This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

Distinguishing intentional behavior from accidental behavior is a crucial component of social cognition and a major developmental achievement. It has often been assumed that developmental changes in intentional reasoning result from a gradual sophistication in the ability to discern intentions in action. We take issue with this notion, demonstrating that data from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology are more consistent with the hypothesis that it is instead a gradual sophistication in the ability to understand accidents that drives developmental change.

This paper provides an account of the developmental origins of our belief in free will based on research from a range of ages—infants, preschoolers, older children, and adults—and across cultures. The foundations of free will beliefs are in infants' understanding of intentional action—their ability to use context to infer when agents are free to “do otherwise” and when they are constrained. In early childhood, new knowledge about causes of action leads to new abilities to imagine constraints on action. Moreover, unlike (...) adults, young children tend to view psychological causes (i.e., desires) and social causes (i.e., following rules or group norms, being kind or fair) of action as constraints on free will. But these beliefs change, and also diverge across cultures, corresponding to differences between Eastern and Western philosophies of mind, self, and action. Finally, new evidence shows developmentally early, culturally dependent links between free will beliefs and behavior, in particular when choice‐making requires self‐control. (shrink)

Skepticism toward the existence of neonatal differential imitation is fostered by views that assign it an excessive significance, making it foundational for social cognition. Moreover, a misleading theoretical framework may generate unwarranted expectations about the kinds of findings experimentalists are supposed to look for. Hence we propose a theoretical analysis that may help experimentalists address the empirical question of whether early differential imitation really exists. We distinguish three models of early imitation. The first posits automatic visuo-motor links evolved for sociocognitive (...) functions and we call it Genetically Programmed Direct Matching. The second is Meltzoff and Moore’s Active Intermodal Matching, which postulates a comparison between the acts of self and other. The third is the alternative we propose and we call it “Association by Similarity Theory”, as it relies on the tacit functioning of this domain-general process. AST describes early imitation merely as the differential induction or elicitation of behaviors that already tend to occur spontaneously. We focus on the contrast between AIM and AST, and argue that AST is preferable to AIM for two reasons. First, AST is more parsimonious and more plausible, especially because it does not require infants to be able to recognize self-other similarities. Second, whereas the extant findings tend to disqualify AIM, AST can account for them adequately. Furthermore, we suggest that AST has the potential to give new impulse to empirical research because it discriminates promising lines of inquiry from unproductive ones. (shrink)

Social referencing informs and regulates one’s relation with the environment as a function of the perceived appraisals of social partners. Increased emphasis on relational and social contexts in the study of emotion makes this interpersonal process particularly relevant to the field. However, theoretical conceptualizations and empirical operationalizations of social referencing are disjointed across domains and populations of study. This article seeks to unite and refine the study of this construct by providing a clear and comprehensive definition of social referencing. Our (...) perspective presents social referencing and social appraisal as coterminous processes and emphasizes the importance of a relational and interpersonal approach to the study of emotion. We conclude by outlining possible lines of research on this construct. (shrink)

The development of action and perception, and their relation in infancy is a central research area in socio-cognitive sciences. In this Perspective Article, we focus on the developmental variability and continuity of action and perception. At group level, these skills have been shown to consistently improve with age. We would like to raise awareness for the issue that, at individual level, development might be subject to more variable changes. We present data from a longitudinal study on the perception and production (...) of contralateral reaching skills of infants aged 7, 8, 9, and 12 months. Our findings suggest that individual development does not increase linearly for action or for perception, but instead changes dynamically. These non-continuous changes substantially affect the relation between action and perception at each measuring point and the respective direction of causality. This suggests that research on the development of action and perception and their interrelations needs to take into account individual variability and continuity more progressively. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest impaired motor skill development during infancy in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether infants at high familial risk for ASD would benefit from early interventions targeting the motor domain. The current study investigated this issue by providing 3-month-old infants at high familial risk for ASD with training experiences aimed at facilitating independent reaching. A group of 17 high-risk (HR) infants received 2 weeks of scaffolded reaching experiences using “sticky mittens,” and (...) was compared to 72 low-risk (LR) infants experiencing the same or alternative training procedures. Results indicate that HR infants – just like LR infants – show an increase in grasping activity following “sticky mittens” training. In contrast to LR infants, evidence that motor training encouraged a preference for faces in HR infants was inconclusive. (shrink)

