Rule understanding, shared intentionality, and the evaluation by others

This project will investigate whether - and if so in which way - rule-understanding is dependent on processes of evaluation by others. After a preliminary clarification of various possible meanings of "rule-understanding" and "evaluation by others", we will focus our study on the empirical evidence that these concepts describe two closely related phenomena. This evidence comes from four different sources: (1) experiments suggesting that 2-year old children first show a distinctive emotional response of distress or satisfaction when replicating an activity modelled for them; (2) experiments indicating that an early awareness of normativity may be connected with the emergence of shared intentionality; (3) experiments suggesting that 2-year old children understand rules in conventional games and in pretend play in a context-relative way; and (4) evidence that children at this age have difficulties with processing conflicting rules, e.g. changing their behaviour in a dimensional change card sorting test (DCCS-Tests). Kagan claims that beginning at the age of 15-16 months children experience an obligation to implement the acts of a given model together with an awareness of their inability to perform the action, i.e., they learn to consider and to reflect on their performance capabilities by learning what it means to meet rules and instructions. The more recent experiments mentioned above - although in line with these findings - suggest the following more elaborate hypothesis which is reminiscent of Davidson`s idea of triangulation: infants become sensitive to evaluations by others when they begin to share intentions with them, and by using this sensitivity they can adopt a norm-guided behavior before they later on learn about rules in an explicit way. Our goal is to substantiate this hypothesis by focussing on two critical questions: (A) What is wrong with the standard view that children need to understand the normative content of rules in order to follow such rules? (B) What is right about the idea that grasping conventional rules in games may be the entrance door for children to the world of normativity at large? In addressing question (A), the leading idea will be that infants do not yet understand the normative content of rules when they become sensitive to evaluations by others or when they act in accordance to a shared intention. Our goal here is to argue that a positive answer to question (A) provides the best explanation for the experimental findings (1) and (2) above. In addressing question (B), our conjecture will be that pretend-play provides an ideal setting for children to learn the context-relativity of rules. We surmise that children do not have to master any higher-order rules when they begin to understand pretend-contexts at 1.5 years, and that this achievement is therefore different from success in a dimensional cardsorting task which children do not master until 3.5 years. We also want to show that grasping the conventional nature of pretend-play and the normativity inherent in such conventions may help children to realize later on that their peers are not unquestionable authorities. We hope to establish that this conjecture provides the best explanation for the experimental findings (3) and (4).

In this research project, we tried to answer basic philosophical questions concerning the foundations of our ability to follow rules and to understand normative relations in human societies. A social normative relation obtains when people should do something because it is obligatory according to a norm-giving power. This power can be some institution with norm-giving legitimacy or it can be the society as a whole. That I should stop at red, that I should grade examinations fairly, etc., are normative relations. What is problematic about these relation is the fact that normative reality is invisible, as John Searle says. One sees the traffic light and its red color, but one does not see that one should stop at red. Where does this invisible ontology come from, and how are children learning to understand such normative relations?The main result of our project is that two important distinctions need to be drawn when one considers the cognitive development of understanding social norms: First, one must distinguish an understanding of rational connections from an understanding of normative connections; and secondly, one must distinguish an understanding of what is imperative either on the basis of a teleological or on the basis of a mentalistic conception of action.In order to see the importance of the first distinction, it is helpful to consider a scenario that developmental psychologists use in testing the normative understanding of two- and three-year-old children. They explain to children a new game with a simple rule that children can easily grasp. Playing this game involves making a certain move that is arbitrarily called daxing. After children have learned to play the game, they are turned into observers and observe a puppet making a daxing-move while committing a severe breach of the daxing-rule. When children protest against the performance of the puppet, it seems that they understand that the puppet does something that should not be done. However, the question is whether these children thereby already manifest a normative understanding, or whether they merely imitate the role of a referee without really understanding what this role is.In order to shed further light on this question, it is necessary to examine more closely how children at this age understand human actions. Here the distinction between a teleological and a mentalistic action understanding becomes critical. Teleologists understand that an agent does something because it should be done, taking this should to be an objective necessity rather than ensuing from a social norm. Thus a child may understand that it should stay away from a lion because lions are dangerous. Children with some practical rationality understand such teleological connections. Something else is required for understanding social normativity, because social norms are tied to the intentions of members in a society. To cross at red is not dangerous for the same reason as it is dangerous to caress a lion. It is dangerous because motorists expect from a pedestrian that he does not cross at red and therefore will not stop at the traffic light. In order to understand that a certain behavior depends on expectations, one must know what expectations are, and one must interpret actions as reasonable or unreasonable in light of the mental attitudes of the agent.These considerations lead to the following conclusion: Protesting against a certain behavior is by itself not a sufficient indicator of normative understanding. Children gradually practice such understanding only when they understand that others may do things intentionally contrary to what they are expected to do, contrary to a certain rule, or contrary to their own claim how they want to act. They have to understand that others intentionally want to break a rule or violate a certain expectation. Understanding intentions specifically understanding intentions to satisfy a certain expectation or rule is the foundation for understanding normative relations. It is also on this basis that children learn to consciously follow rules, or to consciously break them.