03/7/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 17 of 22)

0535 Natural philosophy is not the same as natural history.

Modern science offers objective natural history.  “Objective” means “independent of what anyone in particular thinks about it”.

Does that imply that “objective” must be true?

Premodern philosophers and scholastics offer a natural philosophy that starts with the recognition of (1) material things as hylomorphes where matter [substantiates] form and (2) immaterial things as hylomorphes where being [substantiates] form.

Clearly, immaterial things do not exist independently of what anyone in particular thinks about them, because they are what people are thinking.  Immaterial things structure human thought.

0536 Plus, immaterial things cannot be directly observed or measured with scientific instrumentation.

So, how is a scientist supposed to build a model, based on observations and measurements?

0537 Does Tomasello wrestle with angels… or maybe… demons?

Thank God that angels and devils are not material things.  Science can safely ignore them.  Why?  The positivist intellect can only build models based on observations and measurements of material things.

Indeed, how can “angels” and “devils” be material things?

They are merely spoken words, labeling what (superstitious) humans project from their own imaginations.  Their imaginations are the potentials underlying their perceptive souls [animating] their reactive bodies.  Their imaginations project internal actualities onto the external world.  Such projections reflect their own internal successes or failures at moral self-governance.

But, if this is so, then the above paragraph constitutes a scientific model that accounts for observations and measurements of phenomena associated with the terms, “angels” and “devils”.

Is that not curious?

0538 Here, I return to diagrams developed in Looking at Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking”, and similar examinations (see point 0389).

We live in a world of judgment.  A judgment is a triadic relation with three elements: relation, what is and what ought to be.

0539 Here is a judgment as a purely relational being.  One could say that it is “objective”, because the relation exists despite what anyone thinks of it.

0540 Okay, as one watches the empty slots filled in, does that change its objectivity?

According to the Latin Age scholastics, if two of the empty slots are filled in by the universal aspects of an impression (a species impressa intelligibilis) and the intelligible aspects of a perception (a species expressa intelligibilis), then the resulting judgment may be labeled as a kind of intelligence (a species intelligibilis).

0541 Here is a picture.

Is this judgment2c still “objective”?

I suppose that it2c exists independently of what anyone thinks about it.

0542 At the same time, I can say that an impression2a (a species impressa2a) is subjective and a perception2b (a species expressa2b) is both objective (since it objectifies an impression2a) and intersubjective (since members of a group share intentionality1b and imagination1b).

So, a species intelligibilis2c, having the “objective” relational structure of judgment, may also be labeled, “suprasubjective”, because it2c puts the intersubjective perception2b and the subjective impression2a into perspective.

0543 Here is a picture of the scholastic interscope of the way humans think.

0544 Now, I may perform some substitutions.

For the content-level actuality2aspecies impressa2a or impression2a, I substitute the hylomorphe, active body [substantiates] sensate soul2a.

For the situation-level possibility1b, the potential of ‘situating content’1b, I substitute the potential of shared intention and imagination1b.

For the situation-level actuality2bspecies expressa2b or perception2b, I substitute the hylomorphe, perceptive soul [animates] reactive body2b.

For the perspective-level possibility1c, the potential of ‘contextualizing the situation’1c, I substitute the potential of a person as an institution writ small1c.

For the perspective-level actuality2c of species intelligibilis2c, I substitute the term, “suprasubjective judgment2c“.

0545 After all these substitutions are made, here is a picture of an updated scholastic interscope of the way humans think.

03/6/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 18 of 22)

0546 The previous blog not only demonstrates that Tomasello’s natural history of human morality ties back to the natural history of human thinking, the origins of social communication and the cultural origins of human cognition, but it also moves me closer to bringing the intersection for Era 2 into alignment with David Hume’s views of the nature of human morality.

How so?

0547 Recall the nested form that comes into being during the era of collective intentionality.

The perceptive soul [animates] reactive body2bA, or the perception2bA, characterizes the individual in communityA.  An organizational object2aC, belonging to the content-level of an interscope corresponding to societyC, animates an organizationB by interpellating the individual in communityA and bringing the perceptive soul2bA into denkalignment.

