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ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY
HUMANIST GALAXY OF
SECULAR SCIENCE STARS
ALISON GOPNIK
September 15, 2020
Book #2
THE PHILOSOPHICAL BABY:
What children's minds tell us about
truth, love, and the meaning of life
by Alison Gopnik.
Picador, 2010 (304 pages)
BOOK OUTLINE
note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages
INTRODUCTION (pages 3-18)
[1] How Children Change the World (pages 6-9)
note = “There is one big, general idea behind all the specific experiments and arguments in this book. More than any other creature, human beings are able to change. We change the world around us, other people, and ourselves.”
[2] How Childhood Changes the World (pages 10-15)
note = “An animal that depends on the accumulated knowledge of past generations has to have some time to acquire that knowledge. An animal that depends on imagination has to have some time to exercise it. Children are protected from the usual exigencies of adult life [so they can prepare]... All they need to do is learn.” (pages 10-11)
[3] A Road Map (pages 15-18)
1) POSSIBLE WORLDS — Why do children pretend? (pages 19-)
[1] THE POWER OF COUNTERFACTUALS (pages 21-23)
[2] COUNTERFACTUALS IN CHILDREN — Planning the future (pages 23-25)
[3] RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST (pages 26-27)
[4] IMAGINING THE POSSIBLE (pages 27-31)
[5] IMAGINATION AND CAUSATION (pages 31-34)
note = “Once you know how one thing is causally connected to another you can predict what will happen to one thing if you act to change another — you can see what a difference making things different will make (page 31)
note = Causal understanding lets you deliberately do things that will change the world in a particular way. We might simply have had the ability to track the world as it unfolded around us. But, in fact, we have the ability to intervene in the world, as well, to actually make things happen. (page 32)
Intervening deliberately in the world is not the same as predicting what will happen next. When we intervene we envision a particular possible future we would like to bring about and our action actually changes the world to make that future real.” (page 32)
note = “Having a causal theory of the world makes it possible to consider alternative solutions to a problem, and their consequences, before you actually implement them, and it lets you make a much wider and more effective range of interventions.” (page 33)
[5] CHILDREN AND CAUSATION (pages 34-37)
6] CAUSES AND POSSIBILITIES (pages 37-39)
[7] MAPS AND BLUEPRINTS (pages 39-41)
[8] CAUSAL MAPS (pages 41-43)
[9] DETECTING BLICKETS (pages 43-46)
note = “With the help of the guys in the shop and the graduate students in my lab, I invented a machine we call the ‘blicket detector.’” (page 43)
note = use top paragraph to describe the purpose of the blicket detector (page 44)
2) IMAGINARY COMPANIONS: HOW DOES FICTION TELL THE TRUTH? (pages 47-73)
[1] DUNZER AND CHARLIE RAVIOLI (page 49)
[2] NORMAL WEIRDNESS (page 52)
[3] MAKING A MAP OF THE MIND (page 54)
[4] IMAGINARY COMPANIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE (page 60)
Autism, causation, and imagination (page 61)
Maps and fictions (page 63)
Why minds and things are different (page 65)
Soul engineers (page 68)
The work of play (page 70)
note = use last paragraph about Bayesian learning ideas combined with causal maps (pages 78-79)
3) ESCAPING PLATO'S CAVE: How children, scientists, and computers discover the truth P. 74-105
note = use bottom paragraph about Socrates’ point that humans are the prisoners who can only detect shadows of reality - and use pages 76-77 examples of probability thinking (75-77)
OBSERVATION: BABY STATISTICS P. 81-92
note = about Bayes’s big idea that learning is about probabilities of possibilities (78)
note = Combining Bayesian learning ideas with causal maps has turned out to give computer scientists and extraordinarily powerful way of constructing learning machines. (78)
