Is the Causal, the Teleological?1 (original) (raw)

One of the first steps toward understanding others is understanding what their goals are and how their overt behavior relates to those goals. György Gergely and Gergely Csibra argue that we acquire the capacity to make sense of others’ actions much earlier than expected, at around 12 months of age. According to Gergely and Csibra, infants utilize a so-called teleological stance, a tripartite analysis of the environment, in order to infer the corresponding goal of others’ actions. Moreover, they argue that the adult capacity to explain others’ actions in terms of mental vocabulary and causal links is simply a conceptual extension of the earlier capacity to teleologically interpret others’ actions. In this paper I expound Gergely and Csibra’s teleological stance, how they compare it to the adult capacity to explain others’ actions causal-mentalistically and what they exactly mean by the relationship of a conceptual extension. I argue that we do have good reasons to reject the idea tha...