wittgenstein's private language argument and children's understanding of the mind

DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW, 17, 291–320 (1997)ARTICLE NO. DR970436

Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument and Children’sUnderstanding of the Mind

Derek E. Montgomery

Bradley University

A theoretical statement about children’s understanding of the mind is derivedfrom Wittgenstein’s private language argument. Wittgenstein argued that under-standing the mind is a process embedded in acquiring the rules governing the useof linguistic expressions about the mind. These rules are publicly agreed upon and,therefore, separable from one’s subjective phenomenological experiences. The im-plications of this argument for theories which hold that children’s understanding ofthe mind is based upon introspective insight (simulation view) and those which holdthat understanding the mind is based upon the acquisition of a theory (theory view)are discussed. Developmental evidence illustrating Wittgenstein’s private languageargument and its differences from the simulation and theory views is presented.Points of compatibility between the theory view and Wittgenstein’s private languageargument are discussed. The paper closes by framing Wittgenstein’s view in thebroader context of children’s linguistic and conceptual development and discussingthe implications of these relations for future research. 1997 Academic Press

Understanding why human action occurs is a foundational competencethat underlies the development of central concepts such as volition and hu-man selfhood. An increasing amount of empirical evidence suggests thatvery young children are actively engaged in considering the causes of humanaction in mentalistic terms (see Astington, 1993; Flavell & Miller, in press,for recent reviews of children’s developing thinking about the mind). In es-sence, young children appear to conceptualize the purpose of action to beneither random nor unknowable, but as attributable to a desire to achievesome goal. Moreover, they attribute a wide range of epistemic states, therebydemonstrating the awareness that interpersonal understanding involvesknowing when to attribute beliefs, knowledge, memories, and so forth toothers.

Young children’s attributions of mental states are particularly impressive

The author gratefully acknowledges the very helpful comments of Scott Miller, MelissaWelch-Ross, and Jeremy Carpendale on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper was writtenwhile the author was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (1RO3 MH 54528-01).

Address correspondence and reprint requests to the author at Department of Psychology,Bradley University, Peoria, IL 61625. E-mail address: [email protected].

2910273-2297/97 $25.00Copyright 1997 by Academic PressAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

292 DEREK E. MONTGOMERY

because, as philosophers have long framed the issue, it is not immediatelyobvious how other minds are knowable since mental states are abstract andcannot be seen or touched. This problem of other minds is even more sharplyfocused when one realizes that there is a dubious validity, at least on logicalgrounds, in inferring the nature and presence of the mental experiences ofeveryone else on the basis of a single case (one’s own). Taken together, theabstract and private nature of mind are features that pose an epistemologicaldilemma for anyone attempting to understand the development of the abilityto impute mental states to others. This ability is dependent upon childrenlearning to categorize the world so that they can consistently extend or re-strict attributions of the various mental concepts. The problem of other mindsis thus intertwined with issues related to conceptual development and catego-rization.

This paper begins with a summary of two prominent and particularly in-fluential theories of how children might solve the problem of other minds:a simulation view and a theory view. A brief overview of the two approachesas they relate to this specific problem will be presented by integrating thephilosophical and psychological literature pertaining to each. The purposeof each overview is to provide a context for presenting in detail a third per-spective that is based upon the writings of the noted philosopher LudwigWittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s private language argument bears directly onmany important issues regarding children’s thinking about the mind and yetthis argument has largely been absent from theoretical discussions about chil-dren’s development in this area (although see Olson, 1988). After the privatelanguage argument is contrasted with both the simulation and the theoryviews, Wittgenstein’s criteriological view (derived from the private languageargument) is discussed within a larger context of concept development. Thecriteriological view is then partially synthesized with a theory view. Thepaper concludes with a discussion of how issues related to language develop-ment speak to the private language argument and provide future directionsfor research.

SIMULATION AND THEORY VIEWS

Morton (1977) offers a helpful classification of three general methods bywhich the problem of knowing other minds might be solved. One approachis ‘‘working from the outside in’’ and involves learning to assign the wordmeanings of psychological terms to overt cues such as distinctive patterns ofbehavior. Terms signifying ‘‘knowledge,’’ for example, might be consideredappropriate when behavioral signs (correct outcomes to problems, perhaps)are present. These overt cues signify the presence of the mental state bothfor self and for other. A second method is ‘‘self-centered’’ or ‘‘working fromthe inside out’’ and assumes that self knowledge is a prerequisite for knowingothers. For example, one could be said to have acquired the concept of voli-tion simply by experiencing it firsthand. By drawing analogies between one-

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self and others, the same first person experience of volition can then be im-puted to others. The distinction between these two methods, roughlyspeaking, is that mentalistic concepts may emerge either as public conceptsembedded in external cues (criteriological view) or instead as private con-cepts that are generalized to others via analogy (simulation view). A thirdperspective described by Morton (1977) supposes that through experienceand socialization children acquire a small repertoire of principles and as-sumptions pertaining to the interrelation of mind and body. These principlesand assumptions are theory-like in that they postulate unobservables (i.e.,mental states) that are causally related to each other and to the behavior ofothers in law-like, predictable ways. Mental states are, therefore, understoodwithin the framework of a conceptual system that interrelates inward andoutward experiences. Morton’s (1977) brief taxonomy neatly summarizesimportant distinctions among the criteriological, simulation, and theoryviews. Each of these perspectives is discussed more fully below.

