Tomasello, Carpenter | What Makes a “We”? (Apart 3)

About this event

A live, text-driven seminar on major works in philosophy (mostly analytic). We read the paper together, slowly—stopping to clarify terms, reconstruct arguments, and stress-test claims. You can find the next week's reading here (https://www.notion.so/Philosophy-Meetings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8?source=copy_link) WARNING Browse the current and upcoming papers along with past Readings and meetings. (https://opaque-artichoke-859.notion.site/Philosophy-Meetings-and-Readings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8) Expect highly technical material, dense terminology, and high abstraction. It is full of philosophical jargon and complex technical terms. Your expectation should be to treat it as a graduate seminar in philosophy. We don't assume you have a degree in philosophy, but we do assume philosophical maturity and/or a crazy level of passion for deductive reasoning. We will start of at page 13. HELPFUL Here is a slide on social Ontology that would be useful. Social Ontology Presentation (https://social-ontology-pres-af8c.bolt.host/#1) DETAIL What separates human beings from other intelligent animals? It may not simply be language, abstract reasoning, or a larger brain. According to Michael Tomasello and his collaborators, the decisive difference may be our ability to create a shared point of view—to understand not merely that I intend something and you intend something, but that we intend something together. In this event, we will read and discuss the influential paper “Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition.” The authors argue that great apes can understand many features of intentional action: they can recognize goals, follow attention, and predict what others are trying to do. But human children gradually develop something more unusual during their first fourteen months of life: shared intentionality. Shared intentionality includes joint attention, shared goals, coordinated roles, and the recognition that two people are participating in a common activity. A child pointing at an airplane is not merely identifying an object or asking for it. The child may be inviting another person into a shared experience: Look at that—with me. The paper proposes that this capacity to form a “we” is the foundation of human language, cooperation, teaching, social norms, institutions, and cumulative culture. Human beings do not merely learn individually. We build systems of shared knowledge in which each generation can inherit, preserve, and improve upon the achievements of previous generations. The paper also raises major philosophical questions: What exactly is a shared intention? Can a “we-intention” be reduced to two individual intentions, or is it a genuinely collective mental state? How does joint attention make language possible? Can obligations arise simply because people undertake an activity together? And are institutions such as money, governments, corporations, and laws ultimately built from shared forms of recognition? The deepest question is not simply how one mind understands another. It is how separate minds become organized into a common perspective. No background in psychology or philosophy is required. We will examine the paper carefully, clarify its central concepts, and debate whether shared intentionality truly explains the origins of human culture—or whether the authors draw too sharp a line between humans and other animals. Join us as we investigate the strange cognitive achievement hidden inside one ordinary word: We.