note = Turing test and computational science are imicking the proceudres of science (80)
EXPERIMENTATION: MAKING THINGS HAPPEN (86-
DEMONSTRATION: WATCHING MOM'S EXPERIMENTS P. 92
UNDERSTANDING MINDS P. 96-105
note = “By the time children are four years old children will use statistical patterns to make inferences about individual minds.” (98-99)
note = use last paragraph to discuss how “Language plays an especially potent role in learning about the mind. In fact, there are consistent and strong correlations between children’s language abilitieis and their understanding of the minds of others.” (101)
note = use paragraph on top “Perhaps the most dramatic example of the power of language comes from deaf children.” (102)
4) WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BABY? ()
CONSCIOUSNESS AND ATTENTION P. 106
EXTERNAL ATTENTION P. 110
INTERNAL ATTENTION P. 112
BABY ATTENTION P. 116-123
note = use paragraph about how habituation technique becomes much harder as babies grow older. (118)
YOUNG CHILDREN AND ATTENTION P. 123-125
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BABY? P. 125-126
TRAVEL AND MEDITATION P. 126-132
note = what developmental and neuroscience can tell us about a baby’s “lantern consciousness” (126-132)
5) WHO AM I? MEMORY, SELF, AND THE BABBLING STREAM P. 133
[1] CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY P. 134-137
[2] CHILDREN AND MEMORY P. 138-140
]3] KNOWING HOW YOU KNOW P. 140-144
]4] CONSTRUCTING MYSELF P. 144-147
[5] CHILDREN AND THE FUTURE P. 147
note = use paragraph at bottom and next two pages to explain how “Executive control requires me to care as much about my future self as my current self. For adults, executive control, like autobiographical memory, is closely associated with consciousness.” use driving in traffic example of making choices while also driving mindlessly (148-150)
note = use last paragraph to describe the function of executive control and autobiographical memory that produces our consciousness of having a constant “self” (150)
[6] THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS P. 150-
[1] LIVING IN THE MOMENT P. 152-154
[2] INTERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS, FREE ASSOCIATION, HYPNAGOGIC THOUGHT, AND INSIGHT MEDITATION P. 154-156
[3] WHY DOES CONSCIOUSNESS CHANGE? P. 156
note = use second paragraph about beliefs becoming more well confirmed as we age (158)
note = use idea = “Adolescents at risk for suicide had a less coherent sense of themselves. They were less likely to connect their current, past, and especially future selves than children who were less at risk.” (160)
A MAP OF MYSELF — CONSTRUCTING CONSCIOUSNESS P. 160
HERACLITUS' RIVER AND THE ROMANIAN ORPHANS — HOW DOES OUR EARLY LIFE SHAPE OUR LATER LIFE? P. 164
LIFE CYCLES P. 168
THE PARADOX OF INHERITANCE P. 169
HOW BABIES RAISE THEIR PARENTS P. 174
LEARNING TO LOVE: ATTACHMENT AND IDENTITY P. 179
THEORIES OF LOVE P. 179
BEYOND MOTHERS — SOCIAL MONOGAMY AND ALLOMOTHERING P. 191
LIFE'S WEATHER P. 195
THE CHILD INSIDE P. 196
LOVE AND LAW — THE ORIGINS OF MORALITY P. 202
IMITATION AND EMPATHY P. 205
ANGER AND VENGEANCE P. 209
BEYOND EMPATHY P. 210
PSYCHOPATHS P. 21?
TROLLEYOLOGY P. 214
NOT LIKE ME P. 216
WIDENING THE CIRCLE P. 219
FOLLOWING THE RULES P. 221
BABY RULES P. 223
DOING IT ON PURPOSE P. 225
RULES AS CAUSES P. 226
THE PERILS OF RULES P. 229
THE WISDOM OF HUCK FINN P. 230
BABIES AND THE MEANING OF LIFE P. 23
WE P. 238
MAGIC P. 239
LOVE P. 241
CONCLUSION P. 243
NOTES P. 249
BIBLIOGRAPHY P. 257
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS P. 273
INDEX P. 277
AUTHOR NOTES, SUMMARY,
AND BOOK DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR NOTES = Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of two previous books about child development: The Scientist in the Crib and the Gardener and the Carpenter. They explain what the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children.
