Michael Tomasello, a prominent researcher in human cognition and social origins, explores the fascinating evolution of agency and morality. He discusses how our cognitive abilities developed through social pressures, emphasizing the importance of cooperation and communication. The conversation touches on cognitive parallels with great apes, the emergence of language from gestures, and the complex roots of morality influenced by altruism. Tomasello also delves into the significance of 'theory of mind' and how interdependence shapes our social behaviors.
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Unique Human Sociability
Humans and great apes differ significantly in their social skills, leading to distinct cognitive abilities.
This difference is evident in humans' capacity for complex communication and cooperation, absent in apes.
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Biological Basis of Social Skills
Human social skills have a biological basis, as evidenced by the challenges faced by individuals with autism.
These individuals often struggle with the social cognition that seems to set humans apart.
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Collaborative Foraging
The key differentiator in human evolution is collaborative activities like foraging and hunting, not individual brainpower.
This shift, evident in tool use and brain growth, occurred relatively late in human evolution.
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In *Why Free Will Is Real*, Christian List presents a compelling case for the existence of free will by addressing three primary objections: determinism, radical materialism, and epiphenomenalism. He argues that free will is a higher-level psychological phenomenon, not reducible to fundamental physics, and thus compatible with a deterministic universe. List's approach emphasizes the importance of intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and mental causation as emergent properties that cannot be explained solely by physical processes.
The Evolution of Agency
Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans
Michael Tomasello
In 'The Evolution of Agency', Michael Tomasello proposes a theoretical framework outlining four main forms of psychological agency: goal-directed agency in ancient vertebrates, intentional agency in ancient mammals, rational agency in ancient great apes, and socially normative agency in ancient humans. This framework deepens our understanding of how agency evolved to enable complex decision-making and social behaviors in humans.
How Physics Makes Us Free
Jenann Ismael
In 'How Physics Makes Us Free,' Jenann Ismael delves into the problem of free will, examining what it means to make decisions and how our actions are determined by physical laws. She argues that human beings are not simply responding to external stimuli but are making decisions based on a set of beliefs, memories, and goals built up over a lifetime. Ismael's work suggests that the complexity of human behavior, even in a deterministic universe, affirms most of what we believe about our own freedom. The book is written in a jargon-free style, making it accessible to a broad audience.
The Language Instinct
How the Mind Creates Language
Steven Pinker
In this book, Steven Pinker argues that language is an innate human ability, produced by evolution to solve the problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He explains how language works, how children learn it, how it changes, and how the brain computes it. Pinker refutes common ideas such as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and the notion that language is a human invention. He supports his argument with examples from linguistics, psychology, and popular culture, emphasizing that language is a specialized 'mental module' rather than a mark of advanced intelligence. The book also includes updates on advances in the science of language since its initial publication.
Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and decide on a course of action based on those deliberations. These abilities developed over evolutionary history for a variety of reasons and under a number of different pressures. But one crucially important aspect of their development is their social function. According to Michael Tomasello, we developed agency and cognition and even morality in order to better communicate and cooperate with our fellow humans.
Michael Tomasello received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Georgia. He is currently the James Bonk Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience and Director of the Developmental Psychology Program at Duke University. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his awards are the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the Wiley Prize in Psychology, and the Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science. His newest book is The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans.
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