First, a simulation view clearly emphasizes the importance of first personphenomenological experiences (e.g., Goldman, 1993). Although accountsdiffer somewhat among various philosophers and psychologists in the detailsof how the problem of other minds is solved via this method, the essentialargument common to them all is that imputing a mental state to anotherentails (a) imagining oneself in the situation of the other and (b) assuminga similarity between one’s imagined mental state in that situation and theother’s experienced mental state. In short, humans have privileged access totheir own mental experiences and infer the presence of those same internalexperiences in others on the basis of analogy. As Bertrand Russell (1948/1991, p. 90) succinctly states the case: ‘‘We know, from observation of our-selves, a causal law of the form ‘A causes B,’ where A is a ‘thought’ andB a physical occurrence. We sometimes observe a B when we cannot observeany A: we then infer an unobserved A’’ (emphasis added). To illustrate, achild may associate the phenomenological experience of fear with the experi-ence of being left alone with a baby-sitter and will therefore assume thatwhen another person is left alone with a baby-sitter then that person is fearfultoo. The experience of fear is the same for others as it is for oneself. Develop-ment occurs by adjusting for individual differences between oneself and oth-ers and incorporating those differences into the simulation (Gordon, 1986)and also by attributing increasingly wider ranges of possible mental experi-ences, including those that are counterfactual (Harris, 1991).

The simulation viewpoint owes much to the Cartesian notion of the trans-parency of mind. Since one need only have a belief, desire, or emotion toknow what each is, first person psychological experience is the mechanismby which psychological concepts develop. The transparency of the mindmeans that sincere first person statements are considered incorrigible; thatis, the inward perception of one’s own mind is beyond correction (Shoe-maker, 1963). In other words, the status of first person phenomenological


experience is privileged in that the nature of the experience cannot be chal-lenged by another. The alleged privacy and incorrigibility of privileged ac-cess mean that psychological statements about oneself can be made indepen-dently of outward bodily or behavioral signs. For example, remembering ahappy event from the day before need not entail a behavioral sign (a smileor a verbal report, perhaps) confirming the first person experience of thememory. Thus, an assumption of independence between the phenomenologi-cal and the behavioral is characteristic of a simulation view and clearly distin-guishes it from the criteriological view described below.

According to a theory view, the meanings of psychological concepts arederived neither from first person experience nor from conceptual connectionsformed between terms and observable criteria. Instead, meaning is derivedfrom a set of principles that relate mentalistic terms to one another suchthat their meanings are conceptually interdependent (e.g., Churchland, 1984).This means that mental states are defined by their causal relation with eachother (e.g., Armstrong, 1981; Lewis, 1972). For example, to understand whatan intention is, one must understand what it means to have a belief (theknowledge that X will satisfy goal Y) and a desire (the desire for Y explainsthe intention to obtain Y via X). The proposal that children’s understandingof the mind is theory-like because of this coherent interconnection of thevarious mental states (Wellman, 1990) will be a focus of this paper sincethe claim so clearly contrasts with a criteriological view.

The coherent conceptual system within which mental states are definedand understood provides the basis for knowing other minds since this concep-tual scheme provides the basis for inferring the presence of mental experi-ences for self and other. Knowledge of other minds is not, in contrast, basedupon empirical correlates between outward signs and mental states because‘‘there is no set of observable activities in self or other that consistentlycorrelates with inferred mental states’’ (Wellman, 1990, p. 95). There are no‘‘neutral observational data’’ as such because a ‘‘theoretical lens’’ organizesobservable data (Wellman, 1990, p. 95; see also Murphy & Medin, 1985).The presence of a behavioral sign is insufficient for imputing a mental statebecause the ‘‘theoretical lens’’ postulates mediating circumstances (i.e.,other mental states) that override misleading or inaccurate signs (e.g., Put-nam, 1975). To illustrate, apparent satisfaction may typically indicate thataction resulting in the achievement of an outcome was intended; however, itis clearly the case that one’s action may unintentionally result in a satisfying,desired outcome. For example, one could be unintentionally taking the wrongexit off of a highway but, because of a mistaken belief about the correctroute needed to arrive at the destination, one could inadvertently end upachieving the goal that was really desired (arriving at the intended destina-tion) (see Searle, 1983). This scenario illustrates that, according to the theoryview, the key to understanding other minds must involve not simply a rela-tion between a ‘‘psychological state and a behavior-indicator’’ but a relation


between ‘‘two different psychological states’’ (Putnam, 1975, p. 353).Again, this is because, as noted earlier, a mental state derives its meaningfrom its interconnection with other mental states. This emphasis on the inter-dependency of mental terms contrasts with the criteriological view thatmeanings of mental states are derived from the criteria (behavior indicators)that signify the presence of the mental state rather than via the conceptualinterrelation of various mental terms.

THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT

The Inadequacy of Introspection

Curiously, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind has largely been absentfrom theoretical discussions of children’s thinking about the mind. However,Wittgenstein’s writings have long been discussed by philosophers of mind(see Budd, 1989; Pitcher, 1968; Suter, 1989, for helpful reviews) and hisideas remain of current interest (Gillett, 1994) even though the posthumouspublication of his Philosophical Investigations occurred over 40 years ago.Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophical problems was to critique linguisticbehavior because he believed philosophical problems could be solved by acareful analysis of the linguistic terms in which the problems and sur-rounding issues of philosophy were expressed. Philosophical investigationis ‘‘a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problemsby clearing misunderstandings away’’ (1953, para 90). Philosophical puzzlesarise only ‘‘when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doingwork’’ (1953, para 132). Accordingly, insight into the problem of otherminds should result from analyzing the way mental terms are used in every-day situations.

For Wittgenstein, the process of critiquing and understanding a languageis analogous to the process of understanding a game; for example, rules arenecessary to determine the applicability, accuracy, meaning, and so forthof words or sentences just as rules are necessary for understanding whichmaneuvers are acceptable given the rules governing any type of game (seeChiara & Fodor, 1965; Kripke, 1982; Russell, 1987). To imbue meaning intothe behavior of a baseball player running at a right angle after hitting apitched ball, one must be aware of the rules of the game of baseball. Violatingthe rule, perhaps running toward third base rather than first base after hittingthe ball, results in the action having no meaning to the community of observ-ers. So too, a word, ‘‘table’’ for example, has meaning to the extent thatthere are rules that provide criteria to specify when ‘‘table’’ is appropriateto use and when its use is inappropriate. Criteria, therefore, (a) justify thecorrectness of using a word and (b) are public since they are shared by allmembers playing the ‘‘game.’’

However, it is common to suppose that mental words are different fromother linguistic terms regarding the necessity of criteria and rules because


of the presumed privileged access to phenomenological experiences that aredenoted by mental terms. Recall that the sincerity of statements such as ‘‘Iam experiencing a sensation of terror’’ or ‘‘I am thinking about rain’’ cannotbe challenged by another person if one accepts the Cartesian model of mind(Malcolm, 1954). Objective criteria are not needed for making first personstatements within the simulation view because internal observation and intro-spection (the means by which mental concepts are supposedly learned) areunmediated and incorrigible. For example, by experiencing a desire childrenlearn what one is; therefore, this subjective experience might be said to bethe defining feature of what a desire is. Once defined in this fashion, thesame phenomenological experience that signifies a mentalistic concept, suchas desire, is then imputed to others in appropriate circumstances. This processpermits a private language of the mind to be formed, with the meaning ofeach mental term being acquired via introspection. The language is privatebecause words are defined with reference to one’s inner experiences. Witt-genstein, however, argues against the plausibility of such a private language,claiming, in fact, that it is no language at all (see Kripke, 1982).

This is so, Wittgenstein states, because ‘‘it is not possible to obey a ruleprivately: otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the samething as obeying it’’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, para 202). In other words, thereare no rules governing the use of a private language because the only proofof whether one is following a rule within a private language is one’s ownsubjective impression. Relying on one’s own memory of the qualitative feelof a mental state and conceptualizing and defining the state in that fashionis like purchasing several copies of the same newspaper to ensure oneselfof its reporting accuracy (Wittgenstein, 1953, para 265). Clearly, the determi-nation of accuracy must be a matter of public verification and not be basedupon repeated subjective impressions. Moreover, relying upon the memoryof past phenomenological experiences to establish private meanings is a du-bious process since losing track of the relation between symbol (word) andthe internal experience is clearly possible. In other words, one can be de-ceived by one’s memory and suffer ‘‘linguistic amnesia’’ by forgetting‘‘which expressions respectively denote which kinds of sensations’’ (Wright,1989, p. 627). Once a phenomenological experience is mislabeled or labeleddifferently, then what criterion will determine which label is the correct one?In sum, Wittgenstein argues against the possibility of a private languagebecause ‘‘proof that I am following a rule must appeal to something indepen-dent of my impression that I am’’ (Malcolm, 1954, p. 532). Without indepen-dent verification there can be no rules and, hence, no language. The possibil-ity of misidentification and memory failure undercuts any legitimacy to theclaim ‘‘I know what I am experiencing because I have experienced this be-fore.’’ If one’s introspective capabilities are limited or fallible, then subjec-tive experiences labeled X today may not be the same experiences labeledX yesterday.


Current developmental evidence is compatible with Wittgenstein’s argu-ments and nicely illustrates his premise regarding the unreliability of theintrospective process. Preschoolers have been shown to misremember thecontent of their thinking (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995), to fail to recallvery recent experiences such as changes in their beliefs (e.g., Gopnik, 1993)or transitions from ignorance to knowledge (Taylor, Esbensen, & Bennett,1994), and to confuse whether they were really performing an action minutesearlier or just imagining or pretending to do it (e.g., Parker, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). To illustrate, a consistent and intriguing finding is children’smislabeling of their prior belief on the well-known ‘‘unexpected contentstask’’ (e.g., Gopnik & Astington, 1988). Three-year-olds who explicitly statetheir belief about the contents of a familiar package (such as a crayon box)will mislabel that stated belief moments later when shown that reality (e.g.,the crayon box contains candles) does not match the earlier stated belief.This finding has been replicated many times (e.g., Wimmer & Hartl, 1991;Miller, Holmes, Gitten, & Danbury, 1997) and signifies the fallibility ofyoung children’s attempts to recapture accurately the nature of their priorthoughts.

In addition, young children appear to be indifferent to their phenomeno-logical experiences. To illustrate, in an important set of recent studies investi-gating preschoolers’ introspective capabilities Flavell et al. (1995) presenteda series of tasks to preschoolers in which mental experiences were inducedand then, shortly thereafter, the children were asked to reflect upon thoseexperiences. For example, 5-year-olds were asked to solve simple problemssuch as determining which of two crayons was greater in length. After con-veying a solution to the problem the children were moved to a differentlocation and their attention was drawn toward a new object (e.g., a doll).While attending to the new object, children were asked to indicate whetherthey had been thinking about anything moments earlier when they had beenproblem-solving. Approximately half of the children denied having thoughtabout anything even though all had articulated an answer to the problemthey had been asked to solve. These results occurred despite extensive pre-training about the phrase ‘‘thinking about something’’ and are consistentwith preschoolers’ apparent assumption that a person can simultaneously beawake and unthinking (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1993). Importantly, chil-dren’s recall of physical events was significantly better than their recall oftheir thoughts even though the time span (a minute or two) was the samefor both. Moreover, when asked about whether they had been thinking aboutobjects that were irrelevant to the task and not even visible when the problemwas being solved, a majority of young children answered affirmatively.

