A Natural History of Human Thinking

Michael Tomasello

Published by Harvard University Press 2014

A Natural History of Human Thinking

Michael Tomasello

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674726369

Overview
Contents

About this book

Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. 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. Tomasello maintains that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together and coordinate thoughts. A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition.

Author information

TomaselloMichael:

Michael Tomasello is Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
1. The Shared Intentionality Hypothesis Only cooperation constitutes a process that can produce reason Jean Piaget Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Individual Intentionality Understanding consists in imagining the fact Ludwig Wittgenstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
3. Joint Intentionality Conceptual contents are essentially expressively perspectival Robert Brandom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
4. Collective Intentionality Th ere is no thinking apart from common standards of correctness and relevance, which relate what I do think to what anyone ought to think. Th e contrast between “I” and “anyone” is essential to rational thought Wilfrid Sellars Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
5. Human Th inking as Cooperation Th e internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology Lev Vygotsky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
6. Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Edition: Pilot project, eBook available to selected US libraries only
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 192

eBook

Published: February 17, 2014
ISBN: 9780674726369