The predominant view in developmental psychology is that young children are able to reason with the concept of desire prior to being able to reason with the concept of belief. We propose an explanation of this phenomenon that focuses on the cognitive tasks that competence with the belief and desire concepts enable young children to perform. We show that cognitive tasks that are typically considered fundamental to our competence with the belief and desire concepts can be performed with the concept (...) of desire in the absence of competence with the concept of belief, whereas the reverse is considerably less feasible. (shrink)

Several studies demonstrated that children younger than 3 years of age, who consistently fail the standard verbal false-belief task, can anticipate others’ actions based on their attributed false beliefs. This gave rise to the so-called “Developmental Paradox”. De Bruin and Kästner recently suggested that the Developmental Paradox is best addressed in terms of the relation between coupled and decoupled processes and argued that if enactivism is to be a genuine alternative to classic cognitivism, it should be able to bridge the (...) “cognitive gap”, i.e. to provide us with a convincing account of how low-level sensorimotor practices transform into higher-order representational skills. This paper defends, against De Bruin and Kästner, an enactive response to the Developmental Paradox. I argue that 3-year olds’ failure to verbally report their false-belief understanding does not arise from stronger decoupling demands. Rather, they fail because the elicited response false-belief trials involve representational decoupling tout court and what is more, under pressure. (shrink)

This article examines infant attachment styles from the perspective of cognitive and emotional subjectivity. We review new data that show that individual differences in infants’ attachment behaviors in the traditional Strange Situation are related to (a) infants’ subjective construals of infant—caregiver interactions, (b) their attention to emotional expressions, and (c) polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. We use these findings to argue that individual differences in infants’ attachment styles reflect, in part, the subjective outcomes of objective experience as filtered (...) through genetic biases in socioemotional information processing. (shrink)

In this response to 32 commentators, I start by clarifying the overflow argument. I explain why the distinction between generic and specific phenomenology is important and why we are justified in acknowledging specific phenomenology in the overflow experiments. Other issues discussed are the relations among report, cognitive access, and attention; panpsychic disaster; the mesh between psychology and neuroscience; and whether consciousness exists.

A theory of conceptual development must specify the innate representational primitives, must characterize the ways in which the initial state differs from the adult state, and must characterize the processes through which one is transformed into the other. The Origin of Concepts (henceforth TOOC) defends three theses. With respect to the initial state, the innate stock of primitives is not limited to sensory, perceptual, or sensorimotor representations; rather, there are also innate conceptual representations. With respect to developmental change, conceptual development (...) consists of episodes of qualitative change, resulting in systems of representation that are more powerful than, and sometimes incommensurable with, those from which they are built. With respect to a learning mechanism that achieves conceptual discontinuity, I offer Quinian bootstrapping. TOOC concludes with a discussion of how an understanding of conceptual development constrains a theory of concepts. (shrink)

Our concept of actual causation plays a deep, ever-present role in our experiences. I first argue that traditional philosophical methods for understanding this concept are unlikely to be successful. I contend that we should instead use functional analyses and an understanding of the cognitive bases of causal cognition to gain insight into the concept of actual causation. I additionally provide initial, programmatic steps towards carrying out such analyses. The characterization of the concept of actual causation that results is quite different (...) from many standard views: it is graded, context-sensitive, and extrinsic. (shrink)

This essay will defend a causal conception of action explanations in terms of an agent’s reasons by delineating a metaphysical and epistemic framework that allows us to view folk psychology as providing us with causal and autonomous explanatory strategies of accounting for individual agency. At the same time, I will calm philosophical concerns about the issue of causal deviance that have been at the center of the recent debates between causalist and noncausalist interpretations of action explanations. For that purpose, it (...) is important to realize that the domain of folk-psychological action explanation is also the domain of skillful and goal-directed bodily movements, a domain to which we have independent epistemic access. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have long recognized the extraordinary influence of action on learning (Held & Hein, 1963; Piaget, 1952). Action experiences begin to shape our perception of the world during infancy (e.g., as infants gain an understanding of others’ goal-directed actions; Woodward, 2009) and these effects persist into adulthood (e.g., as adults learn about complex concepts in the physical sciences; Kontra, Lyons, Fischer, & Beilock, 2012). Theories of embodied cognition provide a structure within which we can investigate the mechanisms underlying action’s (...) impact on thinking and reasoning. We argue that theories of embodiment can shed light on the role of action experience in early learning contexts, and further that these theories hold promise for using action to scaffold learning in more formal educational settings later in development. (shrink)

