At the moment I am reading the book "The righteous mind" from Jonathan Haidt.
In chapter 9 "why are we so groupish" Jonathan discusses how "shared
intentionality" and a shared mental representation helped our ancestors to form
larger social groups and to move beyond the capabilities of our primate-like
cousins. Words would not only be a link between a sound and an object but first
of all an agreeenment among a group of people which sounds are linked to which
objects.This chapter reminded me of Nick's article 20 years ago that
"Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital". Would it make sense to say that
shared intentionality is the hallmark of (multicellular) life and collective
intelligence? This would fit to the thesis that the temples of the ancient
Greek and the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are fossil remains of the
phenotypes from ancient lifeforms. In my opinion the mental differs from the
material because we perceive the "mental" usually on the level of the genotype
but the "material" on the biological level of the phenotype. -J.
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