challenge
Explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of mindreading.
The challenge is to explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of mindreading.
Let me explain.
\textit{Mindreading} is
the process of
identifying mental states and purposive actions
as the mental states and purposive actions of a particular subject.
So, to be clear about the terminology, to have a theory of mind is just to be able to to mindread,
that is, to identify mental states and purposive actions
as the mental states and purposive actions of a particular subject.
So the challenge is to explain the emergence of mindreading.
You know (let's say) that Ayesha belives Beatrice is in the library.
Humans are not born knowing individuating facts about others' beliefs.
How do they come to be in a position to know such facts?
Meeting this challenge initially seems simple.
But, as you'll see, we quickly end up with a puzzle.
I think this puzzle requires us to rethink what is involved in having a conception of the mental.
Here's the really surprising thing.
Children do really badly on this until they are around four years of age.
And they seem to develop the ability to pass this task only gradually, over months or years.
(There's something else that isn't surprising to most people but should be: adult humans not only nearly always provide the answer we're calling 'correct': they also believe that there is an obviously correct answer and that it would be a mistake to give any other answer. I'll return to this point later.)
Wimmer & Perner 1983
(NB: The figure is not Wimmer & Perner's but drawn from their data.)
There's been some stuff in the press recently about bad science, mainly some dodgy methods and failures to replicate.
So you'll be pleased to know that a meta-study of 178 papers confirmed Wimmer & Perner's findings.
Wellman et al 2001, figure 2A
Now there is clearly some variation here.
That's because different researchers implemented different versions of the original task.
We can use the meta-analysis of these experiments as a shortcut to finding out what sorts of factors affect children's performance.
One factor that seems to make hardly any difference is whether you ask children about others' beliefs or their own beliefs.
To repeat, you get essentially the same results whether you ask children about others' beliefs or their own beliefs.
Children literally do not know their own minds.
Wellman et al 2001, figure 5
What happens if we involve the child by having her interact with the protagonist?
The task becomes easier for children of all ages, but the transition is essentially the same
(participation does not interact with age \citealp[pp.\ 665-7]{Wellman:2001lz}).
Wellman et al 2001, figure 6
Finally, although there are some cultural differences, you get the same transition in seven diferent countries.
Wellman et al 2001, figure 7
challenge
Explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of mindreading.
So our challenge was to explain the emergence of mindreading.
At this point, up until around, it seemed quite straightforward to most researchers.
We seemed to know that children are unaware of mental states until around four years.
And a lot of studies looked at which factors affect their acquiring this awareness.
These studies showed that executive function, language and rich forms of social interaction are all important.
All of this supported something like the story that Sellars tells in his famous Myth of Jones.