AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
6min chapter
225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Is Everything Deterministic?
Agency is the organism acting with this kind of cognitive organization that I gather in, you know, I have a goal. Darwin says that agency is a factor in their evolution because organisms making decisions can scale up to humans. The key variable being how much executive control do you have? So very simple organisms are simple control systems. But then when you get to things like mammals, they've got an executive control system that can plan ahead and consider different possibilities before acting. And so we kind of make a shared agent.
00:00
Transcript
Episode notes
Get the Snipd
podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode