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How Institutions Work in Shared Intentionality and ‘We-Mode’ Social Cognition

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Abstract

The topics of social ontology, culture, and institutions constitute a problem complex that involves a broad range of human social and cultural cognitive capacities. We-mode social cognition and shared intentionality appear to be crucial in the formation of social ontology and social institutions, which, in turn, provide the bases for the social manifestation of collective and shared psychological attitudes. Humans have ‘hybrid minds’ that inhabit cultural–cognitive ecosystems. Essentially, these consist of social institutions and distributed cognition that afford the common grounds for the objectives of we-mode shared intentionality. As such, they stabilize social cognition normatively and offer predictive power in social interaction. Full-blown we-mode shared intentionality fundamentally depends on the functions of social institutions.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘social institution’ is somewhat pleonastic as institutions are inherently social—here the term ‘social’ serves as an emphasis (when used).

  2. The developments of the (mainly) philosophical ideas about collective intentionality are summarized by Schweikard and Schmid: ‘Collective intentionality is the power of minds to be jointly directed at objects, matters of fact, states of affairs, goals, or values.’(2013) Collective intentionality is used here in a broad sense, for as Searle notes, there is ‘a great deal of controversy within the subject, and there certainly is no generally accepted account of collective intentionality.’(2010, 45).

  3. Enfield and Levinson (2006) demonstrate the scope and cross-disciplinary nature of research into human sociality.

  4. In recent years, ‘social cognition’ tends to become synonymous with ‘theory of mind’ or ‘mentalizing’. The broader understandings of the notion and its correlates are applied in this investigation because of its wider scope.

  5. These positions are outlined and discussed in (e.g.) Schweikard and Schmid (2013).

  6. E.g. Becchio and Bertone (2004), Iacoboni (2011). Recent research into basic human cognitive sociality also comes in the form of ‘second-person neuroscience’ where neural mechanisms as seen as the ‘dark matter’ of social neuroscience (Schilbach et al. 2013). This topic will need to be passed over here for reasons of space.

  7. In their ‘Glossary’, Gallotti and Frith note that: ‘Theories of collective intentionality fall by and large in two families depending on whether those features are viewed as attributes of shared states of affairs, such as plans of action, or of the cognition of interacting agents, such as the mode in which they represent aspects of the action scene.’ The distinction is analytically sound but both are most likely mutually active in social interaction.

  8. The volume edited by Menary demonstrates how the extended mind hypothesis has moved from a 1st wave ‘parity’ to a 2nd wave ‘complementarity’ principle ‘where external processes and vehicles can be radically unlike internal ones’ (2010, 20).

  9. Miller has summed up the main distinctions between kinds of social institutions as used by social scientists (Miller 2011).

  10. Searle’s version is used as a practical and heuristic way of speaking about these matters. Although convenient in that sense, the theory needs cognitive science elaborations (which is outside the scope here, but see Dubreil 2008).

  11. In accord with my view of the attribution of meaning and value, Smit et al. demonstrate how institutional objects, such as money, borders and property do not belong to a separate ontological realm but are the results of ‘incentivization of actions’ (Smit et al. 2011). Some critics claim that constitutive rules can be derived from regulative rules and that institutional terms are introduced for ‘economy of thought’ (Hindriks and Guala 2013).

  12. So far it remains a mystery just how scientific methodology should be able to quantify and measure social ‘ontology’, ‘status’ and ‘deontic power’. Seemingly, not all things that count can be counted.

  13. Developmental psychologists Trevarthen and Aitken noted how human collaborative activities begin with facial mimicry and simple ‘turn-taking’ play with toddlers (2001; also Trevarthen 2011). There are restrictions on the mimicry, however, as noted by Hickok (2014).

  14. On the ‘epidemiology of representations’ views of Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer and Christophe Heinz, institutions are sets of representations that include normative regulatory representations about the distributions of representations. To this scenario, there are good reasons to add ‘constitutive representations’.

  15. Michael et al. (2014) produce strong evidence for some functions of the human mirror neuron system in the understanding of action in others. The ‘shared manifold’ hypothesis was introduced above (Gallese 2001).

  16. Of course, relations as perceived are reducible to individuals’ perceptions.

  17. This is not the place to rehearse a discussion of group mind ontology or the related literature, Wilson’s Ch. 11 does so admirably. Group, or ‘hive minds’ with lack of personhood or individuality are favoured themes in Science Fiction literature.

  18. Consider how a wink may ‘count as’ important shared social communication.

  19. Merlin Donald hypothesises a ‘slow process’-neural mechanism in humans that allows for the temporal integration necessary for human social cognition to direct and control complex interactive ‘social scenarios’ (2007).

  20. If this assertion seems unduly definite and unquestionable, see e.g. Tomasello 1999, 201–217; Bender and Beller (2011; with relevant references for the discussion).

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  1. Department of Culture and Society, Interacting Minds (IMC3) and MINDLab Research Associate, Aarhus University, J.C Skous vej 3, Building 1451, Room 525, 8000, Århus C, Denmark

    Jeppe Sinding Jensen

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Jensen, J.S. How Institutions Work in Shared Intentionality and ‘We-Mode’ Social Cognition. Topoi 35, 301–312 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-015-9306-7

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