When I read some neuroscientists’ and cognitive scientists’ research, I find that I knew stuff I didn’t know I knew when I was little. “Folk psychology” and “folk physics,” for example. Although I don’t like the terms, preferring “innate” and “ a priori ” to “folk,” I understand why D. Dennett and others use them.* Supposedly, even babies can distinguish between “agents” and “non-agents,” the latter being nonliving entities like a rock. Agents can choose an action and purposefully cause something to happen. Non-agents are subject to physical forces in the absence of intention—a rock falling in a rockfall triggered by excessive rain.** With regard to folk psychology, a baby appears to be able to empathize and to read faces. With regard folk physics, it seems to know causal relationships among moving and stationary objects. Folk psych has many manifestations; folk physics seems to be generally just a matter of discerning Newtonian forces at work.
So, I guess I knew way back when that someone was upset or happy, my ability to read facial expressions somehow was part of my makeup, somehow was pre-formed in my mind. Of course, experience ultimately refined the ability to read others’ intentions and to understand dangers associated with physical entities acting under those Newtonian forces. But with regard to folk psychology, I’ve been in waiting rooms full of sick children and have heard other babies cry at the sound of crying. It might be a matter of survival: Hearing sounds associated with danger, the baby responds. Could be a cry for preventive help, a call to the mother.
That brings me to one of two questions. Given this inherent folk psychology that enables us to determine intention, do we as babies act intentionally or unintentionally to that sound of crying in a waiting room? If the latter, then aren’t we “non-agents”? So, I’ll answer. Both folk psych and physics look outward, not inward. They are “domains” of the mind that characterize how we characterize the world. My second question is one I believe I can answer, but I will need your help in doing so. (That’s just my way of saying, you’re going to have to think about this one on your own; it’s another point of departure) Here goes: Is there any significance to the finding that folk psychology and folk physics occur universally and show little cultural variability (see second footnote)?
I see significance in the finding: Barring some neurological dissociation like Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism that inhibits folk psychology—but not so much folk physics as evidenced by an autistic child’s fascination with certain objects or machines—all humans share two mind domains and that such commonality in infancy relates all of us until enculturation un-relates us.
Now, an anecdote to ponder: I asked a three-year-old verbal child, “Is a car alive?” The child responded affirmatively. When I asked why, the child said, “It moves.” So, what do you think? Do the domains sometimes get a bit mixed? Is that the reason we can be fooled by robots? And does our failure to perceive reveal that all of us have the potential to accept “false beliefs” that daily come our way through social media, urban legends, and stories of ancient aliens?***
Obviously to you, you, unlike so many around you, have “developed” abilities to understand agents and non-agents. You have surpassed the intuitive through learning. Of course, that doesn’t mean you still don’t mistake your reading of agents and non-agents. Another anecdote: A coed said after one of my lectures on stream development and topography, “My mother said that the Monongahela River runs backwards.” Immediately, I tried to picture the front and back of water, then responded, “I think she means that the Monongahela generally trends to the north like so many other rivers, including the famous Nile. But rivers flow downhill under the force of gravity. In some areas, such as the lower Mississippi, the push of water from behind can drive a stream up a gradient just as the swash of a wave climbs a beach, but rivers flow downhill. The Monongahela begins in the highlands of West Virginia and flows downhill to Pittsburgh, where it joins the Allegheny to make the Ohio and continue the trip to the Gulf of Mexico. By the way, I said, you can picture that if you think of the tallest building in Pittsburgh. Between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the water falls nearly the same vertical distance as that building is tall.”
She said, “I don’t care. That’s what my mother told me.”
How much has culture influenced your development of your initial intuitive psychology and physics? How has it shaped the way you view your world?
*Dennett, D., The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1987.
**Baron-Cohen, Simon, Sally Wheelwright, Amanda Spong, Victoria Scahill, and John Lawson, “Studies of Theory of Mind: Are Intuitive Physics and Intuitive Psychology Independent?” Online at http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2001_BCetal_kidseyes.pdfThe authors refer to folk psychology and physics as intuitive. And they write, “Agents have intentionality, whereas non-agents do not. This means that when agents and non-agents move, their motion has different causes (Csibra, Gergely, Biro, Koos & Brockbanck, 1999; Gelman & Hirschfield, 1994)” p. 48. “Dennett’s claim is that humans from infancy onwards use folk ( or intuitive )psychology to deduce the cause of an agent’s actions, and use folk ( or intuitive )physics to deduce the cause of a non-agent’s movement (Dennett, 1987)” p. 48).
The authors explain that both folk physics and folk psychology are proposed as core domains of human cognition that share seven features (according to Carey, 1985, and other authors). Both “1) are aspects of our causal cognition, 2) demonstrate precocity in human infancy, 3) are acquired or develop universally, 4) show little if any cultural variability, 5) have specific but universal ontogenesis, 6) are adaptive, and 7) may be open to neurological dissociation” (pp. 49, 50).