0548 The institution is the third person of third-person morality.

You and me share intentions in joint attention in second-person morality.

You or me are the individuals in first-person morality.

0549 The institution goes with the societyC interscope.

You and me on the same team (or social circle) goes with an organizationB interscope.

You or me are humans who think in the way that the scholastics propose in the individual in communityA interscope.

0550 The interscopes of societyC, organizationB and individual in communityA belong to a primal category-based nested form, which is home to third-person morality.

0551 So, does perceptive soul [animates] reactive body2bA bring the individualA into organizationB?

Well, no, because denkalignment brings the perceptions2bA into alignment with an interpellation by an organizational objective2aC.  Another way to say the actuality is, “The perceptive soul trains skills and emotions according to tradition.” Perceptions2bA characterize the individual in communityA.

Well, yes, get on board the denkalignment train.

0552 So, what brings the individualA into organizationB?

It must be a suprasubjective judgment2cA or “conviction2cA” emerging from (and situating) the possibility that a person is an institution writ small1cA in the normal context of making sense3cA.

0553 The following associations characterize the living-world of third-person morality.

0554 At this point, I may propose a loop whereby social circles adapt to one another in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Society contains individuals writ large.

Today, we may call these individuals, “institutions”, but such a word cannot be fashioned in hand-talk or hand-speech talk.  “Institution” is a purely symbolic label.  “Institution” is an explicit abstraction.  Hand-talk and hand-speech talk only facilitate implicit abstraction.  So, our ancestors can not name institutions, not like the way that we do today.

For example, after a person dies, we bring the corpse to the tree of life.

Tree of life?

[IMAGE tree][POINT to breath while inhaling][POINT to sky and exhale]

A gathering to mourn is an institution.

0555 The individual writ largeC interpellates other individualsA.

IndividualsA denkalign with the interpellationC.  In this, they serve as institutions writ small.

Individual convictions2cA animate each organizationB, each teamB, and each traditional manifestation of a social circleB.

Then, the events and processes of each organizationB, each teamB, and each traditionB are contextualized by an individual writ largeC.  Such is the tree of life.

0556 Years later, the child of the deceased will say.

[NAME of deceased][IMAGE root][IMAGE tree][POINT to breath while inhaling][POINT to sky while exhaling]

03/5/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 19 of 22)

0557 The tree of life represents the living and the dead.

The following proposed intersection for the era of collective intentionality does not quite capture poetic representation.

0558 I ask, “What tells me to bring the corpse of my father to the tree of life for preparation for burial?”

Does the tree of life tell me?

Is the tree of life an individual writ large capable of talking to me through its own version of hand talk?

Surely, the tree is planted by the one who gives, without us knowing why.

[POINT to sky] [CIRCLE POINT to all around][CIRCLE POINT to audience][PANTOMIME “give”]

0559 Perhaps, the apparent inadequacy of the prior intersection comes from the fact that the organizational objectiveassociates to societyC and social identity associates to the individual in communityA.  So, organizationB polarizes between societyC and individualA.

That may be technically correct, but it does not move me towards the foundations of morality proposed by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume.

0560 So, what if I return to the hylomorphe that associates to organizationB?

What if I substitute suprasubjective judgment or conviction for organizational objective2H?

What if I substitute social circles for societal identity2V?

0561 Then, the horizontal potential changes from the power of deservingness to… something close to the modern concept of “justice”.

 And, the vertical potential changes from denkalignment with a person writ large to… something close to the modern concept of “fairness”.

Here is a picture.

0562 Thus, I arrive at the same final station as Tomasello does, in his natural history of human morality.

All may now disembark.

Plus, I arrive at a novel way to define key words that Hume applies to human morality.

