Abstract
One important application of theories of collective intentionality concerns the evolution of social understanding and even of human thinking (Tomasello M, A natural history of human thinking, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014). A promising idea behind this approach is the Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis (CEH), namely, the idea that humans’ capacity for social cooperation is at the heart of their ability to understand others’ mental states and behavior, leading to an explanation of how humans came to share thoughts and language. However, some of the most popular defenses of CEH face important problems. In this paper, we take Tomasello’s account (J Soc Ontol 2(1):117–123, 2016); A natural history of human thinking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014; Origins of human communication. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008) as a leading example of the CEH which faces such insurmountable problems. In particular, we argue that Tomasello’s analysis of cooperation and spontaneous help is problematic. We locate a source of such issues in the assumption that the right account of joint action and simple forms of shared intentionality is that which is offered by Bratman’s theory of shared intentions. The second part of the article proposes and defends an alternative framework for understanding shared intentionality that can help substantiate CEH.
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- 1.
Tomasello endorses a more controversial thesis, the idea that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,’ illustrated by his endorsement of the two-step intentionality theory for both ontogeny and phylogeny (see the final section of this paper for an illustrative quote). While we are not alone in thinking that this thesis is too strong (see Gould 1977 and Satne 2016), the claim that the developmental path of a cognitive capacity provides some evidence and constraints on its evolutionary trajectory is quite uncontroversial.
- 2.
For an extensive review of empirical literature supporting the claim that young children do not understand such kind of commitments (see Michael et al. 2015).
- 3.
- 4.
See Gallagher (2015) for critical discussion of the relevant tests, whether they evince ToM capacities, and, if so, of what kind.
- 5.
These arguments leave open the possibility for other psychological mechanisms to explain joint action in young children. Pacherie (2013), for example, proposes that joint action in young children is explained by their ability to group identify. However, the success of Pacherie’s account depends on how the psychological notion of group identification is understood. On her view, group identification presupposes the ability to adopt the group’s perspective. Because of this assumption, Salice and Miyazono (2019), argue that Pacherie’s theory may also turn out to be too cognitively demanding for the purposes of explaining the first and very early forms of social interaction among children.
- 6.
As noted above, Pacherie provides a collective view of early joint action. For our reservations about the prospects of such an account for substantiating CEH, see fn. 4 above.
- 7.
For a thorough argument for why one ought to consider second-personal interactions of this sort a form of collective intentionality, (see: Satne forthcoming).
- 8.
The core idea can be found in Haugeland (1990), who describes it in the following way: “when community members behave normally, how they behave is in general directly accountable to what’s normal in their community; their dispositions have been inculcated and shaped according to those norms, and their behaviour continues to be monitored for compliance” (Haugeland 1990: 406).
- 9.
There is a debate concerning the demandingness of the cognitive machinery required to make sense of this set of social comformism capacities (see: Tomasello 1999a, b; Rakoczy et al. 2008; Csibra and Gergely 2009; and for a critical discussion, Satne 2014). Here for reasons of space we advocate the minimal view without further discussing this issue.
- 10.
See Reed (1991) for a non-representational account of social affordances and their developmental and evolutionary trajectories.
- 11.
For a view on minimal cognitive capacities based on Millikan’s concept of push-me pull-you representations (PPRs), (see: Salice and Miyazono 2019). This account can be thought to be compatible with radical enactive views as long as one agrees with Millikan that the organismic responses at issue are intentional—i.e. extensional—and not intensional (for detailed discussion, see: Hutto and Myin forthcoming and Hutto and Satne 2015).
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Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this paper were presented at Aarhus University, Denmark (2016); Maynooth University, Ireland (2016); at the University of Wollongong, Australia (2016); at Monash University, Australia (2017); and at the AAP 2017 Annual Conference at the University of Adelaide. We are grateful for the valuable feedback from audiences at such venues.
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Satne, G., Salice, A. (2020). Shared Intentionality and the Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis. In: Fiebich, A. (eds) Minimal Cooperation and Shared Agency. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29783-1_5
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