***Sorry to those of you who believe that the drawings on the Plain of Nazca were made to aid in landing ancient spacecraft. Did they land only in the daytime? Did they have the ability to cross light years of space without remembering to carry along their radar equipment or landing lights? And did none of them that built the pyramids in Central America, South America, or along the Nile ever produce machinery that had rust-proofing? Of course, one could argue that they took their machinery home after traveling trillions of miles just to pile up some rocks on Earth.
So, I guess I knew way back when that someone was upset or happy, my ability to read facial expressions somehow was part of my makeup, somehow was pre-formed in my mind. Of course, experience ultimately refined the ability to read others’ intentions and to understand dangers associated with physical entities acting under those Newtonian forces. But with regard to folk psychology, I’ve been in waiting rooms full of sick children and have heard other babies cry at the sound of crying. It might be a matter of survival: Hearing sounds associated with danger, the baby responds. Could be a cry for preventive help, a call to the mother.
That brings me to one of two questions. Given this inherent folk psychology that enables us to determine intention, do we as babies act intentionally or unintentionally to that sound of crying in a waiting room? If the latter, then aren’t we “non-agents”? So, I’ll answer. Both folk psych and physics look outward, not inward. They are “domains” of the mind that characterize how we characterize the world. My second question is one I believe I can answer, but I will need your help in doing so. (That’s just my way of saying, you’re going to have to think about this one on your own; it’s another point of departure) Here goes: Is there any significance to the finding that folk psychology and folk physics occur universally and show little cultural variability (see second footnote)?
I see significance in the finding: Barring some neurological dissociation like Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism that inhibits folk psychology—but not so much folk physics as evidenced by an autistic child’s fascination with certain objects or machines—all humans share two mind domains and that such commonality in infancy relates all of us until enculturation un-relates us.
Now, an anecdote to ponder: I asked a three-year-old verbal child, “Is a car alive?” The child responded affirmatively. When I asked why, the child said, “It moves.” So, what do you think? Do the domains sometimes get a bit mixed? Is that the reason we can be fooled by robots? And does our failure to perceive reveal that all of us have the potential to accept “false beliefs” that daily come our way through social media, urban legends, and stories of ancient aliens?***
Obviously to you, you, unlike so many around you, have “developed” abilities to understand agents and non-agents. You have surpassed the intuitive through learning. Of course, that doesn’t mean you still don’t mistake your reading of agents and non-agents. Another anecdote: A coed said after one of my lectures on stream development and topography, “My mother said that the Monongahela River runs backwards.” Immediately, I tried to picture the front and back of water, then responded, “I think she means that the Monongahela generally trends to the north like so many other rivers, including the famous Nile. But rivers flow downhill under the force of gravity. In some areas, such as the lower Mississippi, the push of water from behind can drive a stream up a gradient just as the swash of a wave climbs a beach, but rivers flow downhill. The Monongahela begins in the highlands of West Virginia and flows downhill to Pittsburgh, where it joins the Allegheny to make the Ohio and continue the trip to the Gulf of Mexico. By the way, I said, you can picture that if you think of the tallest building in Pittsburgh. Between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the water falls nearly the same vertical distance as that building is tall.”
She said, “I don’t care. That’s what my mother told me.”
How much has culture influenced your development of your initial intuitive psychology and physics? How has it shaped the way you view your world?
*Dennett, D., The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1987.
**Baron-Cohen, Simon, Sally Wheelwright, Amanda Spong, Victoria Scahill, and John Lawson, “Studies of Theory of Mind: Are Intuitive Physics and Intuitive Psychology Independent?” Online at http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2001_BCetal_kidseyes.pdfThe authors refer to folk psychology and physics as intuitive. And they write, “Agents have intentionality, whereas non-agents do not. This means that when agents and non-agents move, their motion has different causes (Csibra, Gergely, Biro, Koos & Brockbanck, 1999; Gelman & Hirschfield, 1994)” p. 48. “Dennett’s claim is that humans from infancy onwards use folk ( or intuitive )psychology to deduce the cause of an agent’s actions, and use folk ( or intuitive )physics to deduce the cause of a non-agent’s movement (Dennett, 1987)” p. 48).
The authors explain that both folk physics and folk psychology are proposed as core domains of human cognition that share seven features (according to Carey, 1985, and other authors). Both “1) are aspects of our causal cognition, 2) demonstrate precocity in human infancy, 3) are acquired or develop universally, 4) show little if any cultural variability, 5) have specific but universal ontogenesis, 6) are adaptive, and 7) may be open to neurological dissociation” (pp. 49, 50).
***Sorry to those of you who believe that the drawings on the Plain of Nazca were made to aid in landing ancient spacecraft. Did they land only in the daytime? Did they have the ability to cross light years of space without remembering to carry along their radar equipment or landing lights? And did none of them that built the pyramids in Central America, South America, or along the Nile ever produce machinery that had rust-proofing? Of course, one could argue that they took their machinery home after traveling trillions of miles just to pile up some rocks on Earth.
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