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Theories in Children and the Rest of Us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Eric Schwitzgebel
Eric Schwitzgebel*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

I offer an account of theories useful in addressing the question of whether children are young theoreticians whose development can be regarded as the product of theory change. I argue that to regard a set of propositions as a theory is to be committed to evaluating that set in terms of its explanatory power. If theory change is the substance of cognitive development, we should see patterns of affect and arousal consonant with the emergence and resolution of explanation-seeking curiosity. Affect has largely been ignored as a potential source of support or disconfirmation for the “theory theory” of development.

Type
Philosophical Issues in Cognitive Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1996. , 1996 , pp. S202 - S210
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1996

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Mathias Frisch, Alison Gopnik, Martin Jones, Kim Kempton, Lisa Lloyd, Tori McGeer, Maria Merritt, Bojana Mladenovic, John Searle, and Leo van Munching for useful criticism.

‡

Department of Philosophy, 314 Moses Hall, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720.

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