A small theory of behaviour

Bart Geurts (Nijmegen)

Date and time: Monday, 29 March, 5.00 pm

Place: Hattyúház, Level 3, Hattyú u. 14., 1015 Budapest

Based on a wealth of experimental data, it has been argued that, already between their first and second birthdays, children routinely appeal to mental states---goals, perceptions, beliefs, and desires---to explain the behaviour of others. In this talk, I will analyse a range of experiments involving, e.g., non-verbal false-belief tasks, cooperative pointing, and reasoning about goals and desires, and attempt to show that all of them can be accounted for on the assumption that infants have a quite minimal theory of behaviour, which is defined purely in terms of relations between particulars (individuals, places, and times) and is not mentalistic in any deep way.