The Problem of Other Minds: Wittgenstein's Phenomenological Perspective

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible.     

Infants perceive human point-light displays as solid forms

While five-month-old infants show orientation-specific sensitivity to changes in the motion and occlusion patterns of human point-light displays, it is not known whether infants are capable of binding a human representation to these displays. Furthermore, it has been suggested that infants do not encode the same physical properties for humans and material objects. To explore these issues we tested whether infants would selectively apply the principle of solidity to upright human displays. In the first experiment infants aged six and nine months were repeatedly shown a human point-light display walking across a computer screen up to 10 times or until habituated. Next, they were repeatedly shown the walking display passing behind an in-depth representation of a table, and finally they were shown the human display appearing to pass through the table top in violation of the solidity of the hidden human form. Both six- and nine-month-old infants showed significantly greater recovery of attention to this final phase. This suggests that infants are able to bind a solid vertical form to human motion. In two further control experiments we presented displays that contained similar patterns of motion but were not perceived by adults as human. Six- and nine-month-old infants did not show recovery of attention when a scrambled display or an inverted human display passed through the table. Thus, the binding of a solid human form to a display in only seems to occur for upright human motion. The paper considers the implications of these findings in relation to theories of infants' developing conceptions of objects, humans and animals.     

Postural change effects on infants' AB task performance: visual, postural, or spatial?

Smith and colleagues (Smith, L. B., Thelen, E., Titzer, R., & McLin, D. (1999). Knowing in the context of acting: The task dynamics of the A-not-B error. Psychological Review, 106, 235-260) demonstrated that 10-month-olds succeed on a Piagetian AB search task if they are moved from a sitting position to a standing position between A and B trials. These authors explained this result by suggesting that because the reach must be executed by different muscle forces from the standing position, an appropriate reach to B is programmed without the memory of the previous reach interfering with the current reach. In the main study reported here, the influences of postural and spatial factors are separated by adding a condition in which the table containing the hiding wells is moved up at the same time as the infant is shifted to standing, thereby allowing a postural change without a change in the spatial relations between the hand and hiding locations. Results showed that in both a standard control condition and the sitting-to-standing condition in which the table also moved up, performance was poor. Only in the sitting-to-standing condition in which the spatial relation between the hand and apparatus was altered were infants successful. These outcomes demonstrate that perseveration effects are likely to occur at the level of reach planning rather than at the level of execution, thereby narrowing the gap between explanations of improvements in AB performance with age that emphasize prefrontal maturation as opposed to improvements in reaching ability.     

The nature and varieties of felt presence experiences: A reply to Nielsen

Nielsen [Nielsen, T. (2007). Felt presence: Paranoid delusion or hallucinatory social imagery? Consciousness and Cognition, 16(4), 975–983.] raises a number of issues and presents several provocative arguments worthy of discussion regarding the experience of the felt presence (FP) during sleep paralysis (SP). We consider these issues beginning with the nature of FP and its relation to affective-motivational systems and provide an alternative to Nielsen’s reduction of FP to a purely spatial hallucination. We then consider implications of the “normal social imagery” model. We can find only one specific empirical hypothesis articulated within this framework and it turns out to be one that we explicitly addressed in our original paper. We also review our position regarding the possible relation of FP during SP to a number of related anomalous experiences and contrast FP to anomalous vestibular-motor (V-M) phenomena. We review our position that the neuromatrix concept, in the light of available evidence, is more appropriately applied to V-M experiences than FP. Finally, we pursue speculations, raised in Nielsen’s commentary, on the wider implications of FP.     

From domain-generality to domain-sensitivity: 4-Month-olds learn an abstract repetition rule in music that 7-month-olds do not

Learning must be constrained for it to lead to productive generalizations. Although biology is undoubtedly an important source of constraints, prior experience may be another, leading learners to represent input in ways that are more conducive to some generalizations than others, and/or to up- and down-weight features when entertaining generalizations. In two experiments, 4-month-old and 7-month-old infants were familiarized with sequences of musical chords or tones adhering either to an AAB pattern or an ABA pattern. In both cases, the 4-month-olds learned the generalization, but the 7-month-olds did not. The success of the 4-month-olds appears to contradict an account that this type of pattern learning is the provenance of a language-specific rule-learning module. It is not yet clear what drives the age-related change, but plausible candidates include differential experience with language and music, as well as interactions between general cognitive development and stimulus complexity.     

Learning in reverse: Eight-month-old infants track backward transitional probabilities

Numerous recent studies suggest that human learners, including both infants and adults, readily track sequential statistics computed between adjacent elements. One such statistic, transitional probability, is typically calculated as the likelihood that one element predicts another. However, little is known about whether listeners are sensitive to the directionality of this computation. To address this issue, we tested 8-month-old infants in a word segmentation task, using fluent speech drawn from an unfamiliar natural language. Critically, test items were distinguished solely by their backward transitional probabilities. The results provide the first evidence that infants track backward statistics in fluent speech.     

Two are better than one: comparison influences infants' visual recognition memory

Despite a large literature on infants’ memory for visually presented stimuli, the processes underlying visual memory are not well understood. Two studies with 4-month-olds (N = 60) examined the effects of providing opportunities for comparison of items on infants’ memory for those items. Experiment 1 revealed that 4-month-olds failed to show evidence of memory for an item presented during familiarization in a standard task (i.e., when only one item was presented during familiarization). In Experiment 2, infants showed robust memory for one of two different items presented during familiarization. Thus, infants’ memory for the distinctive features of individual items was enhanced when they could compare items.     

Patterns of brain-electrical activity during declarative memory performance in 10-month-old infants

This study of infant declarative memory concurrently examined brain-electrical activity and deferred imitation performance in 10-month-old infants. Continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) measures were collected throughout the activity-matched baseline, encoding (modeling) and retrieval (delayed test) phases of a within-subjects deferred imitation task. Infants were divided into two memory performance groups based on the exhibition of ordered-recall after a 24-h delay. Whereas no group differences were found in EEG collected during encoding, performance-group differences in EEG were present during retrieval. Infants who successfully displayed ordered-recall showed a pattern of increasing EEG from baseline to task at anterior temporal scalp locations, whereas infants showing no ordered-recall displayed no changes in EEG from baseline to task. These findings are discussed with respect to the biobehavioral developments underlying declarative memory abilities.     

Foetal testosterone and vocabulary size in 18- and 24-month-old infants

Amniotic fluid, obtained from 87 pregnant women for routine amniocentesis, was analysed for foetal testosterone (FT) level. Their infants (40 girls and 47 boys) were followed up 18 and 24 months after birth and their vocabulary size was assessed. Girls were found to have a significantly larger vocabulary than boys at both ages. This replicates previous findings of a female advantage in language ability, but reveals this sex difference at the earliest point of development. Additionally, FT was an inverse predictor of vocabulary size when data from both sexes was examined together, but not within sex. The lack of a significant correlation between FT and vocabulary within each sex may reflect the relatively small sample size. However, the significant correlation between FT and vocabulary when the sexes were combined suggests FT might be involved in shaping the neural mechanisms underlying communicative development.     

Direct Perceptual Access to Other Minds

It is sometimes claimed that we perceive people’s mental states in their expressive features. This paper clarifies the claim by contrasting two possible readings, depending on whether expression is conceived relationally or non-relationally. A crucial difference between both readings is that only a non-relational conception of expression ensures direct access to other minds. The paper offers an argument for a non-relational conception of expression, and therefore for the view that we directly perceive people’s mental states in their expressive features.