Abstract
In evolutionary cognitive archaeology, the school of thought associated with the traditional framework has been deeply influenced by cognitivist intuitions, which have led to the formulation of mentalistic and disembodied cognitive explanations to address the emergence of artifacts within the archaeological record of ancient hominins. Recently, some approaches in this domain have further enforced this view, by arguing that artifacts are passive means to broadcast/perpetuate meanings that are thoroughly internal to the mind. These meanings are conveyed either in the form of a Language of Thought, constituted by sub-personal, content-bearing mental representations, or in that of a natural language. In both cases, however, material culture stands as the physical derivative of computations run over representations, which include abstract concepts, semantic relationships, and meta-representations about intensional states, a conception hereby indicated as “representational apriorism”. In this paper, I will argue that such mentalistic models are plagued by the fundamental problems of content, substance, and origin, which affect the representational substrates required for the production of artifacts. At the same time, these models fail the criterion of minimalism at the crux of conditional cognitive archaeology, because they propose overly costly explanations which are insufficiently constrained by material evidence. An alternative proposal, based on the principles of radical enactive cognitive science, is hereby introduced in order to counter this mentalistic drift. It is concluded that a radical enactive cognitive archaeology is able to dissolve the deep problems confronting the mentalistic paradigm, while providing minimalistic cognitive explanations about the emergence of Paleolithic artifacts.
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Notes
In this paper, I use the word “intensionality” (with s) to identify a propositional attitude towards mental states “as such” (i.e., beliefs, desires, etc.). In contrast, “intentionality” (with t) refers to the embodied behavioral directedness towards states of the world (e.g., Hutto 2011, p. 316).
The presence of standardized symmetric artifacts within Acheulean sites remains controversial. According to Cole (2015) and McNabb (2013) the degree of standardization existing in both Acheulean and Middle Paleolithic sites has been often exaggerated in archaeological literature, since most of the artifacts show little appreciation for symmetry as such. However, Hodgson (2015) has recently meta-analyzed a set of studies regarding several Acheulean sites, arguing for the reality of artifact standardization during this period (e.g., Saragusti et al. 2005; Grosman et al. 2008; Beyene et al. 2013; Wynn 2002). This stance supports the idea that Acheulean hominins used standardized artifacts to convey a socially relevant meaning, which I will adopt in the current paper as an illustrative example of collective identity broadcasting.
As widely acknowledged in literature, I define “Theory of mind” in its minimal form as the understanding of “second-order” intensionality, which in turn is mediated by second-order meta-representation.
Proxytypes are considered representations grounded in perception that can be flexibly combined with each other in order to assist cognition and interpret reality. These representations share some aspects with propositional systems, such as combinatoriality, and truth-conditionality (Barsalou 1999, sec. 3.2). However, given their significant differences with propositional vehicles, such as their (multi)-modal and analogical character, I have considered them non-propositional representations.
Within the current paper, I have primarily based my analysis on social artifacts for expositive reasons. As a consequence, I am not committed to the idea that sociality was causally responsible for the evolution of meta-representations, nor that these vehicles are merely limited to the social sphere. In fact, a parallel argument mirroring the one for meta-representational apriorism in social aspects can be moved also for technical ones (see the case of hafted tools in sec. Archaeological applications). The present critique applies indeed to the apriorism of meta-representations in general, and independently from which activity these vehicles are for.
Supporters of mentalism assume that the hearer requires sub-personal meta-representations in order to identify the correct referents of the utterances pronounced by a speaker (Origgi and Sperber 2000; Wilson and Sperber 2002). In other words, when the speaker pronounces some words, the hearer understands what these words really mean by making an inference about the mental contents of the speaker. The most plausible meaning is the one that better connects these contents to the features of a particular context. Thus, for example, the hearer understands that the expression “please pull the door behind when you leave” simply means “close the door”, and not “dismount the door”, by inferring that, in an ordinary context, the speaker just wished to have the house door closed. This implies the use of meta-representation in order to get access to the desires behind the speaker’s utterance (Dunbar 1998b).
Similarly, also the construction of a private language as a natural language invented by a single individual would raise the issue of how word reference and semantics can be fixed without a social dimension.
This point is also valid for alternative architectures for sub-personal theory of mind (e.g., Samuels 1998).
Cole (2015) ascribes theory of mind abilities to the makers of Lower Paleolithic Acheulean handaxes, while arguing at the same time for a later emergence of articulated language in human evolution. The use of artifacts to broadcast collective identity, supposedly based on fourth-level intensionality, is considered to mark only the infancy of symbolic systems. Indeed, the construction of the conventions involved in broadcasting this level of identity can be still associated with “limited language systems”. As a consequence, the identity model appears to implicitly adhere to the nativist account, for it is forced to assume the existence of a Language of Thought that supports theory of mind, given the absence of an articulated natural language. Thus, Cole’s proposal is affected by metaphysical problems concerning the existence of sub-personal and non-linguistic meta-representations (Online Resource 1). Similarly, Dunbar (2009) seems to assume that third-level intensionality, but not fourth-level one, can be processed without language.
The idea of the “only explanation as the best explanation” is often adopted by cognitivist approaches and fosters many of the dogmas currently existing within this paradigm (see Hutto 2008b, p. 94).
The evolution of genuine meta-representations could have capitalized on some of the recursive processes involved in the embedment of imaginative states within one another (cf. Corballis 2014a, 2014b). However, contentless imaginative re-enactments stand in any case as metaphysically distinct from the contentful meta-representations advocated by the proponents of the MCA. Thus, even if the former abilities evolved as early as 500 thousand years before present (Wilkins et al. 2012), they would not reintroduce meta-representational apriorism and would rather stand as an argument for RECA.
McNabb (2012) argues against the necessity of theory of mind in the production of Acheulean tools by providing a minimalistic reading of Gallese’s (2005) theory of embodied simulation and Barrett’s behavior reading (e.g., Barrett et al. 2007). In a nutshell, the intentionality of others can be understood and predicted through the implementation of simulations about their embodied activity. Although the idea that sub-personal simulations about aspects of the world remains still subject to the metaphysical objections raised by the radical enactive account, this conservative form of embodiment already suffices to counter the meta-representational arguments advanced by MCA supporters. It shows indeed that it is possible to make sense of others by understanding their behavioral intentionality rather than their mental contents.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. I wish to thank the editors for their assistance during the review process, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on a previous version of this paper. Prof. Philip Barnard, Prof. Lawrence Barsalou, Dr. Miriam Haidle, and Prof. Erik Myin have also provided useful suggestions about some relevant aspects of my argument.
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Garofoli, D. RECkoning with representational apriorism in evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Phenom Cogn Sci 17, 973–995 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-017-9549-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-017-9549-4