Abstract
There is a growing body of empirical evidence which shows that infants and non-human primates have the ability to represent the mental states of other agents, i.e. that they possess a Theory of Mind. We will argue that this evidence also suggests that infants and non-human primates possess the concept of truth, which, as we will explain, is good news for primitivists about truth. First, we will offer a brief overview of alethic primitivism, focusing on Jamin Asay’s conceptual version of the view. Next, we will survey relevant work on Theory of Mind which indicates that children younger than two and non-human primates are able to attribute false beliefs. Then, we will bring these false-belief data to bear on Asay’s form of primitivism, arguing that the data support two of the four distinctive theses of this view and offering some remarks about the empirical evaluability of the two remaining theses. We hope that our discussion will help to bridge the gap between psychological and philosophical inquiry and that it will encourage further empirical research on the cognitive significance of the concept of truth for humans and other thinking creatures.
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Notes
- 1.
When we had nearly completed this chapter, we learned that in an underappreciated article, Nulty (2008) argued that the data from developmental psychology on false belief attribution in infants and children provide reasons to think that truth is primitive. Specifically, Nulty argues for four main claims: (i) that there are good reasons for believing that possessing truth precedes mastery of a truth predicate; (ii) that truth has a metaphysically robust content; (iii) that the pre-linguistic role of truth offers an explanation for why the concept might be conceptually primitive; and (iv) that the developmental data lend themselves to a novel version of the success argument against deflationism (Nulty, 2008, p. 106). In what follows, it will emerge that we agree with (i), (iii), and (iv) but will remain neutral on (ii). We will also offer an up-to-date discussion of the relevant issues that reflects recent work in developmental psychology as well as recent work on primitivist theories of truth, especially that of Asay.
- 2.
For illuminating remarks on the role of conceptual analysis in theories of truth, see Asay (2013c, Sect. 1.2.3).
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- 5.
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- 7.
Notice, then, that (Fundamentality) leaves open the possibility that there are (actual or possible) creatures that don’t possess truth, as they don’t possess any concepts at all. Thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting this clarification.
- 8.
Asay isn’t explicit about what sort of possibility is in play here, so we leave this unspecified.
- 9.
Asay (2013c, Sect. 8.4) is sympathetic to Davidson’s proposal.
- 10.
- 11.
Asay (2021b, Sect. 4.2) uses (Omnipresence) to motivate (Ability) by way of inference to the best explanation. Since Asay motivates (Ability) using (Omnipresence), (Omnipresence) can be fairly regarded as a more central component of Asay’s conceptual primitivism than (Ability). However, treating these theses as being equally central to the view won’t substantially affect the discussion to follow.
- 12.
It is unusual that the reality bias did not seem to affect the results reported by Onishi and Baillargeon (2005), who tested for false belief attribution among 15-month-old infants. One hypothesis is that Onishi and Baillargeon’s studies show that there may be a strong correlation between reality bias and linguistic competence. This suggests that the verbal nature of the standard false-belief task elicits the reality-based response.
- 13.
The results of Southgate et al.’s (2007) study have not emerged unscathed from the replication crisis in psychology. We will say more about this in Sect. 13.3.2 and in subsequent sections on the relevance of this research to alethic primitivism. However, suffice it to say here that at least one attempt to replicate the results of Southgate et al.’s (2007) study was unsuccessful (Kampis et al. 2021).
- 14.
Notably, however, the children involved in the Clements and Perner (1994) study were not able to verbally predict the agent’s searching behaviour in the false belief trials. This suggests that they lacked explicit false belief understanding.
- 15.
This applies equally well to true belief understanding. The infant should look reliably longer when the location in which the actor searches is inconsistent with the actor’s true belief about the toy’s location. The true belief task begins like the false belief task, but instead of the object being removed from one location and hidden, unbeknownst to the protagonist, in another location, the object is put into the location where the protagonist would expect it to be (Horschler et al. 2020).
- 16.
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- 18.
- 19.
We employ the subscript “A” to underscore the fact that these hypotheses concern the actual world.
- 20.
In saying that the false-belief data lend support to (FundamentalityA), we of course mean that they make (FundamentalityA) more probable, not that they entail it.
- 21.
Of course, if possession of truth is necessary for having beliefs, then it would follow that these respondents possess truth. But if this inference were used to support (FundamentalityA), then the support that it provided would be indirect and thus similar in this respect to the support that is provided by the false-belief data. Thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting this point.
- 22.
A further concern with using true-belief task studies to support (FundamentalityA) is that this would involve looking for confirming evidence, which is subject to cognitive bias, rather than looking for disconfirming evidence.
- 23.
For additional considerations with which we are sympathetic, see Nulty (2008, Sect. 5).
- 24.
Initially at least, this result seems to put pressure on deflationary theories of truth, as these theories seem to commit us to rejecting (Explanatory IndispensabilityA). While we can’t go into the details here, it is worth noting that the standard deflationary manoeuvre of invoking a truth schema, e.g. Horwich (1998)’s Equivalence Schema, to eliminate the instance of truth in the explanans of the problematic explanation doesn’t seem promising in this instance. Another potential manoeuvre would be for the deflationist to argue that (Explanatory IndispensabilityA) should be reformulated along the lines that Wyatt (2022a) sketches in discussing deflationism about the property truth. An advantage of this manoeuvre is that it would seem to defuse not only the present threat to conceptual deflationism, but also the threat involving assertion that is put forward by Bar-On and Simmons (2007). This manoeuvre seems promising, but we will have to leave discussion of it to future work. Lastly, the deflationist might suggest that what really matters for their purposes is not whether we must invoke facts involving truth to explain some actual phenomena. Rather, they might insist that what matters is whether we must use truth to explain some actual phenomena, e.g. the nature of linguistic meaning. If this is correct, then it looks like deflationists can happily accept the argument that we’ve offered, as that argument only shows that we must mention truth in explaining why the relevant subjects possess falsity. This response needs to be carefully evaluated, and again, we must leave that evaluation to future work.
- 25.
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Ulatowski, J., Wyatt, J. (2023). From Infants to Great Apes: False Belief Attribution and Primitivism About Truth. In: Bordonaba-Plou, D. (eds) Experimental Philosophy of Language: Perspectives, Methods, and Prospects. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 33. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28908-8_13
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