Quote:
Originally Posted by tirsales
This one 
I havent read it (so far). |
yes, I was referring to
"The Human Story" by Robin Dunbar (subtitle: a new history of mankind's evolution).
Having found it on my shelves, a short quote (short since I've got to type it in....)
Quote:
Conventional wisdom suggests that adult humans have an absolute upper limit on the levels of intentionality that they can cope with at about five or six orders:
Peter believes (1) that Jane thinks (2) that Sally wants (3) Peter to suppose (4) that Jane intends (5) Sally to believe (6) that her ball is under the cushion.
If your mind has just been turned inside-out by this sentence, it is not too surprising: few adult humans can keep who's thinking what here straight because, in the limit, there are too many orders of intentionality (marked out by the numbered verbs in italics) for us to keep track of. Most everyday situatons probably require no more than second-order intentionality and, in actual practice, the limit for most people is probably about fourth or fifth order.
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(He goes on to talk about the benefits of supporting higher order intentionality, including that (good) writers need to have one higher order than their readers....)
There's actually a lot more in the book, including talking about culture and religion.
EDIT ADDITION:
This review seems pretty fair to me and covers much of what the book talks about.