[Xmca-l] Re: Dynamics of Developmental Change

[Martin John Packer]

Huw,

I was assuming that a mind, if it exists, is 'interior.' 

If I lack a faculty that I have the potential to acquire, then I would say that I have the potential, but not the faculty. So an infant may have the potential for theory of mind (if we assume that this is how adults understand other people, which is open to question), but not this particular faculty. Am I missing something?

Martin

On Sep 11, 2015, at 9:09 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:

> Martin,
> 
> What does it mean to state that a developmental being lacks some faculty
> that is potentially available to them?  It seems to me it either means that
> this faculty lacks sophistication (and that it is then technically
> incorrect to say that they lack the faculty per se) or that the claimant is
> making a logical fallacy by applying idioms of formal logic to a genetic or
> developmental domain.
> 
> Why should a nascent, genetically conceived ToM be something that is
> interior?
> 
> Best,
> Huw
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 11 September 2015 at 14:20, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> wrote:
> 
>> David, Carol,
>> 
>> Why not attribute a theory of mind to infants?
>> 
>> First, because it seems extraordinary to suggest that infants are capable
>> of forming theories. Piaget certainly never suggested that sensorimotor
>> intelligence involved the forming of theories. Vygotsky argued that infants
>> are incapable of verbal thinking, which would also seem to rule out the
>> ability to form theories.
>> 
>> Second, because there is no reason to think that infants know anything at
>> all about mental states such as beliefs and desires. Piaget didn't
>> attribute such knowledge to infants. Vygotsky argued that children are not
>> aware of their own 'interiority' until around school age, and if this is
>> the case it is hard to see how they could know about the interiority of
>> other people.
>> 
>> Third, the researcher responsible for identifying the phenomena of primary
>> intersubjectivity, Colwyn Trevarthen, does not explain it in terms of
>> theory of mind.
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> 
>>