
Robustly argued, using his own and others psychological research on great apes and human children as well as deep and thorough engagement with philosophical theories and ideas (Vygotsky, Mead, Wittgenstein, Davidson etc) to construct a speculative but detailed account of the two-step development of collective intentionality, which he argues lies behind contemporary humans' unique cognitive abilities.
Robustly argued, using his own and others psychological research on great apes and human children as well as deep and thorough engagement with philosophical theories and ideas (Vygotsky, Mead, Wittgenstein, Davidson etc) to construct a speculative but detailed account of the two-step development of collective intentionality, which he argues lies behind contemporary humans' unique cognitive abilities.
May 19, 2019
Pros: short and to the point.
I'm gonna go see if anyone came up with any critique to Tomasello and if there is any evidence against any of the main points. It looks pretty coherent from where I stand right now.
I'm gonna go see if anyone came up with any critique to Tomasello and if there is any evidence against any of the main points. It looks pretty coherent from where I stand right now.
January 30, 2021
The early chapters are interesting, but much of the rest ends up being much of a "just-so story" - a compelling one, to be sure, and one accompanied by interesting philosophical and psychological digressions, but nonetheless one better titled "A [Prospective] Natural History of Human Thinking".
November 21, 2017
Well-argued, fascinating but challenging read.
December 23, 2018
It’s not a easy book, but the research and the comparative studies with monkey worth the effort.
May 8, 2021
15/20
June 25, 2024
yarı yamalak anlayıp insanlara anlatcak bir sürü yeni alakasız akademik şey öğrendim. Süper!
January 29, 2025
we cannot conceive any comprehensive theory of the origins of uniquely human thinking that is not fundamentally social in character
May 22, 2016
La tesi di Tomasello è non solo affascinante, ma anche e soprattutto probabilmente vera o quantomeno verosimile. Il problema è che per spiegarla impiega 300 pagine di ripetizione dello stesso concetto già chiaro dall'introduzione, con una quantità di esempi e schemi francamente superflua.
April 14, 2024
This was an interesting read that was also very eye opening for me. I found it to be quite enjoyable. It gives in depth view of how we humans developed our thinking over time and how it is different than other species. Would definitely recommend.
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April 8, 2016153 T6556 2014
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews