Mindvaults: Sociocultural Grounds for Pretending and Imagining

259 Pages·2013·25.259 MB·English

by  Radu J. Bogdan

M i n d va u lt s
PHilosoPHy of Mind
M i n dvau lts
Radu J. Bogdan is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive “By bringing together advances in the philosophy of mind with recent M sociocultural Grounds for Pretending sociocultural Grounds for Pretending
Science and Director of the Cognitive Science Program at psychological theories of mental development, Radu Bogdan offers an and imagining
i
Tulane University and Regular Guest Professor and Director original and promising explanation of humans’ most distinctive form and imagining
n
of the OPEN MIND program in cognitive science at the Uni- of competence: the imagination.” Radu J. Bogdan
d
versity of Bucharest. He is the author of Interpreting Minds David Olson, University Professor Emeritus, OISE/University of Toronto
(1997), Minding Minds: Evolving a Reflexive Mind by Inter- v
preting Others (2000), Predicative Minds: The Social Ontogeny “Mindvaults is a ground-shifting work of major consequence to the a
of Propositional Thinking (2009), and Our Own Minds: Socio- fields of developmental psychology and cognitive science. Radu Bogdan u
cultural Grounds for Self-Consciousness (2010), all published proposes an innovative developmental-evolutionary theory of human l the human mind has the capacity to vault over the realm of
by the MIT Press. thinking based on a deep understanding and new conceptualization t current perception, motivation, emotion, and action, to leap—
of contemporary research on cognitive development. Mindvaults s consciously and deliberately—to past or future, possible or
should find its place on every developmental reading list.” Radu J. Bogdan impossible, abstract or concrete scenarios and situations. in
Katherine Nelson, Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emerita, this book, Radu Bogdan examines the roots of this uniquely
CUNY Graduate Center human ability, which he terms “mindvaulting.” He focuses
particularly on the capacities of pretending and imagining,
“Mindvaults offers great intuitions and ideas—for example, it suggests which he identifies as the first forms of mindvaulting to de-
that our specific human abilities thrive on adaptations to the cultural velop in childhood. Pretending and imagining, Bogdan argues,
captivity of a prolonged childhood. it takes a brave stance against are crucial steps on the ontogenetic staircase to the intellect.
short-cut explanations of mental evolution and adheres to a healthy B Bogdan finds that pretending and then imagining develop
minimalism of data interpretation.” o from a variety of sources for reasons that are specific and
g
unique to human childhood. He argues that these capacities
Josef Perner, Department of Psychology and Center for Neurocognitive d
Research, University of Salzburg a arise as responses to sociocultural and sociopolitical pressures
n that emerge at different stages of childhood. Bogdan argues
that some of the properties of mindvaulting—including domain
versatility and nonmodularity—resist standard evolutionary
explanations. to resolve this puzzle, Bogdan reorients the
evolutionary analysis toward human ontogeny, construed as a
genuine space of evolution with specific pressures and adap-
tive responses. Bogdan finds that pretending is an ontogenetic
978-0-262-01911-8
response to sociocultural challenges in early childhood, a pre-
adaptation for imagining; after age four, the adaptive response
to cooperative and competitive sociopolitical pressures is a
competence for mental strategizing that morphs into imagining.
Cover painting by Catalina Bogdan
tHe Mit PRess
MassaCHusetts institute of teCHnoloGy
CaMBRidGe, MassaCHusetts 02142
HttP://MitPRess.Mit.edu
MINDVAULTS

MINDVAULTS
Sociocultural Grounds for Pretending and Imagining
Radu J. Bogdan
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bogdan, Radu J.
Mindvaults : sociocultural grounds for pretending and imagining / Radu
J. Bogdan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01911-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Imagination. 2. Imagination in children. 3. Social psychology. 4.
Social perception 5. Social cognitive theory. 1. Title.
BF408.B565 2013
153.3— dc23
2012036428
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my beloved Catalina,
for whom life is a constant exercise in imagination

Imagination is a new psychological process for the child; it is
not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is
totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human
form of conscious activity.
— Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

Contents
Preface xiii
Introduction xvii
I QUESTIONS 1
1 What Sort of Evolution? 5
1.1 Intuitive Debut 6
1.2 An Assortment of Puzzles 9
1.3 Possible Explanations 13
1.4 Evolutionary Turn to Ontogeny 16
2 What Sort of Ontogeny? 29
2.1 The Ape Connection 30
2.2 Sociocultural Activism 34
2.3 Unique Ontogeny for Unique Thoughts 38
2.4 Intuitive Psychology: The Driving Force 42
3 What Sort of Competence? 47
3.1 Identity Crises 49
3.2 The Competence Angle 56
3.3 Metamental Rehearsals 62
3.4 The Structure of the Argument 70