Social Situatedness of Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Vygotsky and Beyond

The concept of “social situatedness,” that is, the idea that the development of individual intelligence requires a social (and cultural) embedding, has recently received much attention in cognitive science and artificial intelligence research, in particular work on social or epigenetic robotics. The work of Lev Vygotsky, who put forward this view as early as the 1920s, has influenced the discussion to some degree but still remains far from well known. This article therefore is aimed at giving an overview of his cognitive development theory and a discussion of its relation to more recent work in primatology and socially situated artificial intelligence, in particular humanoid robotics.

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