I'd touched in passing on a few themes of the third chapter. The main focus in this chapter is childhood development as it relates to Tomasello's thesis. Most particularly what he calls joint attention. That is children attempt to communicate what they are looking at to others. The idea being that they recognize that others are seeing or doing the same thing they are. The idea being that at around 9 months, children develop the ability to recognize intents in others. I just wish to pick at a few comments he makes and then mention some Peircean thoughts.
I don't want to address most of his comments as they are (at least to me) fairly uncontroversial. However it isn't clear to me, as I mentioned in an earlier post, whether all the phenomena Tomasello discusses comes from a single recognition of intentionality in others or whether recognition of intentionality arises out of more fundamental issues. Tomasello brings up Autism, but this seems to in certain ways undermine his thesis since Autistics display such a wide degree of problems in this regard as well as lot of other symptoms or abilities. That, to me at least, suggests that the underlying causes are myriad rather than a simple single ability one has or doesn't have.
With regards to this issue of intentionality, Tomasello has an interesting discussion of it on page 71 with regards to the concept of "like me." That is, which is more fundamental. Do we see others to be like us or is the process reversed? Do we in fact come to understand others intentions and through that come to understand ourselves as a self.
Once again this is an old philosophical dispute. Plato often saw dialog as key because in discussion with others they act like a mirror to see our own soul. (This is especially true in the dialog Alcibiades, although that is one of the more disputed Platonic texts) Contrast this with the tendency since Descartes to think that we have a privileged and often unfettered access to the self. It is the others that poses the mystery. Yet, as Tomasello notes (to a study of Gopnik, 1993 which I've not read) we often know others' intentional states better than our own.
The thesis Tomasello raises is that our knowledge of both self and other belong together through analogy. While I think that true (and can see it in my own 11 month old baby) I wonder if Tomasello isn't pushing things a tad too much. Why can't we have certain subsystems that allow us to understand aspects of the self and subsystems that allow us to understand others? Then the ability to make that analogy (which Tomasello sees as key) would be a more general application of the ability to abstract and see commonalities.
Tomasello even brings this up, mentioning "theory theory" where infants use quasi-scientific methods used in other aspects of cognition. Tomasello, as I'd mentioned in an earlier post does bring up the issue of what I'd call quasi-scientific reasoning on page 75. It just isn't at all clear to me what place he thinks this plays in the cognition of the other and self. Why must it be one or an other? I probably need to read the papers Tomasello references in these pages, but my sense is that we are being presented with a false dichotomy and perhaps unnecessary simplification.
This isn't to dispute Tomasello's central point here: that joint attention and the recognition of other agents as intentional agents like me is important. It certainly does open up his later points of the ratchet effect (basically communication of ideas and their refinement)
The other points I'd touch on is just to emphasize the difference between what Tomasello calls dyads and triads. I think this is quite key. Further, if we conceive of most acts of cognition as being composed of various subsystems interacting, then attributing dyadic and triadic capabilities to these subsystems might be fruitful. To repeat my point from above, perhaps we have systems dealing with others and systems dealing with self both of which come to be triadic through evolution, enabling them to deal with their opposite. Thus that process of analogy isn't an absolute process. Rather it is a multitude of subsystems, each slightly having expanding capabilities and thereby expanding the human capability.
The reason I say this is because we demonstrably do have quasi-scientific abilities. We can create abstract "forces" and treat them as real and behind phenomena. Further those scientific abilities seem to utilize the abilities to recognize intentions in others and in the self. While animism is one tendency of this, so too is the tendency to conceive of aims, purposes and a general sense of telos which is perhaps when man became historical man.
Just a note that I have up a page listing all the blog posts that are part of the reading club. It's also in my right sidebar in the archive area as Reading Tomasello. If you aren't a member of the club but have a post at your blog on this book, please post a note there with a link.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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