We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and (...) evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention. Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Key Words: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention. (shrink)

We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and context–independent representations of means and goals. We analyse these ways of (...) co–operating in game–theoretic terms and submit that the co–operative strategy of games that involve shared representations of future goals may provide new equilibrium solutions. (shrink)

Examining one of the fundamental issues in cognitive psychology: How does our conscious experience come to be the way it is?

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use embodies (...) both individual and social processes. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979) developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, (...) though third in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

Editorial preface to the fourth edition and modified translation -- The text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen -- Philosophische untersuchungen = Philosophical investigations -- Philosophie der psychologie, ein fragment = Philosophy of psychology, a fragment.

What is the relation between the words in language and our everyday actions? Are linguistic structures dependent on our actions, or does language function on its own? This thesis deals with the pragmatic foundations of language and proposes a model of meaning in language that is based on our expectations about the world and about other people. On this view, language is seen as composed of three functional layers of pragmatics, semantics and morpho-syntax, with each layer having a certain autonomy: (...) semantics captures useful generalizations from the pragmatic level, and morpho-syntax captures generalizations from the semantic level. The thesis consists of an introduction and five papers that examine different aspects of this overarching model. The first paper explores what happens when individual cognitive structures are shared in language and proposes a model of how names, nouns and adjectives emerge as different levels of abstraction. Further, some cognitive prerequisites for referential communication are discussed. The second paper proposes a model of how breakdowns in an expert-novice task trigger discourse on the levels of instructions, coordinations and labels. These levels are correlated with a gradual conventionalization from pragmatics to semantics. The third paper shows how the modal verbs can be modeled in terms of expectations and social power. The fourth paper argues that meaning in language can be traced back to features of the environment of all living creatures that are inherently meaningful. Examples of such features are food, mates and shelter. The space of meaningful features can be extended by categorization: previously meaningless features gain meaning by association with meaningful features. The fifth paper, finally, uses computer simulations to model the pragmatic process of stabilizing a simple lexicon. (shrink)

In this entertaining work, Peter Grdenfors embarks on an evolutionary detective story to try and solve one of the big mysteries surrounding human existence - how has the modern human being's way of thinking come into existence. Immensely readable and full of humorous insights, the book will be valuable for students in psychology and biology, and accessible to readers of popular science.

The ability to plan for future, not currently experienced, mental or physiological states has been regarded as unique to humans. When humans plan for such states it has been hypothesized that they make use of what has been known as episodic foresight. Episodic foresight is a part of the episodic cognitive system, which also includes episodic memory. The defining feature of this system is so-called autonoetic consciousness, which enables a phenomenal, first-person view on events that have happened or might happen. (...) Autonoetic consciousness is constituted by sensorial simulations detached from current sensorial inputs; therefore, the episodic system provides humans with an "inner" sense, making it possible to mentally re- or pre-experience events. Humans who lack this ability cannot remember any personla events, and similarly cannot plan for any future events involving their own person. The episodic system develops late in humans, around the age of three to five years. It is a non-trivial task to detect episodic foresight in non-linguistic creatures. However there exist a few behavioural criteria on what a non-linguistic episodic planner should be able to perform. This thesis includes three empirical studies on foresight in chimpanzees and orangutans. The first is an experimental study performed on both species in a series of four experiments. Its basic aim was to test the subject's ability to exercise self-control in the face of future tool use, and to investigate whether chimpanzees and orangutans are able to select unfamiliar tools for a familiar future task. Self-control is essential for planning, and arguably its essential for episodic planning. The ability to integrate novel features into a foresight is a strong indicator of episodic abilities. The study results are positive in favour of episodic foresights in apes. The second is a pilot study on one orangutan's ability to plan for a future physiological state that currently is satisfied. Again the results are positive. The third is an observational study on one chimpanzee. The results suggest that chimpanzees are capable of calmly planning for an event in which they will become agitated; further that they are able to manufacture tools for use in that future event. The question of episodic foresight in comparative cognition is highly contested. Therefore the thesis also includes two papers that respond to some of the criticisms. The final paper in the thesis speculates how episodic foresight might have influenced the evolution of language in humans, based on archaeological and paleoanthropological findings as interpreted from a cognitive view point. Its conclusion is that symbolic communication might have evolved as early as 2.6 million years ago in the so-called Oldowan culture. (shrink)