Structure and development of understanding action and reason

This project aims at a comprehensive theory of the structure and development of how humans, in particular children, understand the actions and reasons of others. To this end, three subprojects are interlocked in order to conceptually develop and empirically test a theoretical framework in one and the same collaborative project. (1) Philosophical investigations of a naturalistic non-psychologistic conception of a reason for action serve as the theoretical foundation (Hanjo Glock, University Zürich). In the teleological theory actions can be explained in terms of objective and subjective reasons. Objective reasons are facts: the fact that the chocolate is in the drawer gives Max, who knows that and wants to eat chocolate, an objective reason to go to the drawer. Subjective reasons are facts as they are conceived by the agent: Maxs belief that the chocolate is in the drawer, still gives him a subjective reason to go to the drawer, even if the chocolate had been removed meanwhile. (2) Tobias Schlicht (University Bochum) and Josef Perner (University Salzburg) investigate a layered teleological framework for describing how children develop an understanding of others reasons for acting. In a series of eye tracking experiments basic assumptions of the model are tested: (a) 6-12 months old infants understand goal-directed actions of others as regularities, lacking sensitivity to reasons. Given this assumption children should expect agents to do what they usually do. (b) 18 months old children acquire a teleological understanding of actions based on evaluations of the desirability of goals. Given this assumption, children should expect agents to do, what they should do in order to bring about a desirable goal. (c) 4 year old children understand that intentional actions can be motivated by subjective reasons and therefore should expect agents to act on the basis of subjective reasons. (3) Albert Newen (Universtiy Bochum) and Josef Perner (University Salzburg) work on a philosophical formulation as well as an empirical test of a cognitive architecture based on the notion of mental files which is applied to the development of understanding beliefs and reasons. Mental files theory tells us how knowledge about the world and others is represented and organized and explains the developmental paradox that infants from 7-15 months seem to be able to pass implicit false-belief tasks but can only pass explicit tasks at the age of 4 years. This ambitious project makes substantial and original contributions to central debates in the philosophy of mind and action and the cognitive science of social cognition. To pursue this project, experts from three countries collaborate closely in this unique interdisciplinary constellation which promises to yield a comprehensive, conceptually sound, and empirically supported theory of the structure and development of understanding actions and reasons, opening further empirical investigations in this area.

We elaborate and test a new teleological model of folk psychology to replace the dominant "theory of mind" approach. Whereas the theory approach explains action by lawful generalisations involving subjective mental states, teleology takes objective facts to provide reasons for acting. We investigated two developments, where the theories make different predictions: (i) Theory of mind explains behaviour on the basis of what people want to achieve (goal) and which action they think brings about this goal (instrumental action) free of values. Whether a person's goal is desirable or not, does not figure. In contrast, for teleology the goal has to be desirable (good) or else it would not be a good reason to work for. To note, if it is considered desirable, it also provides reasons to help achieve it. Infants spontaneously offer help around 18 months and, consequently, should recognize desirability of goals at this age. Infants observed a seemingly intentionally acting ball and a mechanically rolling ball end up in different locations. Older infants should find the intentional agent's end point more interesting because there ought to be an interesting reason for that ball to have gone there. Teleology expects this to happen around 18 months; theory of mind expects no such caesura. Our test proved unsatisfactory and remains under construction. We succeeded in discrediting interpretations of existing findings implying earlier appreciation of the goodness of goals. (ii) The mental states, wanting and thinking, brought into play by theory of mind are conceived as completely individualistic and subjective, and need not be shared by others. Teleology sees infants as teleologists who operate with objective reasons of a shared world. Only when boosted with the ability to represent diverging perspectives can they use teleology within different perspectives (teleology-in-perspective). This implies, contrary to theory of mind, a particular age, at which children can understand subjective preferences and beliefs together with other forms of perspective taking, e.g., identity information. This happens around 4 years. For a firmer grasp of what constitutes a perspective we use mental files theory. Each mental file represents a particular object or person. Two files for the same object (coreferential files) present different perspectives on the object. For instance, reference to a person under different names, "the teacher" and "Susie's mother," creates two coreferential files. When told that 'Susie's mother is the teacher' (identity statement) young children are at a loss before they understand mistaken views (false beliefs), where coreferential files are needed for encoding the divergent views. We could confirm this connection, show that children's difficulty is not tied to the linguistic expression of identity, and clarify the conditions under which coreferential files are being deployed.