Overview
This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology. Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, and drawing on research concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of intentionality and norm psychology in human beings, the author provides a semantics for individual intentions, collective intentions, and normative attitudes. This semantics interprets claims about collective intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states, and my formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to these mental states integrates well with research in evolutionary anthropology and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of norm psychology and collective intentionality in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on normativity, collective intentionality, social and development psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.
- | Author: PRESTON. STOVALL
- | Publisher: Routledge
- | Publication Date: 16-Sep-21
- | Number of Pages: 398 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Hardcover
- | ISBN-10: 0367708701
- | ISBN-13: 9780367708702
