1-111 - Little philosophers: Children’s developing metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

What is the world like? What is goodness? How can we acquire and evaluate knowledge? These are some of the deepest and oldest questions about what it means to be human, and they have often been seen as the purview of philosophers. However, a classic focus of developmental psychology has been to examine the way children develop “folk theories” to answer these questions, and in this symposium we suggest that recent empirical work can provide a complementary perspective on enduring philosophical explorations of these issues.

Our symposium offers a broad view of the development of philosophical theories, from metaphysics, to ethics, to epistemology. The first speaker will argue that children’s developing theory of mind encompasses and constitutes our everyday understanding of mental causality. The second speaker will discuss new evidence of a development shift in moral philosophy, from an Aristotelian, character-based stance, to a more Kantian, willpower-based view. The third speaker will argue that examining preschoolers’ early questions and early uses of the verb “know” suggests that sophisticated theories of knowledge begin to develop earlier than has previously been assumed. A concluding dialogue will be led by the discussant, an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development, who has long argued that children’s minds can help us understand deep philosophical questions.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Christina Starmans, Yale University

Discussant

• Alison Gopnik, Univ of California-Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Childhood conception of mind and causality - Presenting Author: Henry M. Wellman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• From Aristotle to Kant: Children’s developing moral philosophy - Presenting Author: Christina Starmans, Yale University

• A working concept of knowledge? - Presenting Author: Paul Harris, Harvard University