Consider these results in light of the circumstances Wittgenstein claimsmust be met for one to possibly have a private language in which the lan-guage signifying internal sensations is meaningful because it is rule-gov-erned. One would need, for example, to put an ‘‘S’’ in a diary each time a


specific internal sensation occurred. The word/sign S would thus signify thespecific phenomenological experience. (As discussed below, even if onewere able to do this S would have no meaning to anyone other than theprivate linguist.) Thus, the mental term S is defined, via introspection, as‘‘the sensation that I feel and call S.’’ When a child imputes the term S toself or other, the child is defining the term on the basis of an associationbetween the present experience and the same type of experiences that werepreviously felt. In contrast to this scenario, the developmental results justcited clearly suggest that preschoolers have difficulty recalling or recon-structing the previous nature of their mental experiences. If young childrenhave ‘‘amnesia’’ about thoughts that occurred a minute earlier, even afterreceiving extensive pretraining, then Wittgenstein’s argument that introspec-tion is a questionable method for defining a mental concept seems crediblenot only on logical grounds but also on empirical grounds. In fact, the empiri-cal evidence from Flavell and colleagues suggests that preschoolers seem tobe so limited in their introspective abilities that they often do not even reportthat they are thinking. Wittgenstein’s argument that introspection is fallible,unreliable, and no basis for forming a language employing mental termsappears particularly insightful and accurate in this light.

Harris (1994), however, has pointed out that although preschoolers maynot always ‘‘retrospect’’ with a high degree of accuracy, they do often suc-ceed at reporting their current mental experiences; for example, they cor-rectly articulate what they currently want or believe (e.g., Baron-Cohen,1991; Gopnik & Slaughter, 1991). Their success is taken to illustrate theintrospective awareness so critical to the simulation viewpoint. However,preschoolers’ accuracy in saying what they currently ‘‘want’’ or ‘‘think’’does not address Wittgenstein’s more fundamental question of how any suchdemonstrations of accuracy could possibly develop in the first place. Theprivate language argument does not hold that children cannot have or some-times label experiences; instead, the emphasis for Wittgenstein is that thereliability of the introspective process is far from perfect. The thrust of theargument, therefore, is that knowing when to report a mental state (‘‘I wantX,’’ for example) cannot be acquired on the basis of associative introspectiveexperiences. The introspective process is unreliable and, as evidenced above,children appear to be indifferent to past phenomenological experiences. Con-sequently, the meaning of the mental states is not derived from introspection.Instead, as argued below, avowals such as ‘‘I want X’’ reflect the child’sacquisition of the meaning of the avowal through acquiring the public rulesand criteria that govern its use.

The Need for Criteria

If introspection is the basis by which the meanings of mental terms areestablished, then, Wittgenstein asks, how can the meanings be publicly


shared? The absence of objective criteria means that the same word mayhave different meanings for different persons. A private language in whichthe meanings of various mental terms are acquired via subjective sense im-pressions alone makes impossible the public use of these terms since thesame term could be referring to very different subjective experiences withinthe community of language users. ‘‘Mental state S is when I feel like this’’is of no use in explaining the meaning of S to another. Wittgenstein (1953,para 350) writes,

But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he hasjust the same as I have so often had—This gets us no further. It is as if I were tosay: ‘‘You surely know what ‘it is 5 o’clock here’ means; so you also know what‘it’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same time thereas it is here when it is 5 o’clock.

In other words, if there are no shared objective criteria then there is no basisupon which to be sure that two persons are talking about the same experiencewhen using the same word. Thus, the simulation view is, at best, incompletebecause it underemphasizes the need for a word learning environment thatprovides rules and criteria governing the usage of mental terms. Interestingly,unlike many behaviorists who reject introspection because it is private andcannot be publicly verified, Wittgenstein rejects introspection because it can-not be private and must be subject to public rules in order for it to be mean-ingful (Chapman, 1987).

Public observables serving as criteria are essential in acquiring the mean-ing of psychological terms. Wittgenstein writes, ‘‘how does a human beinglearn the meaning of the names of sensation?- of the word ‘pain’ for example.Here is one possibility: words are connected with the primitive, the natural,expressions of the sensation and used in their place’’ (1953, para 244). Thatis to say, the communicative milieu in which the child learns words mustoften involve the presence of an observable referent of some sort with whichthe teacher can define the word. Thus, Wittgenstein continues, ‘‘What wouldit be like if human beings showed no outward signs of pain (did not groan,grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of theword ‘toothache’’’ (1953, para 257). Again, the implication is that the child’searly usage of mental terms is conjoined with nonverbal, natural expressionsand the presence of these nonverbal signs is used by parents as criteria ofcorrectness (Malcolm, 1954).

A generally agreed upon definition of a criterion in Wittgenstein’s senseis that it is ‘‘something by which one may be justified in saying that thething is so and by whose absence one may be justified in saying that thething is not so’’ (Albritton, 1959/1968 p. 244). Thus, criteria are public signsproviding justification for imputing the mental state they signify. Since crite-ria are justifications for imputing a mental state, they must be more than a


covariant of a state (i.e., a symptom); they must hold a definitional relation.A term may be applicable in the absence of a symptom but when the criterionis removed or altered, or the opposite occurs, the applicability of the termis affected (see Suter, 1989). To illustrate, when asked what the sum of 21 2 is a demonstration of correctness might be considered a criterial attributeof having knowledge of this simple mathematical problem. The absence ofsuch demonstrations, or the presence of contrasting occurrences such as an-swering incorrectly, alters the likelihood of saying the person knows the factin question.

