Human Cognition

Ontogeny - The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult. Also called ontogenesis.

Important that we know what this means!

Dual Inheritance Theory – in which the mature phenotypes of many species are seen to depend on what they inherit from their forebears both biologically and culturally, pg. 14

I was wondering if this was in support of a collaboration between the ideas of Nature & Nurture.

?? Nonhuman primates are themselves intentional and causal beings, they just do not understand the world in intentional and causal terms, pg. 19

How do we know that nonhuman primates don't understand this? I read the rest of the chapter and saw the author's ideas about this, but is there really any way for us, as humans, to be sure that the other primates are not comprehending the world in intentional and causal terms? Some of Tomasello's examples seem to suggest that there might be some causal understanding within the worlds of other primates... or maybe I'm misunderstanding?

Understanding the behavior of other persons as intentional and/or mental directly enables certain very powerful forms of cultural learning and sociogenesis, and these forms of social learning are directly responsible for the special forms of cultural inheritance characteristics of human beings, pg.25

I completely agree with the first half of this statement, that understanding others' behavior is vital to learning and social interaction, but i still need some help understanding how we know we're alone in this ability.

Along with imitative learning, the process of active instruction is very likely crucial to the uniquely human pattern of cultural evolution as well, pg. 34

Through his examples, I understood this, and appreciated the specifics Tomasello presented, and also, through my 22-month old niece and 5-month old nephew, I can see the imitative learning process first-hand.