Fido the Yak

Two items brought to my attention via Online Papers in Philosophy:

• Faktizität und Geschichtlichkeit als Konstituentien der Lebenswelt in Husserls Spätphilosophie (pdf) by
  Sebastian Luft. Professor Luft has also made available several papers in English on similar topics.


• Joint Attention, Communication and Mind (doc) by Naomi Eilan. This work serves as the introduction to a volume of essays forthcoming from Oxford University Press. I hope somebody is paying attention enough to correctly and consistently print the name of Dr. Juan Carlos Gómez. And there is a "tot" in Eilan's essay which ought to be a "to." But it's a fascinating topic.

A bit of synchronicity, see Chris's recent post on Human Infant and Chimpanzee Altruism.

Update: Chris points to the work of Michael Tomasello. I'm currently looking at a paper he coauthored, Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (pdf). This work may be thought of as going a step beyond neurological studies of social cognition in primates (which I looked at briefly last fall). What it's about (emphasis mine):

We propose that human beings, and only human beings, are biologically adapted for participating in collaborative activities involving shared goals and socially coordinated action plans (joint intentions). Interactions of this type require not only an understanding of the goals,intentions, and perceptions of other persons, but also, in addition, a motivation to share these things in interaction with others--and perhaps special forms of dialogic cognitive representation for doing so. The motivations and skills for participating in this kind of "we" intentionality are woven into the earliest stages of human ontogeny and underlie young children's developing ability to participate in the collectivity that is human cognition.

For a different use of diagrams (-; , see Jon's latest post at posthegemony.

Labels: Eilan, infant, joint attention, Tomasello

posted by Fido the Yak at 7:45 PM.