scholarly journals Joint Intentionality

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ladislav Koreň
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
Specific Capacity ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Motivational Mechanism ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Intentional Activities ◽  
Shared Intentionality Hypothesis

AbstractAccording to the shared intentionality hypothesis proposed by Michael Tomasello, two cognitive upgrades – joint and collective intentionality, respectively – make human thinking unique. Joint intentionality, in particular, is a mindset supposed to account for our early, species-specific capacity to participate in collaborative activities involving two (or a few) agents. In order to elucidate such activities and their proximate cognitive-motivational mechanism, Tomasello draws on philosophical accounts of shared intentionality. I argue that his deference to such cognitively demanding accounts of shared intentional activities is problematic if his theoretical ambition is in part to show that and how early (prelinguistic and precultural) capacities for joint action contribute to the development of higher cognitive capacities.

scholarly journals Response to: Rethinking Human Development and the Shared Intentionality Hypothesis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Shared Intentionality Hypothesis

Abstract I respond to Moll, Nichols, and Mackey’s review of my book Becoming Human. I agree with many of their points, but have my own point of view on some others.

Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 675-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomasello ◽  
Malinda Carpenter ◽  
Josep Call ◽  
Tanya Behne ◽  
Henrike Moll
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Cultural Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
Collaborative Activities

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

scholarly journals Tension in the Natural History of Human Thinking

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrike Moll
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Evolutionary Time ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
Evolutionary Story

AbstractMichael Tomasello has greatly expanded our knowledge of human cognition and how it differs from that of other animals. In this commentary to his recent book A Natural History of Human Thinking, I first critique some of the presuppositions and arguments of his evolutionary story about how homo sapiens’ cognition emerged. For example, I question the strategy of relying on the modern chimpanzee as a model for our last shared ancestor, and I doubt the idea that what changed first over evolutionary time was hominin behavior, which then in turn brought about changes in cognition. In the second half of the commentary I aim to show that the author oscillates between an additive and a transformative account of human shared intentionality. I argue that shared intentionality shapes cognition in its entirety and therefore precludes the possibility that humans have the same, individual intentionality (as shown in, e.g. their instrumental reasoning) as other apes.

scholarly journals Shared intentionality, reason-giving and the evolution of human culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathal O'Madagain ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Different Levels

The biological approach to culture focuses almost exclusively on processes of social learning, to the neglect of processes of cultural coordination including joint action and shared intentionality. In this paper, we argue that the distinctive features of human culture derive from humans' unique skills and motivations for coordinating with one another around different types of action and information. As different levels of these skills of ‘shared intentionality’ emerged over the last several hundred thousand years, human culture became characterized first by such things as collaborative activities and pedagogy based on cooperative communication, and then by such things as collaborative innovations and normatively structured pedagogy. As a kind of capstone of this trajectory, humans began to coordinate not just on joint actions and shared beliefs, but on the reasons for what we believe or how we act. Coordinating on reasons powered the kinds of extremely rapid innovation and stable cumulative cultural evolution especially characteristic of the human species in the last several tens of thousands of years. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Collective Emotions and Joint Action

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikko Salmela ◽  
Michiru Nagatsu
Keyword(s):  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Joint Actions ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Collective Emotions ◽  
Intentional Structure ◽  
Interpersonal Liking

AbstractIn contemporary philosophy of collective intentionality, emotions, feelings, moods, and sentiments do not figure prominently in debates on the explanation and justification of joint action. Received philosophical theories analyze joint action in terms of common knowledge of cognitively complex, interconnected structures of intentions and action plans of the participants. These theories admit that collective emotions sometimes give rise to joint action or more typically, unplanned and uncoordinated collective behavior that falls short of full-fledged jointly intentional action. In contrast, minimalist theorists pay some attention to affective elements in joint action without much concern about their collective intentionality. They refer to an association between low-level synchrony in perceptual, motor, and behavioral processes, and increased interpersonal liking, feelings of solidarity, and cooperativeness. In this paper, we outline an account of collective emotions that can bridge this theoretical divide, linking the intentional structure of joint actions and the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms. Collective emotions can function as both motivating and justifying reasons for jointly intentional actions, in some cases even without prior joint intentions of the participants. Moreover, they facilitate coordination in joint action.

Look, listen and learn: Exploring effects of passive entrainment on social judgements of observed others

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Knight ◽  
Neta Spiro ◽  
Ian Cross
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
Noise Control ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Active Movement ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Motivational States ◽  
Social Efficacy ◽  
Musical Engagement ◽  
Prosocial Behaviours

Music is widely acknowledged to have social efficacy at the group level. This effect is hypothesised to be underpinned at least in part by entrainment. During collective musical behaviours, entrainment – the shared synchronisation of internal oscillators – is suggested to afford the perception of actions, intentions and motivational states as joint action, shared intentionality and mutual motivational states, which in turn fosters interpersonal affiliation and prosocial behaviours, including trust. However, it is unknown whether entrainment’s effects on prosociality persist when we are passive observers. In this study, 44 participants (21 women; average age = 28; average years of musical training = 10) watched audio-visual tokens in which a) the footsteps of an actor were entrained (synchronised) with a drumbeat, b) the footsteps were disentrained (unsynchronised) with the drumbeat and c) the soundtrack was grey noise (control condition). Participants were subsequently required to decide if the actor was engaged in a trustworthy or untrustworthy activity. Results show that participants were more likely to judge the actor as trustworthy in the entrain condition than the disentrain condition, but that the entrain condition was not significantly different to the control condition. Furthermore, this pattern of results was only found for a subgroup of the stimuli. There were no effects of age, gender or musical training. Given the nature of the task, which encourages passive entrainment rather than active movement, these findings indicate that the prosocial outcomes of musical engagement may be more common and have a broader significance than previously suggested.

Carrying, caring, and conversing

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-54
Author(s):  
Bert H. Hodges
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Language Origins ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Social Features ◽  
Linguistic Skills ◽  
Shared Intentionality Hypothesis

Social and ecological research and theory are used to elaborate and enrich two important sets of accounts of language origins. One is the interdependence and shared intentionality hypothesis (e.g., Tomasello, 2014a) of the ways in which humans became cooperative and conforming in ways that other apes did not, eventually leading to language. A second set of accounts addresses the emergence of bipedalism and its connections to language and to many other anatomical, cognitive, and social features that are distinctive in humans. Particular attention is given to the carrying and caretaking of infants. Research and theory challenging common assumptions about the role of conformity in cooperation and conversation are reviewed and integrated into these accounts. Together these varying perspectives point toward a more dialogical, dynamic, and distributed understanding of social interactions and the values that motivate and constrain humans’ social and linguistic skills.

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