Although criteria provide ‘‘necessarily good evidence’’ for the use of amental term in any particular situation, it is important to note that they donot logically entail the correctness of that term. Engaging in pretense ordeception, for example, is a circumstance in which one may satisfy the out-ward criteria of mental state X but the term for that specific state is inapplica-ble. For instance, a person might pretend to be in pain and satisfy the criteriasignifying the appropriateness of saying one is in pain (e.g., facial grimaces)but yet have no actual pain. Thus, the notion of a criterion should not beconfused with conventional behaviorist accounts that the mental is reducibleto the physical. Wittgenstein did not endorse the notion that psychologicalconcepts can be reduced to necessary and sufficient behavioral conditions(see Kripke, 1982).

Additionally, in Wittgenstein’s view mental terms are not synonymouswith private events that elicit the terms in a law-like fashion (Erneling, 1993;Malcolm, 1971). This view is in contrast to Skinner’s suggestion (1953) thata mental term initially acquired by the contingencies established between ateacher and a speaker can eventually gain its meaning via its association witha private event. Skinner (1953, p. 262) proposed that mental terms ‘‘areestablished as part of a repertoire when the individual is behaving publicly.Private stimuli, generated in addition to the public manifestations, then gainthe necessary degree of control. Later when these private stimuli occur alone,the individual may respond to them.’’ To illustrate this point, Skinner sug-gests that a statement of intent, ‘‘ ‘I was on the point of going home,’ ’’ isequivalent to the statement ‘‘ ‘I observed events in myself which characteris-tically precede or accompany my going home’ ’’ (Skinner, 1953, p. 262).Malcolm (1971) cautions that Skinner’s analysis implies that a mental termcan have two conceptualizations, one elicited by a private stimulus (‘‘eventsin myself’’) that is applied to the self and another conceptualization elicitedby public stimuli that is applied to others. Wittgenstein objects to the notionthat past associative experiences permit self-observation to provide themeaning of a mental concept (e.g., Wittgenstein, 1953, paras 354–357; 362).Instead, although a first person statement (e.g., ‘‘I want X’’) may sometimesbe elicited by a private event, the avowal has meaning to the speaker andcommunity only in the context of rules and criteria which, both parties have


learned, characterize the term (Malcolm, 1971). Criteria establish an equiva-lency in meaning between self and other.

THE CRITERIOLOGICAL VIEW

Empirical Illustrations

Wittgenstein’s purpose was not to provide a listing of criteria for variousmental states; nevertheless, it is possible to examine empirical evidence withthe aim of suggesting how the initial stages of children’s early understandingof the mind may be better characterized in some instances as criteriologicalrather than theory-like. Particularly relevant to the present discussion is re-search assessing whether children, when attempting to infer the presenceor absence of a mental state, are more influenced by considerations of theinterdependency of mental constructs (as predicted by a theory view) or in-stead by external criterial features. For example, the theory view holds thatthere are at least two requisite mental states that are defining features ofpretense: knowledge and intent (Lillard, 1994). One cannot represent a ba-nana as a telephone without knowledge that telephones exist. Further, onecannot be said to be pretending to talk into a telephone unless one is, in fact,intending that the banana is to be regarded as a telephone. Thus, pretenseprovides a clear illustration of how one term, ‘‘pretend,’’ is given meaningby being embedded within the framework of other mental states.

In contrast, Wittgenstein’s criteriological view would expect a child tobegin learning to understand and use the term ‘‘pretend’’ by relating it toovert signs rather than by relating it to other inward mental states. To con-sider how a child might come to acquire the word meaning from a criteriolog-ical standpoint, it is important to speculate about how a parent might teachthe child when the word is appropriate or inappropriate to use since learningthe meaning of a word is to learn ‘‘the technique for using the word’’ (Witt-genstein, 1967, para 418). A general guideline is that a parent must be ableto check whether a mental term is being used correctly by observing thechild’s behavior and the surrounding circumstances. To illustrate, Kripke(1982, pp. 99–100) asks, ‘‘When will adults attribute to a child a masteryof the avowal ‘I am in pain’?’’ The answer, he claims, is that ‘‘the adultwill endorse the child’s avowal if the child’s behavior (crying, agitated mo-tion etc.) and, perhaps, the external circumstances surrounding the child,indicate that he is in pain. If a child generally avows pain under such appro-priate behavioral and external circumstances and generally does not do sootherwise, the adult will say of him that he has mastered the avowal, ‘I amin pain’ ’’ (Kripke, 1982, p. 100). Specifically, the adult is looking forwhether criteria are present that ‘‘would lead others to agree that the termhas been used correctly’’ (Kripke, 1982, p. 100).

Accordingly, the word ‘‘pretend’’ would be inappropriately used if, for


example, the child was engaging in behavior entirely consistent with reality.One does not pretend to be making a telephone call if one really is doingso. Instead, behaving as if is a key component of pretense. If asked to ‘‘pre-tend to be a cat’’ a child is rewarded by behaving in ways characteristic ofa cat. Behaving as if is both external and conceptually related to the conceptof pretense such that in the absence of such behavior the child is not saidto be pretending (Woolley, 1995).

