Book Review: Why We Cooperate

Michael Tomasello’s 2009 book, Why We Cooperate, presents in concise terms a hypothesis about what it is that makes humans different from other animals. In this book, Tomasello, a psychologist, summarizes decades of work from his laboratory and he recounts others who are trying to understand the biological nature of human cognition and society. The book consists of two parts. The first is Tomasello’s description of his ‘shared intentionality’ hypothesis. The second consists of short critiques by four leading experts who posit comments, critiques, or competing theories on some or all of the shared intentionality hypothesis, which is based on their own research and data interpretations.

Why We Cooperate gives an appreciation for how far this kind of research has come, especially in the last 25 years, which is when much of the most probative data was generated. It also provides a basis to understand some of the basis for cooperation vs non-cooperation among groups dealing with politics.

Shared Intentionality: Shared intentionality is a hypothesis that a keystone of humanity is the ability of humans to envision the mutual relationship between the self, others, and their shared objectives in goal-oriented activities. This concept is required for even simple activities, such as a role-playing game, wherein a child participates with an adult or other children. This trait develops in humans at about 1.5-2 years of age and it persists throughout life. The activity is characterized by a person’s understanding of the role as well as the other participant's perspective, contingent on the fact that both parties share at least one mutual goal.

Tomasello argues that for joint attentional activities, human intentionality arises from understanding one’s role and the role of others involved. This happens only when there is a shared goal, which is when joint attention would be required from at least two people. Data from research with chimpanzees indicates that they only see their role from a first-person perspective and that of a partner from a third-person perspective. Humans can take a “bird’s-eye view” of the different roles in a group activity and they can easily switch roles, while chimpanzees and other great apes do not appear to display role switching ability. This taken to mean that great apes cannot engage in joint attention.

Evidence for that difference in ability to understand various points of view comes from studies that look at what an individual perceives relative to another individual. A chimp looking at an object of interest such as a mango can lead a second chimp to look at the fruit, but there is no evidence that the second chimp is aware that the first chimp is looking at the object. This is cited as an example that great apes do not have any ‘recursive mind reading’ capacity. Recursive mind reading arises when one individual sees and understands what another individual is seeing. By contrast, humans display evidence of recursive mind reading at an early age.

When infants understand that an adult is gesturing and making eye movements to show they are searching for a relocated or misplaced object, infants point to the item to inform the adult where the object is. Recent laboratory data suggests that when an ape is pointing to an object of interest (e.g., some food) it is not a gesture to inform the human of the food’s location. Instead, the ape is telling the human to get the food so the ape can eat it. This is obviously a difficult distinction. Nonetheless, observation of apes in the wild do not typically reveal gestures that tell other apes in the group where food or an object of interest is. In the wild, apes will look at food, leading others to do the same, but that is where it ends. Evidence of joint attention is generally absent.

Additional evidence of shared intentionality as a human-specific trait is the observation that the whites of human eyes (the sclera) are much more visible than that of all other 200-plus species of non-human primates. Tomasello argues that the whites of non-human primate eyes are mostly dark, which makes it difficult to see where another non-human primate’s eyes are looking. Instead, non-human primates look at where the head of another is pointing. By contrast, human infants engage in a constant process of looking at the eyes of another both to look at where their social partner is looking and to assess their level of attention. Humans are more adept at this presumably because our eyes' anatomies can more easily convey object locations to others.

Combinatorial capacity – increasing language skill increases cognitive capacity: One competing hypothesis championed by Elizabeth Spelke, a ‘combinatorial capacity’ hypothesis, posits that instead of shared intentionality, unique human cognitive and social capacity arises from a combination of processing language as well as five distinct cognitive systems that are present at birth or in months after birth. The five systems are for representing and thinking about (i) inanimate objects and their motions, (ii) intentional agents and their goal-directed actions, (iii) places in the local area and their relations to one another, (iv) sets of objects and their numerical ordering and arithmetic relationships, and (v) social partners who engage with the infant. These systems are universal in all cultures and languages, and these systems remain active throughout life. As a child’s language skills increase, so does the capacity to combine the thought systems to give rise to unique human cognitive skills.

Spelke summarizes this hypothesis as “three hallmarks of uniquely human cognition – tool use, natural numbers and geometry – appear to be consequences of a uniquely human combinatorial capacity that is linked to natural language.” Spelke’s interpretation of existing data lead he to believe that language is the product of unique human cooperation and communication. But she acknowledges that “it is possible, however, that the causal arrow points in the opposite direction.” She argues that the data favors her view that combinatorial capacity and developing language skill is more fundamental than shared intentionality. The book concludes with this by Spelke: “I have focused my comments on two different attempts to explain humans’ unique capacities: Tomasello’s notion of an innate, species-specific capacity for shared intentionality, and the notion of an innate, species-specific capacity for combinatorial capacity expressed in natural language. At this time, we cannot know whether either of these accounts is correct. . . . . Whatever the outcome of [further] studies, Tomasello’s work gives us reason to believe that the next decade of research exploring the minds and actions of infants will be as fruitful as the last. The fundamental questions of human nature and human knowledge, questions that have been outstanding for millennia, are beginning to yield answers, . . . . .”

Human Cognitive Capacity and Politics: Tomasello touches on the relevance of research to politics. He points out that although humans evolved cooperatively, “they also put their heads together to do all kinds of heinous deeds.” He asserts that recent evolutionary models mirror what politicians have known for a long time. He points to politician’s tactic of motivating people to collaborate and think like a group by identifying an enemy and then claim that “they” threaten “us”.

The politics of divide and debase is an common and often successful tactic for winning people over to a politician’s or special interest’s side, and for creating narratives about reality that can diverge from actuality. The tactic is being deployed today on a scale that is arguably unprecedented in recent decades. Tomasello argues that the human capacity to cooperate appears to work best in small groups. He observes that “such group-mindedness is, perhaps ironically, a major cause of strife and suffering in the world today. The solution – more easily described than attained – is to find new ways to define the group.”

One possible way to defining a less divisive kind of group is to look to insights from human cognitive and social science. One possibility is to adopt a mindset or ideology that attempts to downplay sources of biases. As research progresses, insights on the fundamental nature of human cognition and social cooperation is likely to allow refinements in an anti-bias ideology. In that regard, political thinking should track progress in relevant areas of research.

The goal of an anti-bias mindset is to elevate objective reality and less biased reason into more important roles than they currently play in politics. Perfection in this regard is not possible for both human and laws of the universe reasons. Despite the impossibility of perfection, the assumption is that that an anti-bias political mindset will often lead to a better political outcomes in the long run.

B&B orig: 10/6/18