This paper assesses the scope and limits of a widely influential model of goal-ascription by human infants: the shared-intentionality model. It derives much of its appeal from its ability to integrate behavioral evidence from developmental psychology with cognitive neuroscientific evidence about the role of mirror neuron activity in non-human primates. The central question raised by this model is whether sharing a goal with an agent is necessary and sufficient for ascribing it to that agent. I argue that advocates of the (...) shared-intentionality model underestimate both the distinction between the target and the goal of a goal-directed action and the gap between sharing and ascribing a goal. (shrink)

A theory of how concept formation begins is presented that accounts for conceptual activity in the first year of life, shows how increasing conceptual complexity comes about, and predicts the order in which new types of information accrue to the conceptual system. In a compromise between nativist and empiricist views, it offers a single domain-general mechanism that redescribes attended spatiotemporal information into an iconic form. The outputs of this mechanism consist of types of spatial information that we know infants attend (...) to in the first months of life. These primitives form the initial basis of concept formation, allow explicit preverbal thought, such as recall, inferences, and simple mental problem solving, and support early language learning. The theory details how spatial concepts become associated with bodily feelings of force and trying. It also explains why concepts of emotions, sensory concepts such as color, and theory of mind concepts are necessarily later acquisitions because they lack contact with spatial descriptions to interpret unstructured internal experiences. Finally, commonalities between the concepts of preverbal infants and nonhuman primates are discussed. (shrink)

An understanding of the nature and development of nursing intuition can help nurse educators foster it in young nurses and give clinicians more confidence in this aspect of their knowledge, allowing them to respond with greater assurance to their intuitions. In this paper, accounts from philosophy and neurophysiology are used to argue that intuition, specifically nursing intuition, is a valid form of knowledge. The paper argues that nursing intuition, a kind of practical intuition, is composed of four distinct aspects that (...) include: embodied knowledge rather like that knowledge we have when we have learned to ride a bicycle; well‐trained sensory perceptions attentive to subtle details of complex, often rapidly changing situations; a significant store of pertinent conceptual knowledge; and a history of habitual actions intentionally directed towards achieving the best outcomes for our patients. Contemporary neurophysiology research strongly suggests that human persons experience other persons such that they directly understand the meaning of a variety of different human actions, intentions, emotions, and sensations in immediate, non‐reflective, and non‐conceptual perceptions. This research is supported by the philosophical theories of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon found in their accounts of practical knowledge. Together, these accounts offer us a rich view of the reality of nursing intuition that helps us understand why we find intuitive actions in some but not all nurses and gives us some specific information about how to develop intuition in young nurses. Finally, this research shows us a path for further research. (shrink)

Traditional views separate cognitive processes from sensory–motor processes, seeing cognition as amodal, propositional, and compositional, and thus fundamentally different from the processes that underlie perceiving and acting. These were the ideas on which cognitive science was founded 30 years ago. However, advancing discoveries in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology suggests that cognition may be inseparable from processes of perceiving and acting. From this perspective, this study considers the future of cognitive science with respect to the study of cognitive development.

Susan Hurley's shared circuits model (SCM) rightly begins in action and progresses through a series of layers; but it fails to reach action understanding because it relies on mirroring as a driving force, draws on heavily criticized theories, and neglects the need for shared experience in our grasp of social understanding.

How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how we could tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neural natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt their (...) authority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machinery underlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is ‘Yes’? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! The paper argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. The paper argues that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified by the explanations it allows. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines; it is here surveyed under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring and simulation. It is cast at a middle, (...) functional level of description, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The shared circuits model connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception. (shrink)