Know Thyself by Stephen M Fleming

Author:Stephen M Fleming [M. Fleming, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

8

COLLABORATING AND SHARING

Consciousness is actually nothing but a network of connections between man and man—only as such did it have to develop: a reclusive or predatory man would not have needed it.

—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Joyous Science

The increasing specialization of human knowledge means that an ability to work together on a global scale has never been more important. It’s rare for one individual to have all the expertise needed to build a plane, treat a patient, or run a business. Instead, humans have succeeded in all these endeavors largely thanks to an ability to collaborate, sharing information and expertise as and when required. This ability to share and coordinate with others requires us to keep track of who knows what. For instance, when my wife and I go on vacation, I know that she will know where to look for the sunscreen. Conversely, she knows that I will know where to find the beach towels.

We have already seen that many animals have an ability for implicit metacognition. But it seems likely that only humans have an ability for explicitly representing the contents of the minds of ourselves and others. This capacity for self-awareness mutually reinforces the usefulness of language. Our linguistic abilities are clearly central to our ability to collaborate and share ideas. But language is not enough. Human language would be no more than an elaborate version of primitive alarm calls were it not for our ability to broadcast and share our thoughts and feelings. Monkeys use a set of calls and gestures to share information about what is going on in the world, such as the location of food sources and predators. But they do not, as far as we know, use their primitive language to communicate mental states, such as the fact that they are feeling fearful or anxious about a predator. No matter how baroque or complex linguistic competence becomes, without self-awareness we cannot use it to tell each other what we are thinking or feeling.1

The central role of self-awareness in working with others has a downside, though. It means that effective collaboration often depends on effective metacognition, and, as we have seen, there are many reasons why metacognition may fail. Subtle shifts in self-awareness then become significant when magnified at the level of groups and societies. In this chapter, we will see how metacognition plays a pivotal role in our capacity to coordinate and collaborate with others in fields as diverse as sports, law, and science—and see how the science of self-awareness can supercharge the next wave of human ingenuity.

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