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Article 5354 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: harnad@shine.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Subject: Theory of Mind: BBS Call for Commentators
Message-ID: <1992May1.040652.10682@Princeton.EDU>
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Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Keywords: cognitive development, folk psychology, functionalism
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Date: Fri, 1 May 1992 04:06:52 GMT
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Below are the abstracts of 2 related target articles on child and
adult theory of mind, one by a developmental psychologist, Alison
Gopnik, and one by a philosopher, Alvin Goldman. They will appear
jointly in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international,
interdisciplinary journal offering Open Peer Commentary on important
and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive
sciences.

Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator on one or both of these
articles, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information
about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to:

harnad@clarity.princeton.edu  or harnad@pucc.bitnet        or write to:
BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542  [tel: 609-921-7771]

Commentators may comment on one or both papers. The length limit for a
commentary on one paper is 1000 words; for a joint commentary on both,
it is 1750 words (only one commentary can be submitted).

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic(s) on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator,
specifying which article(s) you would wish to comment on. Electronic
drafts of the full text of each article are available for inspection by
anonymous ftp according to instructions that follow below the
abstracts. These drafts are for inspection only; please do not prepare
a commentary until you are formally invited to do so.

(1)      HOW WE KNOW OUR MINDS: THE ILLUSION OF FIRST-PERSON
                                KNOWLEDGE OF INTENTIONALITY

         Alison Gopnik
         Dept. of Psychology
         University of California at Berkeley

KEYWORDS: children, cognitive development, consciousness, epistemology,
folk psychology, functionalism, incorrigibility, intentionality,
theory-of-mind, metacognition, perception.

ABSTRACT: As adults we believe that our knowledge of our own
psychological states is substantially different from our knowledge of
the psychological states of others, first-person knowledge coming
directly from experience, but third-person knowledge involving
inference. Developmental evidence suggests otherwise. Many
three-year-old children are consistently wrong in reporting some of
their own immediately past psychological states. They have similar
difficulties reporting the psychological states of others. At about age
4 an important developmental shift to a representational model of the
mind affects children's understanding of their own minds as well as
those of the minds of others. Our sense that our perception of our own
minds is direct may be analogous to many cases where expertise provides
an illusion of direct perception. These empirical findings have
important implications for cognitive science.


(2)      THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY

         Alvin I. Goldman
         Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona
         Tucson, AZ 85721
         Electronic Mail: goldman@ccit.arizona.edu

KEYWORDS: folk psychology, functionalism, introspection, mental
concepts, propositional attitudes, self-attribution of mental
states, sensations, theory of mind

ABSTRACT: Folk psychology, the naive understanding of mental state
concepts, requires a model of how people ascribe mental states to
themselves. Competent speakers associate a distinctive memory
representation (a category representation, CR) with each mentalistic
word in their lexicon. A decision to ascribe such a word to oneself
depends on matching to the CR an instance representation (IR) of one's
current state. As in visual object recognition, evidence about a CR's
content includes the IRs that are or are not available to trigger a
match. This framework reveals serious problems for functionalism, the
theory-of-mind approach to the meaning of mental terms. A simple
functionalist model is inadequate because it (1) requires relational
and subjunctive information (concerning what would have happened) that
is not generally available; it (2) could lead to combinatorial
explosion. A modified functionalist model can appeal to qualitative
(phenomenological) properties, but the earlier problems still reappear.
Qualitative properties provide a simpler model that need not refer to
functional (causal-relational) properties at all. Qualitative
properties are important for sensations, propositional attitudes, and
their contents. The introspectionist character of the proposed model
does not imply that ascribing mental states to oneself is infallible or
complete; nor is the model refuted by empirical research on
introspective reports. Empirical research on 'theory of mind' does not
support any strict version of functionalism, but only an understanding
of mentalistic words that may rest on phenomenological or experiential
qualities.

--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
these articles, electronic drafts of both are retrievable by anonymous
ftp from princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the
filenames are bbs.gopnik and bbs.goldman). Please do not prepare a
commentary on these drafts. Just let us know, after having inspected
them what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what
aspect of each article.
---------------------------------------------------------------
   To retrieve a file by ftp from a Unix/Internet site, type either:
ftp princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   For your password, type:
your-own-login-name@your-system's-name
   (make sure the "@" sign gets through, it's important!)
   then change directories with:
cd pub/harnad
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.gopnik
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

JANET users can use the Internet file transfer utility at JANET node
UK.AC.FT-RELAY to get BBS files. Use standard file transfer, setting
the site to be UK.AC.FT-RELAY, the userid as anonymous@edu.princeton,
the password as your own userid, and the remote filename to be the
filename according to Unix conventions (e.g. pub/harnad/bbs.goldman).
Lower case should be used where indicated, using quotes if necessary to
avoid automatic translation into upper case.

---------------------------------------------------------------
        The above cannot be done form Bitnet directly, but there
        is a fileserver called bitftp@pucc.bitnet that will do
        it for you. Send it the one line message
help
        for instructions (which will be similar to the above,
        but will be in the form of a series of lines in an
        email message that bitftp will then execute for you).

-- 
Stevan Harnad  Department of Psychology  Princeton University
harnad@clarity.princeton.edu / harnad@pucc.bitnet / srh@flash.bellcore.com 
harnad@learning.siemens.com / harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu / (609)-921-7771


