Teleology

Abstract

A fundamental question in recent “theory of mind” research is how to interpret a seemingly robust dissociation between young children’s performance on different kinds of tests for false belief understanding. 3-year-olds’ poor performance on classical, “direct” false belief tasks is well-documented. Yet a range of “indirect” tests reveal sensitivity to agents’ false beliefs in much younger children. It is natural to think that the two kinds of tests bring to light two kinds of understanding: “explicit” vs. “implicit” understanding. But how should we understand this distinction? And why should “implicit” understanding of false beliefs only be available in connection with “indirect” tests? Our project in this chapter is to address these questions by further developing a hypothesis advanced elsewhere (Perner and Roessler, 2010). This is the hypothesis that young children are teleologists : they make sense of intentional actions in terms of justifying reasons provided by “worldly” facts (not by mental states). We begin by spelling out this account in more detail. We then argue that mastery of the concept of belief (or possession of an “explicit understanding” of belief) involves giving a twist to the teleological scheme of explanation. What is critical is the ability to engage in hypothetical or suppositional reasoning about justifying reasons. This account, we contend, is in competition with both a “theory theory” and a “simulation theory” of belief understanding (though it has some affi nities with certain versions of the latter). In the fi nal, fourth part of the chapter we bring the account to bear on the dissociation problem. The difference between “direct” and “indirect” tests, we argue, turns on whether successful performance requires understanding the normative underpinnings of the causal role of belief (as in direct tests) or merely requires a set of generalizations regarding the causes of behavior (as in indirect tests ).