Social Cognition in the Emergence of Comprehension

I wrote this essay as a midterm assignment in class for the PHIL408 Philosophy of Mind II course I took during the Spring 2022 semester, as a follow-up of the previous semester’s PHIL407. We had been discussing the ideas of Dennett, Frith and Gallese among many on cognition and social cognition, embodied simulation and comprehension out of competence. Because it was an in-class midterm and we had limited time (2 hours), our professor had spared us from the obligation of citing our sources explicitly, which is why there are not any in the below text aside from one place (and that is more a name-dropping than a proper citation). I can only state this is absolutely not a presentation of my ideas but of the scientists and philosophers I mentioned earlier, but in my own comprehension and words, with my own examples to the best of my knowledge.

Question: Let us assume that we want to develop an account of the evolution of comprehension out of competence. Let us also assume that we develop this account along the lines of evolutionary psychology and natural selection. Please elaborate on the role of social cognition in the emergence of comprehension. If possible, please also substantiate your explanation with an example (an example that is developed by yourself).

How could a neuroscientific theory of social cognition (in terms of brain studies) support the abovementioned explanation?

The framework we wish to form starts as follows: Organisms lack certain skills that are essential for their survival and are constantly subjected to tests of their competence through the dangers or problems imposed by natural selection. The mechanism of natural selection pushes the organisms towards overcoming this incompetence, otherwise, the species fails to procreate and pass on its genes.¹

The natural selection process does not necessarily constrain the solution to this incompetence other than with the expected ones, such as the environmental resources, so we can classify these solutions broadly into two categories: Firstly, a species may develop a solution per member, let’s call this kind of competence as solitary competence. For example, say an ant species lives in an environment where all the food sources are high above the ground. This might push that species of ants to develop adhesive legs so that they might climb onto steep surfaces. The ants that develop this climbing ability survive, and those that don’t likely die out, leaving that species of ants to remain with the ability to climb for future generations to come. The ants by themselves become competent and the species survives in that environment, but the members of the species are solitarily competent. The alternative is where the species develops a solution not per member but groups. In this case a single member of the organism remains incompetent but develops skills to organize and communicate with other members of the same species so that they might combine their capabilities to overcome a common problem. Let’s call this kind of competence as collaborative competence. On the same line as the previous example, if a species of ants is located in an extremely rainy region, they might develop the ability to come together to form a raft upon heavy rainfall. Notice how in both cases some ants may be, directly or indirectly/effectively, sacrificed for the benefit or the (future) well-being of the group. This, however, is not a problem for natural selection or evolution as they are factors that favour the survival of a species (hence the group or the larger population) over that of a single member.

The collaborative competence requires the members of a society to communicate to one another, in one way or the other. The members must be able to assess another member’s state and actions so that they can repurpose themselves and even communicate to the others how other members might repurpose themselves in response to the environment. This assessment can stem from communication, as in each member declaring their state to one another and others decoding this message, or be rooted in perception, where each member can evaluate what another member’s state is by the physical properties they perceive. In either case, some comprehension can be said to arise. Each member develops the capability to form a representation of other members with questionable or variable accuracy and use this representation to take action to manipulate the environment or its own state of being, to face whatever danger natural selection may pose as a group. Therefore, the reliability of the total sum of this communication becomes the criterion for survival: The more reliable the communication, the better the group adapts to the environment and solves their problems.

It is important to notice how the second mode of communication mentioned above has an involuntary component. Others perceive the physical marks of their state not through messages that they construct. So, the members may come to manipulate their would-be-perceived physical properties and actions to appear competent or apt to the current situation as required by the group whereas it is not the case, which leads to a sense of self, a representation of their own state within themselves.² This is another response to a newly formed pressure of natural selection: The survival of the member in this setting relies on not actually being competent in face of external danger but on being included in the collaboratively competent group. This hidden incompetence inevitably makes the whole group weaker, creating yet another pressure of natural selection: The members are pushed towards assessing the reliability of the communication taking place to fish out the imposters for their collaborative survival strategy to work. As another example, let’s take a pack of wolves. Individual wolves are not competent enough to hunt a bison, so they hunt in packs. Each wolf does not need to be strong enough to kill the bison single-handedly but be open to communicating the hunting strategy and responding to how others are acting in the hunt to know where to run, when to bite, and when to evade the prey. Then, the incompetent or older members of the pack might come to mimic competence by embossing their fur or growling when they are threatened by others, in hopes of appearing stronger. This way they might come to survive just a little longer through deception. Inevitably, however, this cover is blown, and they are either eliminated by the pack or excommunicated, dying in either case.

