276 HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
routes to it (strategies and “maps”), agreements about divisions of labor,
signals for monitoring and modulating pro gress, and the use of a unique
language. Just think of helping someone lift a long table through several
doorways, or a wardrobe downstairs: a cascade of cognitions through
a mutual attractor landscape ensues— rules and conventions we tend to
take for granted.
Other regulations emerge in the fashioning of shared mechanical de-
vices and artifacts. Th ese range from simple stone tools and shelters to
emergent technologies, all literally designed with others in mind. Th e
critical design of a wrench is not merely matched to a hand. It derives
from an abstract statistical structure of its use— that is, an attractor
basin— shared in the mind of the designer.
Th e self- organ ization of larger co ali tions of humans has also emerged
in the form of highly structured institutions. Th ey issue overtly stated, or
legalized, obligations and conventions, as in marriage rules, kinship
identities, asset owner ship conventions, and so on. Th ese defi ne and
legitimize more explic itly what is expected of individuals, oft en in stated
laws, shaping cognitions in the pro cess.
Human language, with its complex structure, unique productivity, and
speed of transmission, evolved specifi cally for coordinating social coop-
eration. And, as mentioned above, other sets of rules (contrived attractor
basins, as in a square dance) are devised for simply celebrating and en-
joying expressions of synthetic structure. All these forms of regulation
shape and cement cooperative social relationships, most of which can
vary radically from group to group or place to place. But their detailed
cognitive structure, even as used by young children, is almost incredibly
complex.
Vygotsky referred to these rules and devices (or, as we would now say,
shared attractors) as “cultural tools.” Th ey all refl ect a depth and detail
of informational structure not experienced in, or demanded of, previous
species. But they also become internalized as psychological tools. It is
through them that individuals think and act. Accordingly, the cognition
of individuals becomes fashioned by its sociocultural tools, just as the
activities of single neurons are fashioned by the global activity of their
networks or as the be hav ior of ants is fashioned— albeit in a much more
restricted sense—by the emergent dynamics of the collective.
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