Lillard (1993) contrasted behaving as if X with the absence of knowledgeabout X to see which of the two was more influential in preschoolers’ attribu-tions of pretense. For example, 4- and 5-year-olds were told a story aboutsomeone who had never seen or heard of a kangaroo and, therefore, had noknowledge of ‘‘what a kangaroo is.’’ However, the person was ‘‘hoppingup and down,’’ thereby satisfying a potential criterion of pretense (behavingas if ). Preschoolers consistently indicated that such a person was, in fact,pretending to be a kangaroo. In general, Lillard found that children typicallysaid a person was pretending if that person was behaving as if X, regardlessof whether the person had pertinent knowledge about X or, indeed, whetherthe person was ‘‘thinking’’ about X (see also Perner, Baker, & Hutton, 1994).Moreover, a majority of children denied that a person was pretending if thatperson was thinking about X but was not behaving as if. Additionally, Lillard(1995) presented preschoolers with scenarios in which a person’s intentionsto not pretend contrasted with the appearance of that person’s actions. Forexample, children were told a story about a girl who was running ‘‘like adeer’’ even though she was ‘‘not trying to be like a deer.’’ The majority ofthe time 4-year-olds responded that the protagonist was pretending to be adeer. These experimental findings are consistent with naturalistic observa-tions which reveal that 4- and 5-year-olds talk about pretense almost exclu-sively in behavioral terms (e.g., ‘‘I am a rabbit’’) and infrequently in men-talistic terms in which they might speak about intentions to pretend or aboutthe contrast between pretend beliefs and true beliefs (Hall, Frank, & Ellison,1995).

The findings are consistent with a criteriological view; young children firstuse publicly observable characteristics to determine the presence or absenceof a mental state. In contrast to a theory view, the presence or absence ofpretense is not considered by young children to be a theoretical questionwith the answer being mediated by a network of mental terms such as intentand knowledge. When the criterion of behaving as if was counterposed tothese defining mental states, preschoolers often viewed the action itself asthe definitive clue whether the term signifying pretense was applicable tothe situation.

Research addressing developing conceptions of to know provides anotherillustration of the difference between understanding a term in a theory-likefashion and understanding it via its relation to overt defining criteria. Asnoted earlier, one might teach a child the meaning of ‘‘to know’’ by referring


to correct behavior. Correctness bears a conceptual relation to the mentalterm such that the removal or the converse of this criterion (e.g., if one be-haves incorrectly) alters the applicability of the term. Also, correct behaviorhas the important feature of being external and, therefore, publicly observ-able. In contrast, according to a theory view ‘‘knowledge’’ must be definedvia its relation to other mental states such as the processes of perception andattention. To take a simple example, one cannot be said to know the contentsinside of a box unless one can (a) gather enough information to deduce thehidden contents or (b) perceive the contents directly. Either way, gatheringinformation precedes knowledge and, accordingly, attributions of knowledgemust account for this conceptual interdependence.

It has been argued that 3-year-olds will accurately attribute knowledgebased upon whether a person has perceptual access to a particular fact inquestion (e.g., Pillow, 1989a; Pratt & Bryant, 1990; Woolley & Wellman,1993). Their apparent connecting of the mentalistic process of perceptionwith the mental state of knowledge seems to indicate a theory-like conceptionof knowledge. However, the conclusion that 3-year-olds understand the con-ceptual interdependence between perception and knowledge is tenuous forthree reasons. First, findings of early competence are not generally robust,with methodologically similar studies varying in whether 3-year-olds suc-ceed on perception–knowledge tasks (Montgomery, 1992; compare, for ex-ample, Pratt & Bryant, 1990, with Wimmer & Wiechbold, 1994). Second,3-year-olds struggle when the paradigm assessing their knowledge attribu-tions is extended beyond simply asking them to choose which of two protag-onists has attained knowledge when only one protagonist has had perceptualaccess. Three-year-olds, for example, often fail to indicate how they havecome to know something, not realizing that their own perceptual access wasthe source of their knowledge (O’Neill & Gopnik, 1991; Pillow, 1989a).Moreover, they apparently understand little about how perception causesknowledge since they confuse the effects of different modalities of percep-tion, overattributing, for example, knowledge about tactile aspects of an ob-ject when the object was only perceived visually (O’Neill, Astington, & Fla-vell, 1992). Third they do not appear to endorse a fundamental tenet of acausal understanding of the relation between perception and knowledge,namely, that the presence of the cause (perceptual access) generates the effect(knowledge). For example, 3-year-olds attribute knowledge to someone whowants to know something but who lacks perceptual access (Lyon, 1993) andunderattribute knowledge to someone if the message was perceived againstthe conveyer’s wishes (Montgomery & Miller, in press).

Taken together, these results suggest that 3-year-olds’ success on manyforms of the perception–knowledge tasks may be based upon an associa-tional strategy (Perner, 1991). That is, they may implicitly be aware thatknowledge (correct behavior) and perceptual activity often covary. Onlyaround age 4 do children appear to begin grasping the conceptual underpin-


ning to this association by generally exhibiting greater success than 3-year-olds on the tasks described above. However, even though 4-year-olds havea relatively firm grasp of the relation between perception and knowledge,they do not view this relation within a larger conceptual framework of othermental states and attributes. Preschoolers do not account for how differencesin beliefs and background knowledge will affect whether knowledge canbe gained from an informational source (e.g., Montgomery, 1993; Taylor,Cartwright, & Bowden, 1991), nor do they readily understand the relationbetween selective attention and the acquisition of knowledge (Pillow,1989b). Thus, a full-fledged theory-like conception of knowledge in whichthe concept is embedded in a network of other mental terms appears to havea relatively gradual development.