To summarize the account this far: The members of a species developing collaborative competence are forced to (1) form a mode of communication and be able to assess the other member’s states of being, (2) appear competent to be included in the collaborative survival strategy, and (3) assess the judge the reliability of communication to fish out imposters. This new setting can bring about a whole new set of problematic situations, such as an incompetent member somehow “blaming” another for incompetence to continually survive, but I will leave it at this point as I believe this is sufficiently illustrative of how comprehension may come to arise out of (lack of) competence. The members develop (perhaps mental) representations of other’s and their own state, original and as externally perceived. They interpret messages formed in what one may call a (pseudo-)language and actions to decide which action they are to take and which members of the group are reliable for survival. The upshot of this setting is that they develop what may be called social cognition.

Before coming to a neuroscientific account of social cognition, I would like to make a quick tangent regarding the constraints imposed by natural selection. Whatever the problem is, evolution is bound to favour solution that are the most economic. Solutions relying on careless or excessive use of whatever resource available may come to fail under straining circumstances, and inevitably the organisms are pushed towards using less resources and still managing to survive. A typical example of this can be found in the Cambrian explosion. The excessive amount of oxygen in the atmosphere allowed the development of large organisms, such as dragonflies. As the oxygen levels receded over time, these dragonflies were forced to grow smaller and smaller to survive in this newly-developed environment with scarce oxygen levels.

The ability to represent the states of other members of a social group is no exception to this tight belt solution requirement. A most efficient way³ of developing a representation of other members, what they are doing and what their states are, would be making use of the already existing mechanisms of bodily control to internally simulate the perceived behaviour without actually committing it. This brings us to the mirror neuron system. Neuroscientific data shows that in macaques, a significant portion of the neural circuitry involved in the individual’s actions and control are also active when the individual is only perceiving the relevant action. This activation further completes occluded actions as well with predictions by incorporating different sense data: A hand reaching to a hidden peanut behind a veil and breaking it there not only elucidates a sensory-motor response corresponding to a hand reaching to an arbitrary object, but also a response that corresponds to breaking and eating the nut when there is no visual data regarding the breaking and eating of the peanut. The auditory input completes the incomplete representation started by the incomplete visual data of a hand reaching an unspecified object, by triggering a forecasting mechanism based on what the observer would to in such a situation and further supporting it with the auditory data.

These findings point towards an explanation of the social cognition framework developed above through embodied simulation, as Gallese calls it. We do not follow syntactic rules to make sense of the world and, more specifically, agents similar to ourselves around us. So, this narrative in our minds does not follow an if-this-then-that structure as in propositional calculus (“If a subject similar to me reaches to an unspecified object and a breaking sound akin to a peanut’s is heard, that subject is likely eating a peanut”), but follows a partial non-procedural simulation of what we would do under similar circumstances. This process is dynamic and feeds on different sensory data, which are fused on-the-run to steer the prediction of what other’s states are based on our own model of self, which we assume fits other members as well. This can further be formulated in a Bayesian setting, the brain making predictions and forming representation based on reverting the data generation process of our actions to form representations of the observed actions based on observed data (not necessarily generated through the assumed data generation model or in compliance with the likelihood function assumed).

In the end, we seem to make use of the same neural mechanisms that plan and are in control of our actions and states in estimating the actions and states of other members of the society, which is an economic use of the resources in solving the representational and assessment problem of others. Considering the scarcity of available resources that persistently constrains the human evolution, including the bodily ones such as the of number of cells and synaptic connections that can be sustained, and the fact that we have apparently developed the end result of the social cognition account presented above, seem to validate the use of mirror neurons and the neuroscience accompanying as a ground for the social cognition account developed.

Notes

1. In this regard, we can take the genes to be the subject of natural selection, but that is not relevant at this point. Back up.
2. While I talk of the emergence of a sense of self only when the member is deceptive, it need not be the case. A suitable member is also obliged to accurately show its competence in relevant respects to be included in the collaborative survival strategy. I do not delve on the development of self, but focus on social cognition in the rest of the essay. Back up.
3. To me, at least. Back up.