0563 Justice1H underlies convictions2H.  Justice1H is also the potential1H of underlying organizational objectives2H. Without justice1H, an organizational objective2aC will fail to interpellate individuals in communityA.  With justice1H, an organizational objective2aC not only successfully calls the individualA into organizationB, but the individualA proves his or her worth.  Worth is honor that is not bestowed, but rather demonstrated through committed action.  With justice1H, deservingness has power, not the establishment’s definition of “power”, rather, the power of righteousness1aC.  If justice1Hprevails, then establishment3H power2H is bestowed upon the deserving1H.

0564 Fairness1V underlies coming together into organization2V.  Fairness1V is more than having fun1V.  Fairness1V is the prerequisite for having fun.  If I agreed to play a game, then discover that the game is unfair (that is, rigged), then why continue playing?  The game is no longer fun.

One challenge faced by our ancestors in the era of collective intentionality becomes obvious.  Some teams are more productive than others.  Some teams have more fun than others.  So, if team members start to denkalign with a team, as if the team provides their societal identity, then pride (in productivity) and guilt (in having good fun) are countered by resentment and jealousy (by those who denkalign with other teams).  

Consequently, the team cannot provide a person with their societal identity.

There is someone more encompassing than any team.  That larger than life person embraces all teams, from way back to now to way to comeThat third person interpellates every you and every me.  That person planted the tree of life.  We are the roots.  We are the branches.

03/4/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 20 of 22)

0564 Chapter Five, the second to last chapter, is titled, “Human Morality as Cooperation-Plus”

Cooperation-Plus?

Makes me wonder what is cooking.

0565 Two evolutionary steps occur.

The first corresponds to a transition from individual foraging in bands in tropical forests to obligate collaborative foraging in mixed forest and savannah.

The second corresponds to what happens when more and more teams become successful after the domestication of fire.

0566 Here is a list of three eras and two steps.

0567 Tomasello writes in our current Lebenswelt about the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Tomasello proposes explicit abstractions to account for developments in a living world of implicit abstractions.  An evolutionary anthropologist may understand his terminology, but an ancestor would stand befuddled.  What do these technical terms picture or point to?

0568 The advantage of Peircean diagrams over the specialized terminology of evolutionary anthropology is clear.

The category-based nested form has three elements: normal context, actuality and potential.  A spoken word is an actuality2.  In the normal context of definition3 this actuality emerges from (and situates) three potentials: meaning, presence and message, corresponding to Peirce’s categories of thirdness, secondness and firstness, respectively.  This is the proposition underlying the masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Diagrams provide a presence1 that definitions3 of technical terms2 in evolutionary anthropology currently presume to be present.

0569 For example, what does the term, “caramelization”, presume to be present?

One needs to have a recipe in hand to know.  Each category-based diagram follows a recipe.

The results are delicious.

0570  Our current Lebenswelt, full of spoken words and explicit abstractions, is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, full of hand-talk, hand-speech talk and implicit abstractions.  

0571 So, I summarize by visualizing how our current Lebenswelt views the intersection of the group for each era of intentionality

0572 Here is the intersection for the zeroth era.

The band2 is necessary for protection against predators.  Individuals compete within this constraint.  They compete for establishment power, that is, a place in their hierarchies.  They compete for alliances, affiliations where others are on my side.

Here is a world without justice and without fairness.

Or maybe, “justice” is me having a place in a hierarchy and “fairness” is me having others on my side.

0573 Next is the intersection for the first era.

The team2 is the vehicle for collaborative foraging.  Collaborative foraging is unavoidable, because each individual cannot successfully forage the foods that other species either ignore or cannot get to.  Teams are required.

Successful teams are productive.  Everyone in a successful team gets along with everyone else.  How do I know this?  The team is having fun.

Of course, the ambiguous term, “having fun”, does not crop up in the vocabulary of evolutionary anthropologists.  Perhaps, it should.  Another word might be “camaraderie”.

