Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons

10. Three Motivations and a Challenge

10 Three Motivations and a Challenge The Narrative Competency Objection For all that has been said, it is likely that some readers may still be inclined to believe in the existence of inherited mindreading devices (IMDs), positing these in order to fulfill certain perceived explanatory needs. And it might be thought, for example, that this idea could be combined with a softer variant of the NPH, according to which encounters with folk psychological narratives are needed, but only to put the finishing touches on our capacity to understand intentional action in terms of reasons, not as a basis for it. Yet, before considering whether such a combination is even possible we should determine whether developing this idea is even desirable. In deciding this, it will prove useful to ask that famous question, apparently beloved by actors: “What’s my motivation?” With this in mind, my aim in this chapter is to expose and defuse the strongest motivations for thinking that there is a need to postulate some kind of IMD. For, as I see it, it is the tendency to think this that poses the real threat to the full and proper acceptance of the unadulterated variant of the NPH, as presented in chapter 2. For example, an immediate worry might be about the underlying abilities that children must possess in order to participate in narrative practices that involve stories about people who act for reasons in the first place (see Gallagher 2007b). For, so the thought goes, that ability surely presupposes precisely the kind of understanding that, according to the NPH, exposure to folk psychological narratives is meant to foster. After all, it is not as if the relevant narrative competency is of the general variety: it requires a specific understanding of stories with a distinctive type of mentalistic subject matter. Clearly, the easiest way to explain how children are able to engage with stories would be to suppose that they had preexisting theory of mind (ToM) abilities. This may be the quickest explanation, but is it the best one? Certainly, if it was the only possible explanation of the narrative competency in question then the NPH would be viciously circular, at least in its strong form: ToM abilities would be required in order for children to appreciate the narratives of the very sort that the NPH holds are responsible for engendering their initial folk psychological understanding. Naturally, I deny this. In the previous chapters I have been at pains to show that basic folk psychological narrative competence rests on having a raft of abilities—which include at the top end the possession of a sophisticated capacity for cocognition and a practical grasp of the propositional attitudes. Yet, even in sum, these abilities do not add up to having a ToM. Young children come to the table with a great many emotive and imaginative capacities that, even in unison, fall just short of a genuine folk psychological understanding . A range of embodied skills and linguistic skills need to be mastered if they are to become conversant with everyday stories about reasons for action to be sure—but if my appraisal of their nature is correct, it obviates the need to postulate IMDs of any kind whatsoever. All told, a child’s first competence with folk psychological narratives rests on their having a sophisticated command of language, a range of specialized imaginative and interactive abilities, and a prior grasp of the core propositional attitudes. This is what children bring to the relevant storytelling practices during their developmentally rich preschool years. Nevertheless , having this raft of abilities does not equate to having ToM abilities per se. Hence, there is no danger that the NPH is viciously circular. Technically, therefore, the narrative competency objection has already been dealt with. Still, since theorizing about IMDs is the orthodoxy, I anticipate further resistance to the NPH and its sociocultural proposal about the basis of folk psychology. So, let me try to quell it here and now. To that end, in the next three sections, I put pressure on the three motivating considerations that encourage belief in the existence of IMDs. Polemically, these are often presented as established facts with which any theorist must contend. They are 1. Children’s early learning environments lack stimuli of the appropriate kind and quantity to explain how the rules of folk psychology are acquired. 2. Folk psychological abilities are universal through the human species, being exhibited by all unimpaired members of the human race. 3. Mindblindness...