Shared Intentionality

From the Science Times: We May Be Born With an Urge to Help

The article opens by claiming biologists are overturning dour traditional -- that of philosophers, theologians, and parents -- notions of human nature. They have found that human children are naturally more helpful, co-operative and social than chimpanzees.

The article centers on a book by a Dr Tomasello who teaches that children develop "shared intentionality", described as the propensity to abide by, and enforce, social norms, which he believes parents ought reinforce. To Dr Tomasello -- a co-director of an institute for evolutionary anthropology -- shared intentionality evolved very early on -- it is handy when hunting -- and is a foundation of human culture.

The article then quotes one Dr. de Waal, a primatologist, who teaches that humans are naturally empathetic -- only psychopaths are not -- and therefore the humaneness of societies is, thankfully, ground in biology, not "the whims of politics, culture or religion."

The article notes (in an apparent non sequitur) that "experiments have shown that people will reject unfair distributions of money even it means they receive nothing" and, more relevantly, is fair enough to acknowledge that social norms may, in part, be enforced negatively and that warfare is also an expression of this human capacity for co-operation. It concludes with one final lesson from Dr. Tomasello that "we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time."

This final lesson is, of course, very consistent with the traditional teachings that the article claimed biologists were overturning.

Above all, the article is wonderfully self-referencing. Enforced social norms apply as much to thought as to behavior. Without them, those who easily imagine the roots of human nature as adapted to prehistoric lifestyles would have less difficulty understating how our traditional political, cultural and religious structures might be adapted to human nature (and, in turn, human nature to them). More-over, if there is, here, a new way of thinking upending previously established norms, it is brought about by people raised to rebel against any naturally developed shared intentionality.