I was swept away by the recent Netflix documentary “Cave of Bones”. Not that I have believed the narrative (I did not), but it made me curious. The question that seems to bother many people (not me) is: what is so special about us, humans? I thought to myself that maybe I lacked some understanding and decided to read the book “A natural history of human thinking” by M. Tomasello. This book argues for a hypothesis that Tomasello and colleagues have been promoting for a while. The hypothesis is supposed to answer the question: how uniquely human thinking emerged? The answer is shared intentionality. 

The formulation of the shared intentionality hypothesis is that social communication and collaboration required shared intentionality, which led to the emergence of new ways of thinking. According to the authors, there were two evolutionary steps. 

The first step is called joint intentionality. Imagine that you are going to gather berries with another human. You and your fellow have a shared goal: to collect berries and bring them home. So, you are collecting berries from nearby bushes, and as your partner decides to move to the next bush, you notice that there are still berries at her current bush. You can clearly see them, but she cannot. So you attract her attention by pointing to the other side of the bush and by making appropriate sounds. At this moment, the thinking that goes in your and your partner's heads is perspectival and recursive. From your perspective, you should point in such a way that your partner interprets your pointing as pointing to berries and interprets that you want her to see the berries. In order to point appropriately, you need to look at yourself from a second-person perspective, such as “if I pointed like this, then she would think that berries are there”. From your partner's perspective, your pointing indicates that you want to help with something because both of you have a shared goal. So she takes your perspective, which is taking her perspective. This joint intentionality and second-person thinking evolved, according to the author, in early humans when environmental challenges forced them to cooperate. Great apes do not possess joint intentionality; they compete rather than collaborate. 

The second step is collective intentionality. This step signified the human population growing and competing between groups for resources. Imagine that you like warmth, and there are other people in your office who are just like you. However, there are also rivals who find fresh air essential and keep opening windows here and there. The group that you belong to may always carry a shawl to identify themselves or agree that when someone is alone at the office, he will take care about closing windows. Later, maybe, you will create more sophisticated norms and even initiation procedures for other people to be accepted in your group. As time passes, norms proposed by a certain individual become detached from that individual and become objective. You would also begin to think from an objective and group-minded perspective, saying something like “One must wear the shawl” or “One wins warmth if one keeps the window closed”. You would also develop argumentative thinking to be able to persuade members of your group to impose new norms or persuade members of the rival group to join you. Collective intentionality, according to the author, is associated with the creation of language and culture.

 The steps in the evolution were as follows: great apes have only individual intentionality (me-against-the-world perspective); early humans had joint intentionality (I-see-you perspective); and we have collective intentionality (it’s-called-the-third-amendment perspective). 

The book goes on to explain in detail those steps and provide a coherent picture of the evolution of human thinking. I don’t know much about the scientific methods in antropology. Many arguments in the book seem fair, but how certain we can be, I don’t know. Some ideas did not resonate with me. For instance, I don't seem to communicate with reflection about what another party thinks that I imply. It seems that I assume automatically that the other party thinks the same. And only if I meet misunderstandings, I am forced to acknowledge that the party is a separate person with a somewhat different train of thought. Thus, I don't think about how my words will be perceived; I think that they will be perceived as I perceive them. Although, possibly, the recursive thinking (shaped by evolution) runs on the background, and I have no conscious access to it. 

Overall, I found the book quite interesting but way too general. I would like to read more description of studies that served as a basis for hypothesising shared intentionality. 

Favourity quote “Humans evolved reasoning abilities not for getting at the truth but for convincing others of their views.” 

January, 2024