SUMMARY = In a lively and accessible tour of the groundbreaking new psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical developments, Gopnik offers new insight into how babies see the world, and in turn promotes a deeper appreciation for the role of parents in shaping the lives of their children.
BOOK DESCRIPTION = In the last decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of the minds of infants and young children. We used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Now Alison Gopnik — a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother — explains the cutting-edge scientific and psychological research that has revealed that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined. And there is good reason to believe that babies are actually smarter, more thoughtful, and more conscious than adults.
BOOK REVIEWS =
FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY = Psychologist Gopnik (The Scientist in the Crib) points out that babies have long been excluded from the philosophical literature, and in this absorbing text, she argues that if anything, babies are more conscious than grownups! While adults often function on autopilot, getting through their busy days as functional zombies, babies, with their malleable, complex minds and penchant for discovery, approach life like little travelers, enthralled by every nuance of their exciting and novel environment. Gopnik compares babies to the research and development department of the human species, while adults take care of production and marketing. Like little scientists, babies draw accurate conclusions from data and statistical analysis, conduct clever experiments and figure out everything from how to get mom to smile at them to how to make a hanging mobile spin. Like adults, the author claims, babies are even capable of counterfactual thinking (the ability to imagine different outcomes that might happen in the future or might have happened in the past). As she tackles philosophical questions regarding love, truth and the meaning of life, Gopnik reveals that babies and children are keys not only to how the mind works but also to our understanding of the human condition and the nature of love.
LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Gopnik (psychology, Univ. of California, Berkeley), coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib, now goes solo with a kind of Scientist in the Crib, Part 2. Once again, her goal isn't to offer child-rearing advice but to let the general reader know about the most recent findings in developmental psychology. This time around, the subjects include the growth of imagination attachment and morality (i.e., the "truth, love, and meaning of life" promised in the subtitle). And as with the prior book, the writing is engaging and accessible. Verdict The concept of the book-that, historically, philosophers haven't had much to say about infancy but that the work of contemporary developmental psychologists has changed all that-is debatable. Plato and John Locke, for example, had a great deal to say about human development, although not in concrete terms. (Those venerable gentlemen probably didn't have much child-care experience.) However, this is a fairly minor quibble. This work is still a good choice for anyone interested in the workings of the human mind and may appeal to those who like Stephen Pinker's books.-Mary Ann Hughes, formerly with Neill P.L., Pullman, WA
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW = Psychologist Gopnik (The Scientist in the Crib) points out that babies have long been excluded from the philosophical literature, and in this absorbing text, she argues that if anything, babies are more conscious than grownups. While adults often function on autopilot, getting through their busy days as functional "zombies," babies, with their malleable, complex minds and penchant for discovery, approach life like little travelers, enthralled by every nuance of their exciting and novel environment. Gopnik compares babies to the "research and development" department of the human species, while adults take care of production and marketing. Like little scientists, babies draw accurate conclusions from data and statistical analysis, conduct clever experiments and figure out everything from how to get mom to smile at them to how to make a hanging mobile spin. Like adults, the author claims, babies are even capable of counterfactual thinking (the ability to imagine different outcomes that might happen in the future or might have happened in the past). As she tackles philosophical questions regarding love, truth and the meaning of life, Gopnik reveals that babies and children are keys not only to how the mind works but also to our understanding of the human condition and the nature of love.
