Intersubjectivity, deception and the ‘opacity of other minds’: Perspectives from Highland New Guinea and beyond

Rumsey, Alan

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2013.06.003

Cited by 30 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In some cases, such practices can involve explicit ‘mindreading’ as well, that is, inferring the beliefs, intentions, and desires of other agents as such ( Michael et al, 2014 ). There is a long-running debate among anthropologists over the extent to which inferences about other people’s mental states (as opposed to, say, bodily states) may reflect a folk psychology that is more pronounced among modern Western peoples ( Robbins and Rumsey, 2008 ; Rumsey, 2013 ). This ‘transparency of mind’ folk psychology is contrasted in the literature with so-called ‘opacity doctrines’ found in other cultures, in which people’s interior states are said to be ‘opaque,’ or unknowable.…”

Section: The Neurodynamics Of Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we outline a framework for the study of the mechanisms involved in the engagement of human agents with cultural affordances. Our aim is to better understand how culture and context interact with human biology to shape human behavior, cognition, and experience. We attempt to integrate several related approaches in the study of the embodied, cognitive, and affective substrates of sociality and culture and the sociocultural scaffolding of experience. The integrative framework we propose bridges cognitive and social sciences to provide (i) an expanded concept of ‘affordance’ that extends to sociocultural forms of life, and (ii) a multilevel account of the socioculturally scaffolded forms of affordance learning and the transmission of affordances in patterned sociocultural practices and regimes of shared attention. This framework provides an account of how cultural content and normative practices are built on a foundation of contentless basic mental processes that acquire content through immersive participation of the agent in social practices that regulate joint attention and shared intentionality.

show abstract

Section: The Neurodynamics Of Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is suggested by ethnographic reports of children being reprimanded for overt curiosity about others’ actions or intentions. On this view, Melanesians are simply taught that they ought not to wonder about what people are thinking (Robbins 2008; Robbins & Rumsey 2008; Rumsey 2013). Moreover, reports from other Melanesian contexts indicate that it is widely recognized that people “think silently” (e.g., in the context of courtship among the Korowai of New Guinea; Luhrmann 2011; Stasch 2009).…”

Section: Introduction: Learning In Cultural Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism.

show abstract

“…Indeed, people in the Yopno valley are attuned to the possibility that purported experts are deceiving and manipulating them. Deception and manipulation are a theme running through local historical tales, anecdotes, and people's observations about present‐day experts (a preoccupation elsewhere in Melanesia as well; see, e.g., Rumsey ; Weiner ). Anticipating the possibility of deceit, listeners are careful to listen well and evaluate (Y: sɨlɨp a ‐) the speech of experts, lest the experts deceive and manipulate them into becoming their “slaves.”…”

Section: Learning To Listen: Truth Deception and The Need To Listenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the subaltern listen? Self-determination and the provisioning of expertise in Papua New Guinea

Slotta

2017

American Ethnologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Voice is a major concern in contemporary liberal‐democratic politics, one that stresses the political importance of speaking (“giving voice,” “speaking up”). But in the Yopno valley of Papua New Guinea, where NGO and government projects are expanding, people's sense that they are losing control of their future has led them to worry about their capacity to listen, not their capacity to speak. In largely acephalous villages, people's self‐determination seems particularly threatened by their ignorance of the true nature of their own actions. From a perspective in which the antecedents and the consequences of action are deeply unclear—a perspective stressed in the provisioning of expertise prevalent in political discourse—self‐determination hinges on listening and gaining the understanding needed to shape one's future. [political communication, expertise, self‐determination, voice, listening, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia] Long tingting bilong planti saveman bilong demokratik politiks na arapela manmeri tu, toktok em i as bilong paua bilong ol manmeri. Tasol, ol manmeri i stap long Yopno veli, wanpela hap bilong Papua Niugini, ol i no save wari tumas long tokaut. Maski gavman na NGO i laik wokim planti samting long hap, ol i no tingting planti long toktok tumas. Tasol, ol i wari planti long harim: ol inap long harim toktok na i stap fri o nogat? Long hap, ol lida bilong ples na gavman, ol i nogat paua long bosim ol manmeri bilong ples. Ol manmeri i ken bihainim laik bilong ol. Tasol, ol i wari olsem, nogut tingting bilong mipela i paul na mipela i no save gut long wei bilong kamapim ol samting mipela laik kamapim. Ol i lukim olsem paul tingting na nogat save em i wanpela kain kalabus. Olsem na, ol save tok olsem, ol mas harim gut toktok bilong ol saveman na kisim save. Dispela em i rot bilong bihainim tru laik bilong ol na kamapim samting ol i laik kamapim bihain. [toktok, saveman, bihainim laik, tokaut, harim toktok, kisim save, Papua Niugini]

show abstract

Intersubjectivity, deception and the ‘opacity of other minds’: Perspectives from Highland New Guinea and beyond

Cited by 30 publications

References 14 publications

Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention

Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention

Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture

Can the subaltern listen? Self-determination and the provisioning of expertise in Papua New Guinea

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About