Introduction

Peer reviewe

Collective Intentionality, Inferentialism and the Capacity for Claim-Making

Some of our linguistic practices are special in that they involve claims about how things stand in the world. These judgments are thought to be true or false with respect to what they are about. The nature of these practices of claim-making has been studied by philosophers and psychologists alike. Furthermore, important strands in evolutionary studies have relied on both psychological and philosophical theories for addressing the question of how these practices evolved in the hominins lineage, claiming that engagement in such linguistic practices is humans\u27 exclusive heritage. This paper aims to show that (some of) the conceptual tools provided by collective intentionality and inferentialist theorists can productively complement each other in pursuing this theoretical endeavor, namely the elucidation of human practices of claim-making. In particular, I argue that (i) Brandom\u27s inferentialist account of basic linguistic practices in interpretational terms is problematic and that these problems can be addressed via appeal to the collective intentionality theorist\u27s toolbox, and (ii) Inferentialists resource to linguistic norms in understanding meaning and claim-making can offer crucial tools for understanding the emergence of human specific cognitive capacities of objective judgement, tools that are needed to complement the accounts offered by collective intentionality theorists. The main aim of the paper is to provide an account of the evolution and development of human-specific abilities of claim-making which combines resources from both approaches in order to understand the nature and crucial role of shared activities in their emergence

Collective Intentionality, Inferentialism and the Capacity for Claim-Making

Some of our linguistic practices are special in that they involve claims about how things stand in the world. These judgments are thought to be true or false with respect to what they are about. The nature of these practices of claim-making has been studied by philosophers and psychologists alike. Furthermore, important strands in evolutionary studies have relied on both psychological and philosophical theories for addressing the question of how these practices evolved in the hominins lineage, claiming that engagement in such linguistic practices is humans’ exclusive heritage. This paper aims to show that (some of) the conceptual tools provided by collective intentionality and inferentialist theorists can productively complement each other in pursuing this theoretical endeavor, namely the elucidation of human practices of claim-making. In particular, I argue that (i) Brandom’s inferentialist account of basic linguistic practices in interpretational terms is problematic and that these problems can be addressed via appeal to the collective intentionality theorist’s toolbox, and (ii) Inferentialists resource to linguistic norms in understanding meaning and claim-making can offer crucial tools for understanding the emergence of human specific cognitive capacities of objective judgement, tools that are needed to complement the accounts offered by collective intentionality theorists. The main aim of the paper is to provide an account of the evolution and development of human-specific abilities of claim-making which combines resources from both approaches in order to understand the nature and crucial role of shared activities in their emergence

Philosophy of mind and/as the repression of interpersonal understanding

Peer reviewe

Shared Intentionality and the Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis

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