- 17 Mar, 2021
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Essay
In examining these phenomena, we make three basic claims.
• Human beings have a biological adaptation for a species-unique form of
social cognition. This adaptation expresses itself ontogenetically at two
key developmental moments, one at about one year of age and one at
about four years of age. Although conceptualized and investigated in very
different ways – as skills of joint attention and theory of mind, respectively – these are really just two phases of the same developmental pathway: understanding persons as intentional agents and then as mental
agents.
• Understanding and coordinating with intentional agents at one year of age
is the truly momentous leap in human social cognition in the sense that it
already distinguishes human beings from other primates, and it enables
human children to participate in and master cultural activities of all kinds,
including linguistic communication. In participating in cultural activities,
two year old children demonstrate their ability to establish self-other
equivalence, to take different perspectives on things, and to reflect on and
provide normative judgments of their own cognitive activities. We thus
call these activities shared intentionality.
• Three and four year old children’s coming to understand mental agents –
who have thoughts and beliefs that may be false – depends both on the
understanding of intentional agents and on a several year period of continuous interaction, especially linguistic interaction, with other persons.
Based especially on their participation in perspective-shifting and reflective discourse, some new kinds of normativity emerge – specifically,
those involving beliefs (with intensionality and norms of rational inference and truth), which in turn enable the comprehension of cultural institutions based on collective beliefs and practices such as money and
marriage and government. We thus call these activities collective intentionality.
1. UNDERSTANDING INTENTIO