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Knowledge of Objects

Origins of Mind : 05

s.butterfill & [email protected]

lecture(s)topic
01Methodological Foundations and the Philosophy of Cognitive Development
02Goal Tracking (& Mirror Neurons)
03 & 04Knowledge of Mind
05Physical Objects
06Is There a Role for Metacognitive Feelings in Development?
07Joint Action
08Nonverbal Communication
09Knowledge of Syntax (and Innateness)

question

The question for this course is ... We are going to approach this question by examining the evidence from developmental science, and identifying philosophical problems created by the evidence.

When do humans first come to know facts about the locations of objects they are not perceiving?

look: by 4 months of age or earlier (Baillargeon 1987).

look: by around 2.5 months of age or earlier(Aguiar & Baillargeon 1999, Experiment 2)

search: not until after 7 months of age (Shinskey & Munakata 2001)

‘action demands are not the only cause of failures on occlusion tasks’

Shinskey (2012, p. 291)

‘the tip of an iceberg’ Charles & Rivera (2009, p. 994)

Suppose we ask, When do humans first come to know facts about the locations of objects they are not perceiving? Some evidence points to an early age, perhaps 2.5 months or earlier. But other evidence points to a much later age, 7 months at the earliest.
You might think, this is just an issue about measuring age. But I want to argue that it points to a deeper problem. The problem is how to characterise the mental states and actions of typically developing infants in their first months of life, when they can perform some actions for the reason that there is an object behind a screen but when this ability is strictly limited.

Uncomplicated Account of Knowledge

For any given proposition [There’s a spider behind the book] and any given human [Wy] ...

1. Either Wy knows that there’s a spider behind the book, or she does not.

2. Either Wy can act for the reason that there is, or seems to be, a spider behind the book (where this is her reason for acting), or else she cannot.

3. The first alternatives of (1) and (2) are either both true or both false.

\subsection{Uncomplicated Account of Minds and Actions} For any given proposition [There’s a spider behind the book] and any given human [Wy] ... \item Either Wy knows that there’s a spider behind the book, or she does not. \item Either Wy can act for the reason that there is, or seems to be, a spider behind the book, or else she cannot. \item The first alternatives of (1) and (2) are either both true or both false.
If I’m right, we need to rethink fundamental claims about mental states. These are coded in the Uncomplicated Account of Minds and Actions.
But faced with this, we should try to hold on to the Uncomplicated Account for as long as possible. There are two ways to do this.
One possibility is to insist that infants, despite failures to search, really can have beliefs about, and knowlegde of, the locations of unseen objects. For all we have seen so far, it might be that this is right. Perhaps, for example, there is something especially tricky about searching. Or perhaps there are other studies which show, contra Shinskey and Munakata, that four months olds really can search for unperceived objects. This deserves careful investigation.
Another possibility is to insist that infants, despite apparently demonstrating intelligent responses to unperceived objects in their looking behaviours, just can’t ever act for the reason that there is an object behind a screen. Their responses are not really intelligent but driven by some more basic process.

Crude Picture of the Mind

  • epistemic
    (knowledge states)
  • broadly motoric
    (motor representations of outcomes and affordances)
  • broadly perceptual
    (visual, tactual, ... representations; object indexes ...)

lots of evidence

We’re going to consider lots of evidence. The gist will be that we cannot reject the idea that infants just can’t ever act for the reason that there is an object behind a screen.
As you’ll see, different researchers have quite different theories. Why? I could just tell you what I think the balance of scientific evidence allows us to conclude. But I want you to learn to evaluate the scientific evidence for yourself. More importantly, there is uncertainty about what the balance of scientific evidence allows us to conclude. If you look at the research carefully, I thin you’ll find that no one yet has a fully adequate answer to the question, When do humans first come to know facts about the locations of objects they are not perceiving? So this question presents a significant challenge for us.