CHOICE = Gopnik (Univ. of California, Berkeley) has been one of the leading soldiers in what she calls the "revolution in ... scientific understanding of babies and young children." In this book, the first of its kind, she sets out to describe the extraordinary work that reveals the early age at which young humans become capable of empathizing with others' emotions and understanding others' knowledge and wishes. She accomplishes this task beautifully, providing many felicitous examples to clarify difficult material. A secondary purpose of the book--connecting early development with philosophical issues such as the understanding of causality and the nature of consciousness--is less well achieved, although Gopnik's discussion of the origins of morality in empathy provides strong arguments for her thesis. The experimental research that Gopnik describes involves a complex series of studies, each building on others. Accordingly, although it emanates from a trade publisher, the volume is dense with information and will challenge those who have not already studied developmental psychology. Nevertheless, those who persevere will be rewarded with an understanding of how modern developmental science has left Freud and Piaget far behind. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. Mercer Richard Stockton College
EDITORIAL REVIEWS =
“Gopnik makes a good, and sometimes impassioned, case . . . [She] offers the captivating idea that children are more conscious than adults but also less unconscious, because they have fewer automatic behaviors . . . The Philosophical Baby is both a scientific and romantic book, a result of Gopnik’s charming willingness to imagine herself inside the consciousness of young children.” —Michael Greenberg, The New York Review of Books
“Gopnik’s description of what psychological research reveals about babies’ surprisingly sophisticated thinking is fascinating.” —Drew DeSilver, The Seattle Times
“Gopnik is a fine writer, and her wit enlivens a subject that could easily veer into the overly abstract . . . She is also passionate about her subject. The Philosophical Baby isn’t simply a summary of recent research on young minds. Rather, Gopnik seeks to place early childhood in the context of 2,500 years of Western philosophy.” —Mark Sloan, San Francisco Chronicle
“[Gopnik’s] account of what the science of recent decades has had to say about infants’ minds tells a fascinating story of how we become the grown-ups that we are.” —The New York Times
“Gopnik incisively and compassionately highlights the extraordinary range of mental capabilities of even the youngest child. What makes Gopnik’s book stand out from the myriad recent books on consciousness is her overarching insight into the sophisticated ways that even infants think and scheme.” —Robert Burton, Salon
“Gopnik is at her most persuasive when she turns her attention to the nature of infant consciousness . . . As a guide to the field of cognitive development, there can be few people better qualified than Gopnik. This eminent developmental scientist writes with wit, erudition and an admirable aversion to jargon, and her book provides an intriguing perspective on some philosophical questions.” —Charles Fernyhough, Financial Times
“[A] fascinating and thought-provoking new book . . . For all the heavy subject matter, The Philosophical Baby is never ponderous. In fact, Gopnik explores the subject of how children think with a fresh, enthusiastic and wry voice . . . Fun and fascinating, The Philosophical Baby is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand child development and what it means to be human.”—Amy Scribner, Bookpage
“One of the most prominent researchers in the field, Gopnik is also one of the finest writers, with a special gift for relating scientific research to the questions that parents and others most want answered. This is where to go if you want to get into the head of a baby.” —Paul Bloom, Slate
“The book offers a refreshing alternative to the current dominance of an evolutionary perspective in popular books on cognitive science, such as those of Steven Pinker. Not that Gopnik doubts that evolution has shaped our brains, but she places less emphasis on hardwired cognitive modules that evolved for a Stone Age environment and more on the cognitive capacities that allow us to transcend our biological predispositions and create completely new environments.” —Ethan Remmel, American Scientist
“Inspiring . . . Gopnik writes with a nicely personal touch . . . She uses a clear and very readable prose, squarely aimed at the general reader and sensibly divided into short sections, ideal for anyone burdened by babies or toddlers. Her pages are packed with provocative observations and cunning insights. I’d highly recommend this fascinating book to any parent of a young child—and, indeed, anyone who has ever been a baby.” —Josh Lacey, The Guardian
“The writing is engaging and accessible . . . a good choice for anyone interested in the workings of the human mind and may appeal to those who like Stephen Pinker’s books.” —Mary Ann Hughes, Library Journal