0574 Next is an intersection for the second era.

0575 One irony is that the term, “establishment3H“, cannot be stated in hand-talk or hand-speech talk.  Neither can the word, “institution3H“.  Plus, the term, “social circle3H“, seems inadequate, since there is a third person that is conjured in each manifestation of a social circle.

An institution is a individual writ large.

For example, the community (150) contains several bands (50), many teams (15) and many many families (5) and deep friendships (5).  Also, the community (150) is contained within mega-bands (450) that meet according to seasons and tribes (1500) that meet either according to the stars or by the bidding of messengers.

Each manifestation of a social circle2 feels like a person writ large, that is, someoneC who interpellates individualsA to come into organizationB.  IndividualsA enjoy societal identityC.  OrganizationsB pursue their objectivesC.  The successes and the failures of those pursuitsB empower individualsA who are deserving and disempower individualsA who are less so. 

0575 But, that is not enough.

Once again, here is an intersection for the second era.

0576 Here, the individual in community2 is a single actuality constituted by suprasubjective judgments2H and social circles2V.  Conviction2H emerges from and situates the potential of something more than deservingness1H in the normal context of establishment3H.  Social circles2V emerge from and situate the potential of something more than mutual respect and trust1V in the normal context of alliance3V.  

An individual in community is an institution writ small.

0577 Given the prior four figures, the inquirer can trace the presence of the philosophical terms, “justice1H” and “fairness1H” backwards through human evolution, to the LCA.  The exercise is well worth the effort.

03/2/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 21 of 22)

0578 What about other research into how human morality came to be?

Tomasello sorts current theories into three baskets: evolutionary ethics, moral psychology and gene-culture evolution.

In order to appreciate Tomasello’s view on the contents in each basket, I present (once again), his vision.  The perspective level associates to phenotype.  The content level goes with adaptation.  The intersections previously diagrammed are alternate portrayals of situation-level interdependence2b.

0579 Evolutionary ethics focuses on reciprocity.

The idea of reciprocity applies, yet seems insufficient, to an explanation of interdependence2b.  In Tomasello’s vision, interdependence2b emerges from (and situates) cooperation1b,  in the normal context of cultural selection3b.  Cooperation1b emerges from joint attention2a, in the same way that a situation emerges from content.  Joint attention2aemerges from (and situates) sociogenesis1a in the normal context of natural selection3a.

Reciprocity pertains to the ways that cooperation1b virtually situates sociogenesis1a. But, reciprocity cannot account for joint attention2a, which directly situates sociogenesis1a.

0580 Moral psychology investigates prosocial behaviors.  Unfortunately, the field has not drawn connections to human evolution.  Tomasello’s vision pencils in many connections.  

Indeed, Tomasello’s vision takes moral psychology into vistas beyond the term, “prosocial behaviors”.

For example, here is the virtual nested form in the category of firstness.

Surely, prosocial attitudes are foundational to each of these potentials.  Plus, each of these potentials keys into attitude-associated behaviors.

0581 Here is the virtual nested form in the category of secondness.

Ah, moral psychology models prosocial behaviors that potentiate the phenomena of these noumena.

0582 Here is the virtual nested form in the category of thirdness.

Oh, moral psychology has nothing to say about these three topics.

0583 What does this imply?

Moral psychology is a discipline that investigates the phenomena of actualities2 that occur within the normal context of three styles of natural selection

On the phenotypic (perspective) level, natural (within culture) selection3c is similar to selective breeding, in which each long-lived successful tradition breeds for individuals who are more and more capable of maintaining its survival.

On the cultural (situation) level, each manifestation within a particular social circle competes3b with other manifestations.  For example, one teams competes with other teams in terms of productivity2H and having fun2V.

On the adaptation (content) level, natural selection3a brings an adaptation2a into relation with a niche1a.  Tomasello labels the adaptation2a, “joint attention2a“, and its niche1a, “sociogenesis1a“.

0584 The problem?

A niche is the potential of an actuality independent of the adapting species.

The actuality independent of the content-level adaptive species does not appear in Tomasello’s vision.

