The Single-Minded Animal

Shared Intentionality, Normativity, and the Foundations of Discursive Cognition

Preston Stovall author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:25th Sep '23

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The Single-Minded Animal cover

This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology.

Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others.

Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.

“Stovall fills an important hole in the Sellars-Brandom account of normativity, the question of how normative rationality is acquired developmentally, by appealing to work in cognitive science on collective intentionality and sensitivity to norms, and by introducing a novel analysis of collective planning talk. This is an intriguing and sophisticated account of a central issue in philosophy.”

Stephen Turner, University of South Florida, USA

"Stovall’s is one of the very few accounts seeking to connect empirical and philosophical approaches to human cognition that gives normativity pride of place. This is an enormously important book that could potentially lead the philosophy of cognitive science to new and productive insights."

Michael Tomasello, Duke University, USA

"Preston Stovall's book is rich in details and covers in broad strokes some very important themes within philosophy of language and intentionality."

R. Krishnaswamy, The Philosophical Quarterly

The Single-Minded Animal is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and admirably interdisciplinary book, taking on a vast range of philosophical and scientific work . . . while we may indeed be single-minded animals, in his sense, in this impressive book, Stovall has shown us the virtue and fruitfulness of philosophical and scientific broad-mindedness.”

Brandon Beasley, Metascience

ISBN: 9780367724061

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

378 pages