The Evolution of Human Causal Cognition

Abstract This chapter presents an overview of casual cognition from evolutionary and archaeological perspectives. A comparison between humans and non-human primates suggests that human causal cognition is based on reasoning about the underlying forces that are involved in phenomena, while other primates hardly understand external forces. We illustrate this by an analysis of the causal cognition required for early hominin tool use. Causal cognition about forces does not only concern physical forces, but Theory of Mind is also an integral element of such cognition in humans. The desires, intentions, and beliefs of others function as social causal variables, so that the evolution of human causal cognition depends more and more on representations of mental variables. Another distinguishing aspect is that humans often think about causality in terms of events. Unlike other models in philosophy and psychology where causality is seen as a relation between events, the account of events presented here moves causality inside events in the sense that an event is modeled as containing two entities representing a cause as well as a result. The chapter ends with a presentation of two models of causal reasoning that are particularly relevant for cognitive archaeology: Woodward’s three-tier model and our seven-grade model.