“Psychologist Gopnik points out that babies have long been excluded from the philosophical literature, and in this absorbing text, she argues that if anything, babies are more conscious than grownups . . . As she tackles philosophical questions regarding love, truth and the meaning of life, Gopnik reveals that babies and children are keys not only to how the mind works but also to our understanding of the human condition and the nature of love.” —Publishers Weekly
“The great American psychologist William James described the infant’s worldview as a ‘blooming, buzzing confusion.’ Gopnik’s book is a challenge to this notion. Based partly on her own pioneering studies, she brings to life the sophisticated mental capacities of infants. A great read.” —V. S. Ramachandran, author of Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
“One of our best writers, Alison Gopnik reveals the inner workings of those minds that have been wrapped in mystery for all of human time: our children’s.” —Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music
“In The Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnik reveals the latest scientific discoveries - many of them quite surprising - about the developing minds of young children. She also presents a richly provocative and endlessly insightful story that unites the endearing other-worldliness of children’s imaginations with some of the oldest and most profound questions in philosophy. This book is at once touching, eloquent, and masterful in its fascinating revelations about what makes us human.” —Frank J. Suloway, author of Born to Rebel
“Alison Gopnik’s absorbing, smart, and enjoyable book might be better titled The Philosophical Developmental Psychologist. Her remarkably thoughtful and carefully reasoned studies into how babies learn and think give intriguing insights and invite new ways of reflecting on consciousness and creativity in adults as well. In a refreshing counterpoint to speculations in evolutionary psychology, her lucid and engaging descriptions of experiments with babies demonstrate how much can be understood simply by asking the right questions with an open and critical mind. Parents and scientists will enjoy the insights, but so will anyone who has thought about the question of what it means to be human.” —Lisa Randall, Professor of Physics, Harvard University, and author of Warped Passages
“What is it like to be a baby? In this astonishingly interesting book, Alison Gopnik reminds us about what we can’t remember. In the process, she teaches us a tremendous amount about the human condition and how the mind is made.” —Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide
“This book really makes you think about consciousness. The mind of a child is a strange and wonderful world.” —Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures
“After convincing us that the seemingly familiar human child is actually wrapped in mystery, Alison Gopnik offers a compelling and convincing portrait of the opening years of life. This is scientific writing of the highest order.” —Howard Gardner, author of Five Minds for the Future
"One of our best writers, Gopnik reveals the inner workings of those minds that have been wrapped in mystery for all of human time: our children's."
EXCERPT - CHAPTER 1
POSSIBLE WORLDS
WHY DO CHILDREN PRETEND?
Human beings don’t live in the real world. The real world is what actually happened in the past, is happening now, and will happen in the future. But we don’t just live in this single world. Instead, we live in a universe of many possible worlds, all the ways the world could be in the future and also all the ways the world could have been in the past, or might be in the present. These possible worlds are what we call dreams and plans, fictions and hypotheses. They are the products of hope and imagination. Philosophers, more drily, call them "counterfactuals."
Counterfactuals are the woulda-coulda-shouldas of life, all the things that might happen in the future, but haven’t yet, or that could have happened in the past, but didn’t quite. Human beings care deeply about those possible worlds—as deeply as they care about the real actual world. On the surface counterfactual thinking seems like a very sophisticated and philosophically puzzling ability. How can we think about things that aren’t there? And why should we think this way instead of restricting ourselves to the actual world? It seems obvious that understanding the real world would give us an evolutionary edge, but what good do we get from imaginary worlds?
We can start to answer these questions by looking at young children. Is counterfactual thought present only in sophisticated grown-ups? Or can young children think about possibilities too? The conventional wisdom, echoed in the theories of both Sig-mund Freud and Jean Piaget, is that babies and young children are limited to the here and now—their immediate sensations and perceptions and experience. Even when young children pretend or imagine they can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy: their fantasies, in this view, are just another kind of immediate experience. Counterfactual thought requires a more demanding ability to understand the relation between reality and all the alternatives to that reality.