Tomasello’s vision is like a house.

The actuality independent of the adaptive species is like a ghost in the basement.

The union of house and basement is called the Tomasello-Mah synthesis.

0585 Gene-culture co-evolution connects the scientific disciplines of genetics and natural history, not as an intersection (as Razie Mah does), but as a three-level interscope (as Tomasello does).

The following interscope, characterizing gene-culture co-evolution, appears in Looking at Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson’s Book (2021) “The Story of Us”.  This examination may be found in Razie Mah’s blog, from July 10 to July 31, 2023.

586 Note how the interscope for gene-culture evolution elevates adaptation over phenotype, in the opposite of the way that the interscope for Tomasello’s vision elevates phenotype over adaptation.

0587 Overall, do any of these three baskets contain Tomasello’s vision?

No, just the opposite, Tomasello’s vision contains the baskets of evolutionary ethics, moral psychology and gene-culture evolution, plus more.

The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry into the origins of humans is notable in this regard.

The house of Tomasello’s vision is an architectural achievement.

Yet, there is that ghost in the basement.

To that ghost, I now turn. 

03/1/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 22 of 22)

0588 The Tomasello-Mah synthesis shows the ghost in the basement of the house of Tomasello’s vision.

Indeed, as this version of Darwin’s paradigm begins to haunt the entire edifice of human evolution, then Tabaczek’s housebecomes more than a house with a basement.  If sociogenesis1b is the potential1b of triadic relations2a, then Tomasello’s arc of inquiry may be re-articulated using triadic relations.

0589 For example, Razie Mah’s Primer on Sensible and Social Construction may be used to re-label the eras of individual, joint and collective intentionality.  Individual construction associates to the category-based nested formSensible construction associates to the two-level interscope, containing content and situation levels.  Social construction associates to the three-level interscope, containing content, situation and perspective levels.

Here is a list of what that might look like.

0590 To continue, the re-labeled eras may be regarded in terms of the evolution of talk.

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.  Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.

0592 Next, I would like to focus attention on the era of collective intentionality.

Here is a list depicting the timeframe.

0593 Before the era of collective intentionality, hand talk is confined team activities.  Hand talk produces sensible constructions.  Each team develops its own way of hand talking.  

After the domestication of fire, team-tradition hand talk starts to be used generally, eventually producing fully linguistic hand talk.

The situation is very dynamic.  Since cooking with fire increases the number of teams, fully linguistic hand-talk is re-appropriated for specialized use in more and more teams.  Fully linguistic hand-talk influences all social circles.  In some of these circles, grammatically correct, yet apparently nonsensible statements, generate social constructions that open new cognitive spaces.  These novel cognitive spaces become sites for more sensible construction.

0594 The voice comes into play during community meetings (150), seasonal mega-band round-ups (500) and special occasion tribal pow-wows (1500).  The voice is used for synchronization.  Song brings a large gathering of hominins into synchronization.  Once this cultural habit starts, then singing joins other traits in sexual selection.  The voice comes under voluntary control.

0595 Most likely, the early speciations of late Homo erectus produced species that could sing and hand-talk.  But, they could not speak.

Speech is added to hand-talk with Homo sapiens.  Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for the next two hundred-thousand years.

0596 Hand-speech talk would still be practiced by anatomically modern humans today, were it not for the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the Ubaid is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.

Here is a picture of the era of social construction.

0598 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

This brings me to the limit of Tomasello’s vision.  I open the door, and step out into the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  I step into the vision of Razie Mah.

0599 The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry, spanning from 1999 to 2016, opens onto three masterworks by Razie Mah.  These electronic books are available at smashwords and other e-work venues.  This examination relies primarily on The Human Niche, along with books contained in the series, A Course on The Human Niche.  A related series is titled, Buttressing the Human Niche.

Here is a list of Mah’s masterworks.

Still, there is more.

A Commentary on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) is available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  This commentary includes Mah’s blogs for January, February and March, 2024, along with an examination of Becoming Human (2019), the fifth book in a sequence of five books.