In contrast, evidence suggests that correct behavior has a reliable influenceon the attributions of knowledge made by young preschoolers (Perner, 1991).To illustrate, Johnson and Wellman (1980) compared the influence of out-ward correctness with perceptual access on children’s attributions of knowl-edge by asking them to guess which box contained a hidden object. Theirguess was then revealed to have been either correct or incorrect. Preschoolerswho had not seen the hiding place and were unsure of its location incorrectlyindicated that they had known rather than guessed the location when theirresponses were correct. In contrast, these children claimed to have not knownthe location when their guess was incorrect. The explicit demonstration ofbeing incorrect revealed to children the absence of knowledge, whereas theirlack of prior perceptual access to the critical information was not regardedas evidence that they had lacked knowledge. Even first-graders experiencedsome difficulty denying they had known something after correctly guessingthe answer. Using a similar procedure, Miscione, Marvin, O’Brien, andGreenberg (1978) concluded that many young children distinguish ‘‘know-ing’’ from ‘‘guessing’’ based upon the outcome of an action, saying they‘‘know’’ something when correct and that they had been ‘‘guessing’’ whentheir response to a test question was incorrect. More recently, Mitchell andRobinson (1990) found that 4- and 5-year-olds were more likely to overattri-bute knowledge to themselves about uncertain facts that had a clear perform-ative component (e.g., picking a card) versus those facts that lacked such acomponent and only required a ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ response. Such findings leadMitchell and Robinson (1994) to suggest that young children may have aperformative criterion by which knowledge about some fact is attributedwhenever one can perform on a task relevant to that fact (see also Esbensen,Taylor, & Stoess, 1997). Relatedly, the comprehension monitoring literatureindicates that young grade-school children need to be prompted to try toenact incomprehensible instructions (thereby revealing to the children theirincorrect performance) before realizing they do not know the informationprovided by the incomplete instructions (Markman, 1977).

The influence of outcome seems to be similarly manifest in children’s


conceptions of remembering and forgetting. ‘‘Remember’’ and ‘‘forget’’ aredefined by their interrelation with ‘‘knowing’’ according to the theory viewin that a person cannot be said to either remember or forget something thatwas not first known. Conversely, outward defining criteria of both remember-ing and forgetting may simply be, as with knowledge, the correctness ofbehavior. Lyon and Flavell (1994) report that 4-year-olds demonstrate a bur-geoning understanding of the importance of prior knowledge in that whentwo persons both display either correct or incorrect behavior only the onewho had previous knowledge is said to have ‘‘remembered’’ or ‘‘forgotten.’’By contrast, 3-year-olds showed little evidence of understanding the interre-lation of these mental states; instead, their success was largely limited toassociating ‘‘remember’’ with correct performance and ‘‘forget’’ with a fail-ure to engage in correct behavior (Lyon & Flavell, 1994). In Lyon and Fla-vell, the target person’s prior knowledge was made explicit by the experi-menter. However, when prior knowledge has to be inferred from priorinformational access, then even 4- and 5-year-olds do not relate previousknowledge to remember and forget. Instead, they say they have remembereda fact that they have, in fact, only correctly guessed (Johnson & Wellman,1980; Wellman & Johnson, 1979). Also, a majority of preschoolers claimthat someone has ‘‘forgotten’’ when present performance is incorrect eventhough the target person has not had previous knowledge of the fact in ques-tion (Wellman & Johnson, 1979). These findings further suggest an earlyreliance on overt criteria to understand what it means to know, remember,or forget. Preschoolers exhibit only a gradual interrelating of these variousconcepts in a fashion that would suggest the presence of a theory of mind.

Taken together, young children’s apparent reliance on overt criteria tosignify the presence of mental states such as pretense and knowledge con-trasts with the possibility that they first judge the presence or absence ofvarious mental states by appealing to a theoretical network that frames andmediates such decisions. These various findings, therefore, serve to illustrateWittgenstein’s argument that the presence of criteria is necessary for teach-ing the meanings of various mental terms to children and, also, for thengauging children’s correct use of these terms. Children use the criteria toconceptualize the mental state and to infer its presence or absence.

Concepts and Criteria

The criteriological view holds that children’s mental concepts are struc-tured and organized around perceptual properties. More specifically, percep-tually available criteria give meaning to a concept and guide extensions tonew instances and situations. This emphasis upon perceptual features as criti-cal influences on children’s early naming and categorization is largely com-patible with the similarity perspective on concept development. The similar-ity view maintains that category membership is extended on the basis ofshared features that exist among items and events (Gentner & Rattermann,


1991; Jones & Smith, 1993; Medin, Goldstone, & Gentner, 1993; Witt-genstein, 1953, para 67). Typically, these features are perceptually salientto the child (e.g., Jones & Smith, 1993; Smith, Jones, & Landau, 1996). Thecriteriological view is analogous to the similarity perspective by maintainingthat category membership (i.e., attributing a particular mental state to an-other) is determined on the basis of whether a new situation or event ischaracterized by a feature that is similar to the criterial feature(s) childrenhave already learned exemplifies a particular mental state.

In contrast to a similarity perspective, a theory view of concept develop-ment argues that children and adults focus on nonobvious functional andcausal–explanatory properties of a concept when classifying and defining it(Gelman & Coley, 1991; Keil, 1989; Murphy & Medin, 1985). Theoriesoften override perceptual appearances and classify on the basis of nonobvi-ous dimensions that are at the core of a concept and that cause categorymembers to be related (e.g., Gelman & Coley, 1991). The possibility ofbuilding concepts and categories out of similarities is criticized on thegrounds that a knowledge base (or theory) is needed to first specify the di-mensions for which similarity is important. The usefulness of similarity met-rics in classification and concept development is therefore dependent upontheories to first impose meaningful discriminations. For example, the rele-vant similarities among robins, ostriches, and toy models of robins dependupon which perceptual features are highlighted and considered theoreticallyimportant.

