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.
...MoreReview Uwe Peters (2015) Review of "A Natural History of Human Thinking". Biology and Philosophy (pp. 299-312).
Essay Review
Mameli, Matteo;
(2001)
Modules and Mindreaders
(/isis/citation/CBB000100668/)
Article
Downes, Stephen M;
(2001)
Some Recent Developments in Evolutionary Approaches to the Study of Human Cognition and Behavior
(/isis/citation/CBB000100649/)
Article
Rapchan, Eliane Sebeika;
(2012)
Cultura e inteligência: reflexões antropológicas sobre aspectos não físicos da evolução em chimpanzés e humanos
(/isis/citation/CBB001420597/)
Thesis
Juzda, E;
(cited 2011)
The Rise and Fall of British Craniometry, 1860--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001567345/)
Book
Cecilia Heyes;
(2018)
Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
(/isis/citation/CBB158347057/)
Essay Review
Murphy, Dominic;
(2003)
The History and Biography of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB000340594/)
Article
Gary Hatfield;
(2020)
Wundt and “Higher Cognition”: Elements, Association, Apperception, and Experiment
(/isis/citation/CBB419943096/)
Book
John E. Joseph;
(2017)
Language, Mind and Body: A Conceptual History
(/isis/citation/CBB786144887/)
Book
Mauro Antonelli;
(2019)
Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology: New Ideas of a Century Ago
(/isis/citation/CBB446831039/)
Book
Ruth Leys;
(2017)
The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique
(/isis/citation/CBB108209300/)
Article
Dr James Nikopoulos;
(2019)
Essay review: Why Can't Science Be More Like History: A Response to Ruth Leys' The Ascent of Affect. Genealogy and Critique
(/isis/citation/CBB041016576/)
Article
Schmidt, Claudia M.;
(2008)
Kant's Transcendental and Empirical Psychology of Cognition
(/isis/citation/CBB000931151/)
Book
Konstan, David;
(2008)
A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus
(/isis/citation/CBB001035548/)
Article
Wassmann, Claudia;
(2009)
Physiological Optics, Cognition and Emotion: A Novel Look at the Early Work of Wilhelm Wundt
(/isis/citation/CBB000930502/)
Article
Yulia Ustinova;
(2020)
Alteration of consciousness in Ancient Greece: divine mania
(/isis/citation/CBB226577100/)
Book
G. E. R. Lloyd;
(2020)
Intelligence and Intelligibility: Cross-Cultural Studies of Human Cognitive Experience
(/isis/citation/CBB563600617/)
Article
Teske, John A.;
(2001)
Cognitive Neuroscience, Temporal Ordering, and the Human Spirit
(/isis/citation/CBB000102258/)
Chapter
Cattaruzza, Serena;
(2001)
The Instrumental Model of Language in Karl Bühler
(/isis/citation/CBB000102708/)
Article
Frierson, Patrick;
(2008)
Empirical Psychology, Common Sense, and Kant's Empirical Markers for Moral Responsibility
(/isis/citation/CBB000931152/)
Article
Rein Vihalemm;
(2022)
On Stages of Cognition
(/isis/citation/CBB488152671/)
Be the first to comment!