Glenda Satne

One important application of theories of collective intentionality concerns the evolution of social understanding and even of human thinking (Tomasello M, A natural history of human thinking, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014). A promising idea behind this approach is the Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis (CEH), namely, the idea that humans’ capacity for social cooperation is at the heart of their ability to understand others’ mental states and behavior, leading to an explanation of how humans came to share thoughts and language. However, some of the most popular defenses of CEH face important problems. In this paper, we take Tomasello’s account (J Soc Ontol 2(1):117–123, 2016); A natural history of human thinking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014; Origins of human communication. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008) as a leading example of the CEH which faces such insurmountable problems. In particular, we argue that Tomasello’s analysis of cooperation and spontaneous help is problematic. We locate a source of such issues in the assumption that the right account of joint action and simple forms of shared intentionality is that which is offered by Bratman’s theory of shared intentions. The second part of the article proposes and defends an alternative framework for understanding shared intentionality that can help substantiate CEH.

An important idea due to Tomasello and others is that the human capacity as the human capacity for social cooperation is at the heart of the species’ capacity to understand others’ mental states and behavior. Furthermore, they argue that this idea allows for an explanation of how humans came to share thoughts and language. While this is a promising idea, the special attempt to pursue this hypothesis in developmental studies and evolutionary theory developed by Tomasello and his research group faces several problems. This is especially apparent in their attempts to explain helping behavior and joint action in young children. In this paper, we argue that many of these problems result from assuming that the right explanation of joint action and simple forms of shared intentionality is given by Bratman’s theory of shared intentions.

In this paper, I address the question of how to account for the normative dimension involved in conceptual competence in a naturalistic framework. First, I present what I call the naturalist challenge (NC), referring to both the phylogenetic and ontogenetic dimensions of conceptual possession and acquisition. I then criticize two models that have been dominant in thinking about conceptual competence, the interpretationist and the causalist models. Both fail to meet NC, by failing to account for the abilities involved in conceptual self-correction. I then offer an alternative account of self-correction that I develop with the help of the interactionist theory of mutual understanding arising from recent developments in phenomenology and developmental psychology.