Mindshaping – A New Framework for Understanding Human Social Cognition - Hardcover

Zawidzki, Tadeusz Wieslaw

3.4

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780262019019: Mindshaping – A New Framework for Understanding Human Social Cognition

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262019019 ISBN 13: 9780262019019

Publisher: MIT Press, 2013

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A proposal that human social cognition would not have evolved without mechanisms and practices that shape minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. In this novel account of distinctively human social cognition, Tadeusz Zawidzki argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse, and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. Zawidzki proposes that such "mindshaping"-which takes the form of capacities and practices such as sophisticated imitation, pedagogy, conformity to norms, and narrative self-constitution-is the most important component of human social cognition. Without it, he argues, none of the other components of what he terms the "human sociocognitive syndrome," including sophisticated language, cooperation, and sophisticated "mindreading," would be possible. Challenging the dominant view that sophisticated mindreading-especially propositional attitude attribution-is the key evolutionary innovation behind distinctively human social cognition, Zawidzki contends that the capacity to attribute such mental states depends on the evolution of mindshaping practices. Propositional attitude attribution, he argues, is likely to be unreliable unless most of us are shaped to have similar kinds of propositional attitudes in similar circumstances. Motivations to mindshape, selected to make sophisticated cooperation possible, combine with low-level mindreading abilities that we share with nonhuman species to make it easier for humans to interpret and anticipate each other's behavior. Eventually, this led, in human prehistory, to the capacity to attribute full-blown propositional attitudes accurately-a capacity that is parasitic, in phylogeny and today, on prior capacities to shape minds. Bringing together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of psychology, Zawidzki offers a strikingly original framework for understanding human social cognition.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

The core hypothesis of Mindshaping is likely to be true...sophisticated...There is much to admire about this book and it is enjoyable to read...an important book.

--Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Zawidzki makes an admirable attempt to synthesize a wide range of phenomena...He also gives an admirably clear overview of the theoretical landscape, and for this reason alone I would recommend Mindshaping to both experts and novices alike.

--Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

Mindshaping is a tour de force. It rigorously reenvisions humans' deeply social nature and presents a penetrating challenge to entrenched intuitions about the centrality of folk psychology. Its key innovation is the idea that our individual abilities to make sense of ourselves and other people is a group accomplishment' grounded in our shared practices for regulating behavior.

--The Review of Metaphysics

About the Author:

Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Codirector of the Mind-Brain Evolution Cluster at the George Washington University. He is the author of Dennett.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.