Michael Tomasello - Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny

The Fred Kavli Keynote Address, Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, May 23, 2019, Washington, DC.

[mikeholley]

I am a grandpa of a four year old and an eleven month old and hardly conversant in this field. However, I found his most recent book and this lecture to be incredibly illuminating as to the development of my precious little ones. Just today my eleven month old offered to share cool new toys with me. And now I know why.

[yuluqin]

It shows some hope of mankind. Competition is there, selfishness is there, but so does cooperation. It was healing to see how children may share things and conform to the joint agreement through communication, the sense of fairness, respect are some of the most fundamental aspects of this more developed/modern society, though we almost always fail to follow them in some situations. But overall, thanks for the inspiring talk.

[SageThyme]

This talk is actually really interesting and quite a refreshing feeling of loving humanity. I enjoyed learning about how good humans are at cooperating together and how special it makes us compared to other apes. I think too often in the complicated drama of life and especially politics its hard to forget that what makes humans special isn't our intelligence or competitiveness or any of the things that modern life makes us feel is important. What is truly special and wonderful about humans is our ability to work together towards shared goals and be social

[timadamson]

Beginning with, and often ending with, individuals as our focus of study limits the very questions we ask about ourselves. In philosophy and psychology, the “problem of other minds” has occupied so much attention, but only because we insisted that the mind was “in the head” of individuals. Tomasello shows a clear path to newer, better questions.

[annelee]

Thank you for sharing this insightful research study in human development perspective.

[timadamson]

This view needs to be integrated with Rene Girard’s notion of mimesis, in which we all learn what is good, interesting, valuable, and desirable via imitation of others’ desires. We are thoroughly interpersonal and social from the start.

[aplus]

Curious if the lack of social engagement of chimp has anything to do with fake, anti-natural setting of the chimp. I imagine there is reference to a parent in the wild.

[johnellis]

As we are all given a different level of intelligence, causing us to have a different ability to acquire wealth, there are three systems of morality that prevail: Capitalism which forces wealth to flow up, socialism which forces wealth to flow down, and gratitude which gives us compassion, charity and a desire that all enjoy equality.

[Hydemica]

I wonder tho if the breaking out of joint commitment could be merely something adopted from observation. Even though we as adults usually have a feeling of superiority over children, rarely any parent/caregiver will just up and leave a joint activity in silence, without saying something like "sorry baby one second/ wait, mommy needs to check the oven/ ill be right back" etc, and that occurs even when before the child can actually fully understand the meaning of those sentences... I wonder if the same type of studies made with neglected children would yield the same results...

[joaodecarvalho]

These seem important steps in the social sciences. I wonder if this triangular interaction, with two perspectives, can be applied to sexual relationships.

[joaodecarvalho]

"What a stupid game... but of all the millions of species on planet Earth, there is only one that thinks that's fun, and that's the human species".
Yes, we are weird...

[timadamson]

Another form of joint attention comes in imitation, where the child attends to the task and purposes done by the model.

[momo-hsjn]

Since these were all german children it would be interesting to know if the normative protest would equally occur with children of other cultures because the german language is very much based on the imperative where people tell others what they have to do.

[GATA_]

I wonder how high the life quality of these animals is. Here they are shown as if they were in jail.