I was somewhat hoping that Chris over at Mixing Memory would have something more to say. However he appear to not be online anymore. That's unfortunate since his was my favorite blog by far. Anyway I wished to return to my comments of last time where I introduced some Heideggerian comments as applicable to Tomasello. The main issue is how joint attention between a child and other humans are objects that are brought "closer" to focus with other objects being pushed into the hazier background. Not only are these objects "shared" focus but they are "shared" as the kind of objects they are. That is the child and the other human have a shared "world."
I put share and world in scare quotes because I don't want people unfamiliar with Heidegger to read too much into them. I mean share in that clearly we understand each other to some degree. I don't think it entails that it is a perfect sharing in the least. (That is there is always the potential of miscommunication) By world though I basically mean a kind of set of things I am with. So say the world of a painter is paint brushes, paint, ladders and most importantly what these things are for. That is I am in a world that gives meaning to the entities around me. When I encounter a paint brush as a painter, I know I can use it to paint walls.
I think that Tomasello is arguing that something very similar is happening to humans but that doesn't happen to apes. What Tomasello calls "joint attention" entails not just a joint focus but a joint orientation. When my one year old baby sees me put my toothbrush in my mouth he knows I am using it for something. We are coming to share a world. That world sharing just isn't possible for apes. Heidegger, I argued last time, doesn't focus on signs much. But where he does it appears that he sees signs as making this worlding possible. The sign orients us in the world.
Thus I think one could argue that what I see in Tomasello as the recognition of the other and self entails a kind of ability to have sign systems. You'll recall that I argued earlier that this basic signing ability is tied to a three-way conception as opposed to a two way conception. Tomasello tends to focus on self and other, but I think that while that's important, there must be more to it. Perhaps small units that evolve to be three way rather than two way in terms of computation.
What I wish to get out of all this though is that these signs allow us to have a world. Tomasello unwisely limits this to linguistic signs. But I think that there is far more to it. Or rather that the general sense of linguistics is itself a perhaps emergent system. We don't just have a language system. Rather we have many systems all interrelated. Thus in my visual system I see entities as entities. I don't just see a dog. I see a dog as a dog and not just a collection of colors and shapes. That can't be seen just as a linguistic phenomena I feel.
But that's a small criticism. And one might perhaps be excused for Tomasello sticking to more concrete things we're familiar with such as language. (And to be fair he does mention a more general symbolic movement on page 131) I think it important to keep in mind though that things must be considered more generally. A quote from Tomasello is well worth comparing to my brief (and perhaps insufficient) discussions on Heidegger and worlds.
. . .as the child internalizes a linguistic symbol - as she learns the human perspectives embodied in a lunguistic symbol - she cognitively represents not just the perceptual or motoric aspects of a situation but also one way, among other ways of which she is aware, that the current situation may be attentionally construed by "us," the users of that symbol The way that human beings use linguistic symbols thus creates a clear break with straightforward perceptual or sensory-motor representations, and is due entirely to the social nature of linguistic symbols. (126)
One can clearly see, I think, that this shift for sensory-motor representations to social symbols is also the move from a logic of two elements (secondness) to that of three elements (thirdness). Thus an animal might hear a loud noise and represent that with the fight or flight reflex. But that relation has only two elements. The loud noise and running. Humans do far more, requiring a robust mediated system. But I'll not repeat that whole discussion.
The discussion on page 126 though about 128 are probably the key pages. Something people might miss in passing is how Tomasello introduces what we might call unlimited semiosis. That is, each object that acts as a mediator between the person and what is signified (and orientation in a world) can itself be treated as a whole symbol. That is a symbol isn't just the object but is the three termed relation. Thus a stop sign involves me, the object of the physical stop sign and then the awareness of stopping my car with that world of relations, uses and goals that entail driving. (So a stop sign orients me in how I drive - it doesn't just entail the motor response of stopping. It tells me what stopping means and what the stop sign means.) But that whole symbol (stop sign, me, orientation in world) can itself be treated as an object. That is the very act of understanding the stop sign can itself be a sign.
I recognize that rather confusing and difficult to grasp. Perhaps a simpler explanation is in order. We can abstract out the notion of running from the symbolism of runners. But then I can conceive of running alone and think about that. That may entail leg movements as a further abstraction. Then I can abstract further biological movements and so forth. The point is that humans aren't just limited to thinking about physical objects or acts and what they are useful for. We can think about thinking itself.
In other words, once this ability Tomasello posits evolved in primitive humans became available, a whole long set of thinking possibilities also becomes possible precisely because any act of interpreting can itself be considered and embraced. Now this clearly entails philosophical thinking when taken to its ultimate extreme. (This is why Heidegger sees the question of Being as being so important - in a sense it is the very questioning of this ability Tomasello posits. It is the recognition that we have this ability and the attempt to understand it in its ultimate sense)
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.
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