0600 My thanks to Michael Tomasello, who writes the books under examination while Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, for conducting a scientific inquiry, from which I have examined only several works.

02/29/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 1 of 22)

0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999, Harvard University Press).  The question is the same.  What makes humans unique?  The answer is the same.  Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin.

In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, “Only humans think of other humans as intentional agents.  Plus, my cat and my dog are intentional operators, as well, say nothing of the weather.”

Okay, I added the second sentence for dramatic effect.

Unfortunately, research conducted after 1999 introduces a problem.  It turns out that great apes recognize intentionality in others.

Uh oh.

0188 This book is the third marker in Tomasello’s intellectual journey.  I start following his trek with Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition” (appearing in Razie Mah’s January 2024 blog).  The second marker that I examine may be found in Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication” (appearing later in the same blog for the same month).

0189 In the publication before me, A Natural History of Human Thinking (2014, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts), Tomasello explicitly abstracts three cognitive processes in order to distinguish humans from apes.  The processes are cognitive representation, inference and self-monitoring.  He then proposes that all three components were transformed in two key steps during hominin evolution.  He labels his claims, “the shared-intentionality hypothesis”.

0190 Does this follow the trajectory set by previous works?

Here is a theme that appears in the second marker, pre-emptively modified with the above propositions in mind.

0191 This modified picture allows me to offer slogans for movements zero and one.

For zero, the slogan is “I work for food.”

For one, the slogan is “We work for food.”

02/28/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 2 of 22)

0192 Chapter one presents the shared intentionality hypothesis.

The early hominins cannot say, “We work for food.”

Yet, that is what they do.

0193 So how is it, that today, Tomasello can inscribe, “Human thinking is individual improvisation enmeshed in a sociocultural matrix.”?

What a great sentence!

Er… question?

0194 Tomasello notes that answers to this question may be thrown into one of two bins.  The first bin is labeled “culture”.  The second bin is labeled “social coordination”.  If an inquirer wants to upset an evolutionary anthropologist, use these terms interchangeably.

Notably, there is another bin, concealed by his proposed theoretical construction, way back in 1999.  That bin is labeled “triadic relations”.

0195 To make the concealment even more provocative, Tomasello’s project has already been diagrammed in an examination of that 1999 book.  Here is a picture of the resulting three-level interscope, with the headline hypothesis2astanding in for joint attention2a.

0196 What is concealed?

I call it “Tomasello-Mah synthesis”.

The following figure corresponds to the Darwinian paradigm, applied to the evolution of the hominins.

0197 The Darwinian paradigm appears in Razie Mah’s The Human Niche, as well as Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome.  Both are available for sale at smashwords and other e-book venues.

This particular expression of the Darwinian paradigm synthesizes the insights of Tomasello and Mah.

0198 Note how the situation level of the Darwinian paradigm corresponds to the content level of Tomasello’s vision.  If Tomasello’s vision is a house, then the content-level of the Tomasello-Mah synthesis dwells in the basement.

In 1999, Tomasello identifies joint attention2a as a key adaptation.  Other adaptations build on this foundation.  Joint attention2a associates to hominin behavior.  In theory, if an evolutionary anthropologist could time-travel back to the Pliocene, he could observe (and perhaps measure) occasions of joint attention2a, especially when the australopithecines and early Homo are working for food in teams.

In 2014, Tomasello identifies shared intentionality2a as a key adaptation.  Shared intentionality2a refers to the cognitive mechanisms underlying joint attention2a.  Food is not the shared intentionality in the slogan, “We work for food.”  Working together is.

02/27/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 3 of 22)

0199 With the previous blog in mind, I may return to the magnificent sentence at the start of chapter one.  I will compare it to the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality for Tomasello’s vision.

0200 The first half of the sentence, “Human thinking is individual improvisation…”, corresponds to the normal context and the actuality of the following nested form.

