CDC Seminar March 29 Monday Bart Geurts

The next talk in the Cognitive Development Center seminar series at the CEU will be given by Bart Geurts: A small theory of behaviour Department of Philosophy University of Nijmegen Date and time: Monday, 29 March, 5.00 pm CEU Cognitive Development Center Hattyuhaz, Level 3, Hattyu u. 14., 1015 Budapest Abstract 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. -- Ágnes M. Kovács Marie Curie Research Fellow-DISCOS MTA PKI Hungarian Academy of Sciences & CEU, Cognitive Development Centre Budapest Hungary tel: +3612796095