Cognitive scientists have discovered that this conventional picture is wrong. We’ve found out that even very young children can already consider possibilities, distinguish them from reality, and even use them to change the world. They can imagine different ways the world might be in the future and use them to create plans. They can imagine different ways the world might have been in the past, and reflect on past possibilities. And, most dramatically, they can create completely imaginary worlds, wild fictions, and striking pretenses. These crazy imaginary worlds are a familiar part of childhood—every parent of a three-year-old has exclaimed, "What an imagination!" But the new research profoundly changes the way we think about those worlds.
In the past ten years we’ve not only discovered that children have these imaginative powers—we’ve actually begun to understand how these powers are possible. We are developing a science of the imagination. How could children’s minds and brains be constructed to allow them to imagine this dazzling array of alternate universes?
The answer is surprising. Conventional wisdom suggests that knowledge and imagination, science and fantasy, are deeply different from one another—even opposites. But the new ideas I’ll outline show that exactly the same abilities that let children learn so much about the world also allow them to change the world—to bring new worlds into existence—and to imagine alternative worlds that may never exist at all. Children’s brains create causal theories of the world, maps of how the world works. And these theories allow children to envisage new possibilities, and to imagine and pretend that the world is different.
THE POWER OF COUNTERFACTUALS
Psychologists have found that counterfactual thinking is absolutely pervasive in our everyday life and deeply affects our judgments, our decisions, and our emotions. You would think that what really matters is what actually happens, not what you imagine might have happened in the past or could happen in the future. This is particularly true of counterfactuals about the past—what might have happened but didn’t—the woulda-coulda-shouldas of life. Yet the woulda-coulda-shouldas have a deep impact on experience.
In one experiment, the Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues asked people to imagine the following sort of scenario. Mr. Tees and Mr. Crane are both in a taxi to the airport, desperate to catch their respective planes, which are both scheduled to take off at 6:00. But traffic is impossibly snarled and the minutes tick by. Finally, at 6:30 they arrive at the airport. It turns out that Mr. Tees’s flight left at 6:00 as planned but Mr. Crane’s flight was delayed till 6:25 and Mr. Crane sees it take off as he arrives. Who is more upset?
Just about everyone agrees that Mr. Crane, who just missed his flight, will be much more unhappy. But why? They both missed their flights. It seems that what is making Mr. Crane unhappy is not the actual world but the counterfactual worlds, the ones in which the taxi arrived just that much earlier or the plane was delayed just a few minutes more.
You don’t need to turn to artificial scenarios like this one to see the effects of counterfactuals. Consider the medalists in the Olympics. Who is happier, the bronze medalist or the silver? You’d think that objectively the silver medalist, who, after all, has actually done better, would be happier. But the relevant counterfactuals are very different for the two. For the bronze medalist the relevant alternative was to finish out of the medals altogether—a fate she has just escaped. For the silver medalist, the relevant alternative was to get the gold medal—a fate she has just missed. And, in fact, when psychologists took clips of the medals ceremonies and analyzed the facial expressions of the athletes, it turned out that the bronze medalists really do look happier than the silver medalists. The difference in what might have been outweighs the difference in what is.
Like Mr. Crane at the airport, or the silver medalist, people are most unhappy when a desirable outcome seems to be just out of reach, or to have just been missed. As Neil Young adapted John Greenleaf Whittier: "The saddest words of tongue and pen are these four words, ‘it might have been.’"
Why do we humans worry so much about counterfactuals, when, by definition, they are things that didn’t actually happen? Why are these imaginary worlds just as important to us as the real ones? Surely "it is, and it’s awful" should be sadder words than "it might have been."
The evolutionary answer is that counterfactuals let us change the future. Because we can consider alternative ways the world might be, we can actually act on the world and intervene to turn it into one or the other of these possibilities. Whenever we act, even in a small way, we are changing the course of history, nudging the world down one path rather than another. Of course, making one possibility come true means that all the other alternative possibilities we considered won’t come true—they become counterfactuals. But being able to think about those possibilities is crucial to our evolutionary success. Counterfactual thinking lets us make new plans, invent new tools, and create new environments. Human beings are constantly imagining what would happen if they cracked nuts or wove baskets or made political decisions in a new way, and the sum total of all those visions is a different world.