The second half of the sentence, “…enmeshed in a sociocultural matrix.”, corresponds to the actuality and the potential.

0201 Human thinking2c’ is phenotypical.  Each phenotypic expression (or individual) must improvise in response to events in nature and in human culture.  Fortunately, for me, the topic of how humans think has been around a long time.  Premodern medieval schoolmen use Aristotle to construct a formula that (ironically) may be diagrammed by a postmodern scholar, Razie Mah, using category-based nested forms.  The scholastic three-level interscope for the way humans think contains three sign-relations, carrying the labels of specifying, exemplar and interventional.

0202 Human culture2b’ habituates all three types of sign.

0203 Chimpanzees embody specifying signs.  Specifying signs present puzzles that require general intelligence. Many chimpanzee interventional signs are innate.  For example, some gestures and vocalizations are involuntary signals.  At the same time, many gestures are voluntary.  Requests involve voluntary gestures.

0204 Early hominins, such as some australopithecines and early Homo, use voluntary gestures to request, inform and share.  This promotes the exemplar sign as an adaptation.  The sign-object of an exemplar sign does not yield an involuntary sign-vehicle for the interventional sign.  Rather, following Tomasello, a perspective-level judgment2c,occurring in the normal context of a common ground3c and emerging from the potential of shared intentionality1c,initiates a voluntary, gesture-based interventional sign.

Also, I can say, “Following medieval scholastics, a perspective-level judgment2c, occurring in the normal context asking, ‘Does this make sense?’3c and operating upon the potential of ‘putting the situation into perspective’1c, initiates a species impressa2a.”

0205 Human culture2b’ enhances the reproductive success of joint attention2a’ and grounds the ontogenetic development of individual thought2c’.

0206 What solidifies hominin culture2b’ as a situation-level actuality?

Is it the substance of Tomasello’s research hylomorphe?

0207 Or is it a manifestation of an adjusted scholastic interscope for the way humans think?

Or both?

02/26/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 4 of 22)

0208 Tomasello presents his shared intentionality hypothesis in chapter one.  The cognitive adaptation of shared intentionality joins a behavioral adaptation of joint-attention.

The term, “shared intentionality”, like the term, “joint attention”, is difficult to define.

Perhaps, the term is too broad.

So, to narrow the field of inquiry, Tomasello breaks out several components which are more compatible with positivist approaches.  The three components are first (1), the ability to takes one’s perception’s “off-line”, second (2), the ability to make inferences that transform a perception causally, intentionally and logically, and third (3), the ability to self-monitor and evaluate those inferences and how they may produce a desirable behavioral outcome.

0209 Yeah.  The three components sound way more scientific.

At the same time, these three components associate to the one of the three signs contained in the scholastic three-level interscope.

Here is a picture.

0210 The exemplar sign says, “A perception2b (SVe) stands for a judgment2c (SOe) in regards to a common conceptual ground2c operating on the potential of ‘mutual intentions’1c (SIe).”

The perspective-level of the scholastic interscope says, “The normal context of a common conceptual ground3c brings the actuality of a judgment2c into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘mutual expectations’1c. The potential of ‘mutual intentions’1c puts the individual’s perceptions2b into perspective.”

0211 What about the three components?

First (1), the exemplar sign takes one’s perceptions2b “off-line”, because the sign-object is a judgment2c (which is itself a triadic relation, SOe).  The perception2b (SVe) does not generate an action.

Second (2), the exemplar sign-object (SOe) becomes what the perception (SVe) stands for.  A judgment2c puts a perception2b into perspective.

Third (3), the exemplar sign-object (SOe) is a relation between what is and what ought to be.  If a unique Peircean category is assigned to each element, then the judgment is actionable.  Actionable judgments unfold into category-based nested forms.  If a unique Peircean category is not assigned, then the judgment is reflective.  Reflective judgments are more likely to involve self-monitoring, evaluation and estimation.

0212 Surely, the three components that Tomasello identifies as subjects for research in cognitive psychology apply to the exemplar sign.