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Origins of Mind

Causal Interactions

Lecturer: Stephen A. Butterfill

Knowledge of objects requires being able to track their causal interactions. How do humans achieve this?

Slides

Notes

Four-month-old infants can track causal interactions among objects, even when those causal interactions are occluded (Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992); as can chimpanzees (Cacchione & Krist, 2004) and dogs (Kundey, Reyes, Taglang, Baruch, & German, 2010).

How do infants, adult humans and nonhumans track causal interactions among objects (including causal relations like support)? Spelke suggests that the Principles of Object Perception can explain this. For example, the position of an object falling onto a bench is predicted by the principle of continuity (an object traces exactly one connected path over space and time (Spelke, Kestenbaum, Simons, & Wein, 1995, p. 113)).

In short, infants’ successes in tracking cauasl intereactions supports the view that ‘object perception reflects basic constraints on the motions of physical bodies’ (Spelke, 1990, p. 51). This in turn might make it tempting to agree, further, that:

‘A single system of knowledge … appears to underlie object perception and physical reasoning’ (Carey & Spelke, 1994, p. \ 175).

And that would commit us to the Simple View.

Glossary

Principles of Object Perception : These are thought to include no action at a distance, rigidity, boundedness and cohesion.
Simple View : This term is used for two thematically related claims. Concerning physical objects, the Simple View is the claim that the Principles of Object Perception are things we know or believe, and we generate expectations from these principles by a process of inference. Concerning the goals of actions, the Simple View is the claim that the principles comprising the Teleological Stance are things we know or believe, and we are able to track goals by making inferences from these principles.

References

Cacchione, T., & Krist, H. (2004). Recognizing impossible object relations: Intuitions about support in chimpanzees (pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118(2), 140–148. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7036.118.2.140
Carey, S., & Spelke, E. S. (1994). Domain-specific knowledge and conceptual change. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kundey, S. M. A., Reyes, A. D. L., Taglang, C., Baruch, A., & German, R. (2010). Domesticated dogs’ (canis familiaris) use of the solidity principle. Animal Cognition, 13(3), 497–505. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0300-6
Spelke, E. S. (1990). Principles of object perception. Cognitive Science, 14, 29–56.
Spelke, E. S., Breinlinger, K., Macomber, J., & Jacobson, K. (1992). Origins of knowledge. Psychological Review, 99(4), 605–632. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.99.4.605
Spelke, E. S., Kestenbaum, R., Simons, D. J., & Wein, D. (1995). Spatiotemporal continuity, smoothness of motion and object identity in infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13(2), 113–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00669.x