Predicative Minds: The Social Ontogeny Of Propositional Thinking (bradford Books)

Predicative Minds The Social Ontogeny of Propositional Thinking R ADU J. BOGDAN Predicative Minds Predicative Minds The Social Ontogeny of Propositional Thinking Radu J. Bogdan A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email . This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bogdan, Radu J. Predicative minds: the social ontogeny of propositional thinking / Radu J. Bogdan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-02636-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Thought and thinking—Social aspects. 2. Thought and thinking. 3. Philosophy of mind. I. Title. BF441.B625 2009 153.4′3—dc22 2008032751 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory of my uncle, my very dear Tache; and to all those good people who cared If we do not understand predication, we do not understand how any sentence works, nor can we account for the structure of the simplest thought that is expressible in language. —Donald Davidson, Truth and Predication Contents Preface xi Introduction xv I The Territory 1 The Many Faces of Predication 1.1 1.2 1.3 1 Dimensions of Predication Two Kinds of Propositions Coinstantiation 11 2 Tales of Predication 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 15 Fregean Predication 15 Linguistic Predication 20 Animal Predication 22 Interpretative Predication 28 Perceptual Predication 34 Pragmatic Predication 39 II Toward an Explanation 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 3 9 A Hypothesis 43 45 Why Development 46 Two Evolutionary Games 48 Ontogenetic Staircase 49 Mental Redesign 54 Roots 57 Coregulative Communication 58 Imperative Communication 65 A Sense of Other Minds 68 3 x 5 Contents Assembly 77 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Joint Ventures 78 Shared Naming 83 Linguistic Takeover 95 Thinking Predicatively 106 III Epilogue 113 6 Implications and Speculations 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Incidental Predicator 115 Assembly Work 117 Way Back When 122 Retrospective 129 Notes 137 References 145 Index 153 115 Preface About fifteen years ago, I joined a growing group of psychologists and a few philosophers in the realization that naive psychology (or theory of mind) is a basic mental competence that evolved to represent and make sense of other minds and our own. That realization eventually went into a book (Bogdan 1997). Work on that book brought the further realization, shared by a much smaller group of developmental psychologists, that naive psychology is also a mind designer, as it enables, often generates, and even shapes a host of other mental faculties, and in particular reflexive thinking or thinking about our own thoughts. This new realization, too, went into a book (Bogdan 2000). This book continues the mind-design theme of the second book, actually a variation of it, as it explores the predicative roots of human thinking. Predication is construed here as a mental competence—apparently uniquely human—that is exercised intently when one attributes explicitly a proper