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Skill and Collaboration in the Evolution of Human Cognition

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Abstract

I start with a brief assessment of the implications of Sterelny’s anti-individualist, anti-internalist apprentice learning model for a more historical and interdisciplinary cognitive science. In a selective response I then focus on two core features of his constructive account: collaboration and skill. While affirming the centrality of joint action and decision making, I raise some concerns about the fragility of the conditions under which collaborative cognition brings benefits. I then assess Sterelny’s view of skill acquisition and performance, which runs counter to dominant theories that stress the automaticity of skill. I suggest that it may still overestimate the need for and ability of experts to decompose and represent the elements of their own practical knowledge.

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Notes

  1. This article is one of four in Biological Theory’s Colloquium on Kim Sterelny’s The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique (Sterelny 2012a). See also Downes (2013, this issue); Gerrans (2013, this issue) and Sterelny (2013, this issue).

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to Ben Fraser and Kim Sterelny for organizing and inviting me to participate in the book symposium at the 2012 Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Conference, to Richard Menary and all the colleagues and students who participated in an eight-week graduate reading seminar on the book in Cognitive Science at Macquarie, and to my collaborators in work on collaboration (especially Amanda Barnier and Celia Harris) and on skilled movement (especially Wayne Christensen and Doris McIlwain).

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  1. Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    John Sutton

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Correspondence to John Sutton.

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Colloquium on Kim Sterelny’s The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique.

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Sutton, J. Skill and Collaboration in the Evolution of Human Cognition. Biol Theory 8, 28–36 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-013-0097-z

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