{"id":7245,"date":"2024-02-29T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=7245"},"modified":"2024-01-08T20:50:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T20:50:47","slug":"this-examination-considers-tomasellos-book-through-semiotic-lens-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=7245","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Michael Tomasello&#8217;s Book (2014) &#8220;A Natural History of Human Thinking&#8221; (Part 1 of 22)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to&nbsp;<em>The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition<\/em>&nbsp;(1999, Harvard University Press).&nbsp;&nbsp;The question is the same.&nbsp;&nbsp;What makes humans unique?&nbsp;&nbsp;The answer is the same.&nbsp;&nbsp;Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, &#8220;Only humans think of other humans as intentional agents.&nbsp;&nbsp;Plus, my cat and my dog are intentional operators, as well, say nothing of the weather.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, I added the second sentence for dramatic effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unfortunately, research conducted after 1999 introduces a problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;It turns out that great apes recognize intentionality in others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0188 This book is the third marker in Tomasello&#8217;s intellectual journey.&nbsp;&nbsp;I start following his trek with&nbsp;<em>Looking at Michael Tomasello&#8217;s Book (1999) &#8220;The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition&#8221;<\/em>&nbsp;(appearing in Razie Mah&#8217;s January 2024 blog).&nbsp;&nbsp;The second marker that I examine may be found in&nbsp;<em>Looking at Michael Tomasello&#8217;s Book (2008) &#8220;Origins of Human Communication&#8221;<\/em>&nbsp;(appearing later in the same blog for the same month).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0189 In the publication before me,&nbsp;<em>A Natural History of Human Thinking<\/em>&nbsp;(2014, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts), Tomasello explicitly abstracts&nbsp;<em>three cognitive processes<\/em>&nbsp;in order to distinguish humans from apes.&nbsp;&nbsp;The processes are cognitive representation, inference and self-monitoring.&nbsp;&nbsp;He then proposes that all three components were transformed in&nbsp;<em>two key steps<\/em>&nbsp;during hominin evolution.&nbsp;&nbsp;He labels his claims, &#8220;the shared-intentionality hypothesis&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0190 Does this follow the trajectory set by previous works?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is a theme that appears in the second marker, pre-emptively modified with the above propositions in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Slide01.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Slide01.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7246\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Slide01.png 600w, https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Slide01-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>0191 This modified picture allows me to offer slogans for movements zero and one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For zero, the slogan is &#8220;I work for food.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For one, the slogan is &#8220;We work for food.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to&nbsp;The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition&nbsp;(1999, Harvard University Press).&nbsp;&nbsp;The question is the same.&nbsp;&nbsp;What makes humans unique?&nbsp;&nbsp;The answer is the same.&nbsp;&nbsp;Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin. In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, &#8220;Only humans think of other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[370,417,419,40],"tags":[115,39,218,71,402,29,249,119,55,403,435,133,437,251,34,430,124,266,424,446,31,35,242,431,243,434,401,433,253,436,287,432],"class_list":["post-7245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological-cultural-evolution","category-book-review","category-scholastic-interscope-for-the-way-humans-think","category-the-human-niche","tag-adaptation","tag-category-based-nested-form","tag-culture","tag-evolution-of-talk","tag-exemplar-sign","tag-first-singularity","tag-hand-talk","tag-human-evolution","tag-interscope","tag-interventional-sign","tag-joint-attention","tag-language","tag-origins-of-language","tag-our-current-lebenswelt","tag-peirce","tag-phenotype","tag-philosophy","tag-psychology","tag-scholastic","tag-scholastic-interscope","tag-scholasticism","tag-semiotics","tag-sensible-construction","tag-social-cognition","tag-social-construction","tag-sociogenesis","tag-specifying-sign","tag-team","tag-the-lebenswelt-that-we-evolved-in","tag-tomasello","tag-triadic-relations","tag-understanding"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Looking at Michael Tomasello&#039;s Book (2014) &quot;A Natural History of Human Thinking&quot; 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