Overview of Tomasello

I think that Tomasellos arguments have made me think about how unique it is to do the kind of things that humans are capable of. The idea that we can understand jokes, recognize and build upon patterns, reason, empathize, learn, understand, etc. are because we have this inherent "delta" gene or genes which separate us from the rest of the primates. All these things which we have been discussion in class thus far, ie knowledge, understanding, truth etc can only be realized by human cognition. I think that we have a great deal to attribute to our social nature and to human culture, which is an added element to understanding which has yet to be introduced into the picture. At least, Elgin and Lynch did not go into much detail on this and Understanding Understanding focused more on the fact of understanding in itself. Does anyone want to comment on how social and cultural aspects of human cognition play a role in understanding, truth, and knowledge?
I like what Marissa mentioned about growing up watching disney movies. I feel like I never realized, until this book, what a unique skill it was to communicate with other humans and I never thought to question the fact that a dogs bark or a bears growl isnt their own form of intelligent "human level" conversation. I guess it is the same thing which Professor McCrickerd talks about in class, we always think that everyone else thinks the same way that we do, but according to Tomasello our way of "thinking" is uniquely human.