{"id":7192,"date":"2024-01-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=7192"},"modified":"2023-12-30T15:06:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T15:06:50","slug":"looking-at-michael-tomasellos-book-1999-the-cultural-origins-of-human-cognition-part-4-of-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=7192","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Michael Tomasello&#8217;s Book (1999) &#8220;The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition&#8221; (Part 4 of 12)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>0022 How does&nbsp;<em>the realness of triadic relations<sub>2a<\/sub><\/em>&nbsp;potentiate&nbsp;<em>the genesis of culture<sub>1b<\/sub>?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In chapter two, Tomasello discusses&nbsp;<em>the biological and cultural inheritance of the last common ancestor between the chimpanzee and human<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Theoretically, the last common ancestor (LCA) is similar to the chimpanzee and the bonobo.&nbsp;&nbsp;The DNA begins to diverge around 7Myr.&nbsp;&nbsp;Australopithecus (so-called &#8220;southern apes&#8221;) are fully bipedal by, say, 3.5Myr.&nbsp;&nbsp;Bipedalism evolves in response to tropical forests giving way to mixed forest and savannah during the Pliocene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In so far as the LCA has &#8220;culture&#8221;, the culture consists of youngsters learning content and situations through exposure, learning on their own and mimicking others.&nbsp;&nbsp;Examples include macaque potato washing, chimpanzee tool use, chimpanzee gesture signaling, and the ability of chimpanzees to learn human-designed symbols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0023 Tomasello and colleagues argue (earlier, in 1993) that cumulative cultural evolution depends on imitation and innovation.&nbsp;&nbsp;Apes do both.&nbsp;&nbsp;Humans do both.&nbsp;&nbsp;So, there may only be a quantitative difference between the LCA and our own species.&nbsp;&nbsp;Or, that difference may be more than quantitative, since anatomically modern humans innately express tendencies to imitate and innovate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0024 So what is being imitated and innovated in humans, that might be qualitatively different than in chimpanzees?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Could it have something to do with triadic relations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the following discussion. I rely on two short works by Razie Mah,&nbsp;<em>A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction<\/em>&nbsp;(available at smashwords and other e-book venues).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0025 I start with imitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why would a youngster chimpanzee imitate another&#8217;s actions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The action of another chimpanzee is an actuality.&nbsp;&nbsp;To the extent that the youngster engages with that actuality, the youngster senses that the actuality<sub>2<\/sub>&nbsp;has a normal context<sub>3<\/sub>&nbsp;(say, foraging for food) and a potential<sub>1<\/sub>&nbsp;(say, getting termites from a log).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0026 During the Latin Age, schoolmen propose that, for this extension, the normal context is &#8216;what is happening&#8217;<sub>3a<\/sub>&nbsp;and its corresponding potential is the possibility of &#8216;something&#8217; happening<sub>1a<\/sub>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide06-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide06-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide06-1.png 600w, https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide06-1-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>They call the actuality, &#8220;<em>species impressa<\/em>&#8220;, (say it like you are speaking Italian).&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8220;Species&#8221; means &#8220;a kind of&#8221;.&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8220;Impressa&#8221; means sensation, impression, qualia or feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can I say that the adult (fashioning a twig to fish for termites) and the youngster (who is watching and will soon imitate), are fashioning&nbsp;<em>the same content-level nested form?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0027 The next step, according to the scholastics, is&nbsp;<em>a category-based nested form<\/em>&nbsp;that sensibly situates&nbsp;<em>the content-level nested form<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;When humans are sensible, then a situation-level category-based nested form virtually emerges from (and situates) a content-level nested form.&nbsp;&nbsp;I call this interscope, &#8220;sensible construction&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The youngster chimpanzee gets a perception (a&nbsp;<em>species expressa<sub>2b<\/sub><\/em>) from its impressions (its&nbsp;<em>species impressa<sub>2a<\/sub><\/em>) of&nbsp;<em>what the other chimpanzee is doing<sub>2a<\/sub><\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;The older chimpanzee is&nbsp;<em>fishing for termites using a twig<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide07-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide07-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide07-1.png 600w, https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Slide07-1-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>0028 Then, the youngster imitates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>0022 How does&nbsp;the realness of triadic relations2a&nbsp;potentiate&nbsp;the genesis of culture1b? In chapter two, Tomasello discusses&nbsp;the biological and cultural inheritance of the last common ancestor between the chimpanzee and human. Theoretically, the last common ancestor (LCA) is similar to the chimpanzee and the bonobo.&nbsp;&nbsp;The DNA begins to diverge around 7Myr.&nbsp;&nbsp;Australopithecus (so-called &#8220;southern apes&#8221;) are fully bipedal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[417],"tags":[416],"class_list":["post-7192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-book-review"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Looking at Michael Tomasello&#039;s Book (1999) &quot;The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition&quot; (Part 4 of 12) - An Archaeology of the Fall<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Razie Mah reviews book from semiotic point of view.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=7192\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking at Michael Tomasello&#039;s Book (1999) &quot;The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition&quot; 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