On the psychological origins of tool use

Abstract

The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans’ engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined—(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes are involved in tool use? (3) Which of these psychological processes are specific to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are specific to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a—perhaps surprising—degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own.

The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories

“…+F 25,2 6 Understand technologies Technical efficiency evaluator (Technical reasoning) (Mangalam et al, 2021;Osiurak & Reynaud, 2019;Stout, 2021;Vaesen, 2012) Gadgets, Magical wands, Futuristic objects +O (Piech et al, 2010;Teichroeb & Chapman, 2014) Delicious food, Banquet (Scalise Sugiyama, 2001a)…”