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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

142827

Pro-social cognition

helping, practical reasons, and "theory of mind'

Johannes Roessler(Warwick Mind and Action Research Centre, University of Warwick)Josef Perner

pp. 755-767

Abstract

There is converging evidence that over the course of the second year children become good at various fairly sophisticated forms of pro-social activities, such as helping, informing and comforting. Not only are toddlers able to do these things, they appear to do them routinely and almost reliably. A striking feature of these interventions, emphasized in the recent literature, is that they show precocious abilities in two different domains: they reflect complex "theory of mind' abilities as well as "altruistic motivation'. Our aim in this paper is to present a theoretical hypothesis that bears on both kinds of developments. The suggestion is that children's "instrumental helping' reflects their budding understanding of practical reasons (in the standard sense of "considerations that count in favour of' someone's acting in a certain way). We can put the basic idea in the familiar terminology of common coding: toddlers conceive of the goals of others' actions in the same format as the goals of their own actions: in terms of features of their situation that provide us with reasons to act.

Publication details

Published in:

Satne Glenda (2015) Developmental, comparative and conceptual issues. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (4).

Pages: 755-767

DOI: 10.1007/s11097-015-9438-7

Full citation:

Roessler Johannes, Perner Josef (2015) „Pro-social cognition: helping, practical reasons, and "theory of mind'“. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (4), 755–767.