Counterfactuals about the past, and the characteristically human emotions that go with them, seem to be the price we pay for counterfactuals about the future. Because we are responsible for the future, we can feel guilty about the past; because we can hope, we can also regret; because we can make plans, we can be disappointed. The other side of being able to consider all the possible futures, all the things that could go differently, is that you can’t escape considering all the possible pasts, all the things that could have gone differently.
COUNTERFACTUALS IN CHILDREN: PLANNING THE FUTURE
Can children think counterfactually? The most evolutionarily fundamental kind of counterfactual thinking comes when we make plans for the future—when we consider alternative possibilities and pick the one we think will be most desirable. How can we tell if a very young baby can do this? In my lab, we showed the baby the sort of post with stacking rings that is a standard baby toy. But I had taped over the hole in one of the rings. How would the baby respond to this apparently similar but actually recalcitrant ring? When we brought a fifteen-month-old into the lab he would use a kind of trial-and-error method to solve the problem. He would stack some of the rings, look carefully at the taped-over one—and then try it on the post. And then try it on the post again, harder. And try it on the post one more time. Then he would look up puzzled, try one of the other rings again—and then again try the taped-over one. Basically, young babies would keep at this until they gave up.
But as they got older and learned more about how the world worked, babies would behave entirely differently. An eighteen-month-old would stack all the other rings and then hold up the trick ring with a "Who do you think you’re kidding?" look and refuse even to try it. Or she would immediately pick the trick ring up and dramatically throw it across the room, and then calmly stack the rest. Or, equally dramatically, she would hold it up to the post and shout "No!" or "Uh-oh!" These babies didn’t have to actually see what the ring would do—they could imagine what would happen if you put it on the post, and act accordingly.
In another experiment we saw whether babies could discover a new use for an object—if they could, in a simple way, invent a new tool. I put a desirable toy out of the babies’ reach and placed a toy rake beside it. As with the ring, fifteen-month-olds sometimes did pick up the rake, but they couldn’t figure out how to use it as a tool. They pushed the toy from side to side or even, frustrat-ingly, farther away from them, till they either accidentally got it or gave up. But older babies looked at the rake and paused thoughtfully. You could almost see the wheels spinning. Then they produced a triumphant smile and often a certain look of smugness. You could almost see the lightbulb switching on. Then they put the rake in just the right position over the toy and triumphantly used it to bring the toy toward them. Again they seemed able to mentally anticipate—to imagine—all the possible ways the rake could affect the toy and then chose just the right possibility.
Simple trial and error, trying different actions until one succeeds, is actually often a very effective way of getting along in the world. But anticipating future possibilities lets us plan in this other more insightful way—using our heads instead of our hands. The older babies seemed to be anticipating the possible future in which the ring or the rake would fail and avoiding that future. Other studies have shown that this isn’t just a difference between fifteen- and eighteen-month-olds. Even younger babies can solve problems insightfully if they have the right kinds of information.
This ability to solve problems insightfully seems to be particularly human. There is a little evidence that chimpanzees, and even some very smart birds like crows, can do this occasionally. But even chimpanzees and crows, and certainly other animals, overwhelmingly rely on either instinct or trial and error to get along in the world. And, in fact, instinct and trial and error are often very effective and intelligent strategies. It is extremely impressive to see a bird putting together the complex set of instinctive behaviors that allows it to build a nest, or a chimpanzee using trial and error to gradually zero in on the right strategy to open a box with elaborate locks. But they are different from the strategies that babies and very young children use. Anthropologists agree that using tools and making plans, both abilities that depend on anticipating future possibilities, played a large role in the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens. And we can see these abilities emerging even in babies who can’t talk yet.
RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST
In these experiments babies seem to be able to imagine alternative possibilities in the future. Can children also imagine past counter-factuals, different ways the world might have been? We have to infer babies’ counterfactual thinking from what they do, but we can explicitly ask older children counterfactual woulda-coulda-shoulda questions. Until recently psychologists claimed that children were quite bad at thinking about possibilities. Children are indeed quite bad at producing counterfactuals about subjects they know little about, but when they understand the subject matter even two- and three-year-olds turn out to be adept at generating alternative worlds.
The English psychologist Paul Harris probably knows more than anyone about young children’s imaginative abilities. Harris is tall, thin, reserved, and very English, and worked for many years at Oxford University. His work, like the work of the great Oxford writer Lewis Carroll, is a peculiarly English combination of the strictest logic applied to the wildest fantasy.
Harris told children a familiar English countryside story. Then he asked them about future and past counterfactuals. Naughty Ducky is wearing muddy boots and is about to walk into the kitchen. "What would happen to the floor if Ducky walked through the kitchen? Would it be clean or dirty?" "What would have happened to the floor if Ducky had cleaned his boots first? Would it be clean or dirty?" Even young three-year-olds say that the floor would have been spared if only Ducky had cleaned his boots.
In my lab, David Sobel and I designed a set of storytelling cards—cartoon pictures that told the right story if you put them in order. We showed children a sequence of pictures, say a girl going to a cookie jar, opening the jar, looking inside, finding cookies, and looking happy. But we also had a set of several other pictures, including the girl finding that there were no cookies, and the girl looking sad and hungry. We showed the children the cards in the right sequence and asked them to tell the story. Then we said, "But how about if the girl had been sad at the end instead?" and changed the last card, so that the girl looked sad instead of happy. "What would have had to happen then?" Three-year-olds consistently changed the earlier pictures to fit the hypothetical ending—they replaced the picture of the full cookie jar with the picture of the empty one. These very young children could imagine and reason about an alternative past.
IMAGINING THE POSSIBLE
We can also see evidence for counterfactual thinking in children’s play. Babies start pretending when they are as young as eighteen months old or even younger. Pretending involves a kind of present counterfactual thinking—imagining the way things might be different. Even babies who can’t talk yet, and are barely walking, can still pretend. A one-and-a-half-year-old baby may fastidiously comb her hair with a pencil, or rest her head on a pillow dramatically pretending to be asleep, giggling all the while. A little later babies start to treat objects as if they were something else. Toddlers turn everything from blocks to shoes to bowls of cereal into means of transportation by the simple expedient of saying "brrm-brrm" and pushing them along the floor. Or they may carefully, tenderly, put three little toy sheep to bed.
We take this for granted when we choose toys for these young children. The toddler sections of toy stores are full of toys that encourage children to pretend: the farmhouse, the gas station, the zoo—even the toy ATM and cell phone. But it’s not that two-year-olds pretend because we give them dolls; instead we give them dolls because they love to pretend. Even without toys toddlers are just as likely to turn common objects—food, pebbles, grass, you, themselves—into something else. And even in cultures where pretend play is discouraged, rather than cultivated, like Mr. Grad-grind’s school in Dickens’s Hard Times, children continue to do it anyway. ("No child left behind" testing policies seem to be echoing Mr. Gradgrind, replacing dress-up corners and pretend play with reading drills in preschools.)
As soon as babies can talk they immediately talk about the possible as well as the real. As a graduate student at Oxford I recorded all the words that nine babies used when they first began to talk. These babies, who were still just using single words, at the very start of language, would use them to talk about possibilities as well as actualities. There was not only the ubiquitous "brrm-brrm," but "apple" when pretending to eat a ball, or "night-night" when putting a doll to bed. One particularly charming red-haired toddler had a beloved teddy bear, and his mother had knitted two long scarves, like the ones Dr. Who wears in the British TV series, a small one for the bear and a larger one for Jonathan. Jonathan one day put his teddy bear’s scarf around his neck and, with enormous grins and giggles, announced his new identity: "Jonathan Bear!"
Excerpted from The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik. Copyright 2009 by Alison Gopnik. Published in First edition, 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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