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Developing the Idea of Intentionality: Children's Theories of Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnik*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Psychology, Tolman Hall, University of California/Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.
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Extract

At least since Augustine, philosophers have constructed developmental just-so stories about the origins of certain concepts. In these just-so stories, philosophers tell us how children must develop these concepts. However, philosophers have by and large neglected the empirical data about how children actually do develop their ideas about the world. At best they have used information about children in an anecdotal and unsystematic, though often illuminating, way (see, for example, Matthews, 1980).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 89 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1990

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