Caring About Other Minds

(Note: This post is a corrected version of the original text which somehow was first released while still in draft form.)

One of the puzzles I find in much scholarly writing is the tendency to attribute extraordinary, technical, and scientific thought to ordinary people. Since a scientific method is a very recent and novel appearance in human history I tend reflexively to dismiss proposals that assume some general way of thinking that ahppens to match contemporary scientific philosophy.

For example, it is very common these days for discussions of the prerequisites of language to include a “theory of other minds,” recognizing that other people have minds of their own. Most cultures, however, have no theory of mind—making no distinction between body and mind, reality and perception, fact and opinion—and they certainly lack a technical notion of a mind as the brain’s operations as experienced by oneself. But if we don’t get too literal about it and simply speak of recognizing differences in particular contexts, the matter seems plain enough.We recognize different points of view, a task easy enough to be found in many other species. Chimpanzees and other primates have been observed many times hiding things and information from their fellows.

The “theory of mind” entered psychology of language studies via the study of autism. The classic study was reported in a 1989 paper by Simon Baron-Cohen with the wonderful title, “Are Autistic Children ‘Behaviorists’?” (abstract here). It found that while non-autistic children, even mentally retarded ones are aware of their thinking processes and can take their own mental state into account, autistic children cannot do these things.

Autistic children are also distinguished by serious difficulties with both language and joint attention, so inevitably people suspected that all these traits were linked to the other two. This idea was developed further in a volume Baron-Cohen edited, Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Autism (Oxford University Press, 1994) which argued that children typically between ages two and four, develop a “theory of other minds” that lets them take the perspective of others.

During the 1990s there was a rapid expansion of inquiry into the issue of other minds and well before 2007 it had become common to say that by age four children had a “representational” theory of other minds, meaning that by age four children are aware of the fact that different people think differently about the same thing. How could they not, one wonders since differences in taste, plans, and attitudes are all around them.

Much interesting and diverse work has emerged from all this. For example, some research suggests that an understanding of other’s minds depends on an earlier capacity to share one another’s emotional experiences, as when mother and child are laughing together (e.g. Lisbeth Nielsen, “The Simulation of Emotion Experience: On the Emotional Foundation of Theory of Mind”). That work also suggests an answer to the how someone might not notice there are other points of view. They might not bother to notice. Apes are smart enough to hide information from others in their society, but they have no interest in one another’s tastes or plans. Speech serves human communities; it is irrelevant to primate societies.

These points are, of course, of strong interest to anybody who takes seriously the link between speech and attention. This blog has often proposed that speech is an expansion of joint attention and that it depends on an attention triplet of speaker, listener, and topic. So, of course, this blog will take note of a theory that says speech depends on an understanding that arises from the emotional experience of joint attention.

Awareness of different perspectives also suggests how speakers select something to say. If an infinite number of sentences are available, we need a strong selection process to produce the one that is most appropriate to the occasion. It would certainly help if, along with a vocabulary and knowledge of syntax, the speaker had an idea about what to say (knowledge of own mind) and an idea about how to make that clear and acceptable (knowledge of other perspectives).

The attention triplet reflects the interaction of two people aware of each other's different perspectives. This view suggests a way of looking more deeply at the interactions of speech. An exchange mentioned before on this blog comes from research by David Rose mentioned before on this blog (here, here, here, and here). It reports a conversation by Australian natives, members of the Pitjantjatjara group.

MOTHER: Perhaps in the morning we can gather honey ants, shall we? (The mother knows what she wants to do, but takes into account the sensibilities of her audience, by raising the possibility and asking for responses.)

SON: Yes, definitely! (Note how quickly speech can bring people into harmony on a basic plan.)

MOTHER: Tomorrow morning in the daylight, we can go gathering, and we’ll show the children how to do it too. (Only after her son’s affirmative reply does the mother state her full plan, gathering and teaching. The mother may know her son has his own ways and self-respect, but she is not a mind reader. So she waits for him to reveal where he stands.)

The speech continues as they work out a mild disagreement over which direction to go searching. An exchange like this one is so basic that it forces attention to the puzzle of why chimpanzees don’t speak. They go hunting for ants too, and they often use tools while they are at it.

But immediately an answer suggests itself. Chimpanzees gather ants, but they do not do it as a community. It is possible that as chimpanzees sit in the dark each one imagines something of the next day and arises from the nest with a plan of action, but they don’t discuss their plans. The do as they please, within the limits of what the dominants will let them get away with. They don’t care what the others do, and they certainly don’t care what the others think.

An exchange of words like the one quoted sounds very foreign because of the plan’s specifics. Going to gather and eat honey ants likely seems unappealing. But the rest of the interaction is perfectly recognizable and human. All of us have said Perhaps in the morning we can _____ and worked out plans for the next day. And there is another detail in this exchange that I love. The mother’s plan includes and we’ll show the children how to do it too.

To be part of a human community it is not nearly enough to have a theory of another mind. You have to respect the other minds and even want both to learn from and teach them.

Comments

[Curtis Maybin]

V ery interesting

Thanks

Curtis Maybin