The need for theories to weight perceptual features rests upon the assump-tion that similarity-based classifications are nothing more than simple tabula-tions of correlated features. There is an arbitrariness inherent in simplymatching similarities and dissimilarities and then categorizing in this proba-bilistic fashion and Keil (1989) persuasively argues there are no clear ac-counts of how coherent adult-like theories (e.g., Murphy & Medin, 1985)would eventually emerge from such probabilistic tabulations. Thus, if criteriaare nothing more than empirical and associational tabulations that correlatewith a concept, then they must be dependent upon theories for meaning andshould be regarded as at the periphery rather than the core of a concept.However, recall that criteria, in Wittgenstein’s sense, hold a definitional rela-tion to the phenomena they signify. The meaning of the mental concept isintertwined with the perceptually available criteria that signify its presence.For example, ‘‘knowing’’ means to behave correctly, ‘‘lying’’ means tospeak falsely (see below), ‘‘pretending’’ means to behave as if, and so forth.Thus, the meanings of the various mentalistic concepts are intertwined withthe perceptually available criterial features in ways that standard tabulationsof similarity metrics are not.

In fact, Wittgenstein explicitly distinguishes criterial features from empiri-cal correlates (referring to the latter as ‘‘symptoms’’). He asks,


If medical science calls angina an inflammation caused by a particular bacillus, andwe ask in a particular case ‘why do you say this man has got angina?’ Then theanswer ‘I have found the bacillus so-and-so in his blood’ gives us the criterion, orwhat we may call the defining criterion of angina. I call ‘symptom’ a phenomenonof which experience has taught us that it coincided, in some way or other, with thephenomenon which is our defining criterion. (Wittgenstein, 1958, pp. 24–25)

Extending this distinction to mental terms, one might suggest that age, forexample, is a symptom of knowledge in that older adults typically knowmore than young children; however, knowledge is not attributed to an adultwho is behaving incorrectly nor is ignorance attributed to a young child be-having correctly.

Wittgenstein’s use of medical science to illustrate what he means by theterm ‘‘criterion’’ should not be taken as an endorsement that criteria arenecessary and defining features of the concept. Criteria are not immutablebut instead are determined by cultural convention. Conventions (includingscientific conventions; consider the various revisions of the DSM, for exam-ple) can alter the criteria signifying the presence of a concept (e.g., Witt-genstein, 1967, para 438). Wittgenstein explains, ‘‘We are unable to clearlycircumscribe the concepts we use; not because we don’t know their realdefinition, but because there is no real ‘definition’ to them. To suppose thatthere must be would be like supposing that whenever children play with aball they play a game according to strict rules’’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 25).

Since criteria are not necessary and defining features of category member-ship, Wittgenstein’s view should not be taken as a claim that children arerealists. He never claimed the mind could be reduced to external criteria(Kripke, 1982) and, in principle, defining a mental term via external criteriadoes not preclude acknowledging that the term denotes an internal experi-ence. The key for Wittgenstein is that the term, and thus the internal experi-ence, is given meaning to the language-user by the conventions of rules andcriteria that determine the proper use of the term. Thus, suggesting that themeanings of various mentalistic terms are conceptually tied to outward crite-rial signs does not necessarily imply that young preschoolers are incapableof making the ontological distinction between the mental and the physical(see Landau, Jones, & Smith, 1992). This point is relevant to Wellman’s(1990) proposal that theories provide ontological commitments and in thecase of a theory of mind ontological distinctions are made by young childrenbetween the mental and the physical domains. The criteriological view iscompatible with the assertion ‘‘that there is no stage when mental verbsare produced and understood exclusively in terms of objective reference’’(Wellman & Estes, 1987, p. 149).

Criteria Precede Theories

The criteriological view adopted in this paper does not exclude the possi-bility that children’s understanding of the mind is eventually theory-like. The


possibility being raised in this paper is that the sequence in which youngchildren understand the mind often proceeds from a criteriological under-standing to a theory-like understanding. Conceptualizing various mentalterms by interrelating them to one another and, thereby, forming a conceptualand theoretical framework emerges after first conceptualizing their meaningvia the external criteria that determine the use of mental terms. The theoryview is no doubt correct in contending that there are instances in which acriteriological view is insufficient and leads to inaccurate and incompletementalistic attributions. For example, there are times when a person knowssomething but behaves incorrectly; a theoretical framework within which‘‘know’’ is interconnected with other mental states can help explain suchcircumstances, providing the conceptual framework from which possibilitiessuch as the person being ‘‘absent-minded,’’ ‘‘inattentive,’’ or ‘‘deceptive’’can be understood. It may be that such exceptions to the criteriological vieware the very evidences needed to compel children to interrelate the variousmentalistic concepts and go beyond a criteriological understanding to an in-creasingly theoretical view of the mind. Presumably, children are active play-ers in language games and play a crucial role in development by activelyseeking ‘‘rule clarifications’’ in the language game of the mind that they areengaged in.

Moving from a strict reliance on overt criteria to considerations of nonper-ceptual, theoretical relations of mental states does not, however, mean thatthe early-learned criterial features become increasingly irrelevant with devel-opment. If criteria are used by parents to check the child’s proper use of theterm then it follows that these criterial features must play a role in adults’attributions of mental states. Criteria must, therefore, play a central role indefining a mental concept for both children and adults. This means that evenwhen the child begins exhibiting some theory-like conceptions of the mind,criterial features will still prove influential. Recall, for example, that by age4 children understand the need for perceptual access in the formation ofknowledge (an apparent theory-like connection). Nevertheless, they still re-gard themselves as having known something, in the absence of perceptualaccess, when present performance is correct. Analogously, even if older pre-schoolers can be shown to have an implicit awareness that some mental con-cepts (such as intent) are conceptually related to pretense, the criterion ofbehaving as if would still be expected to be the primary influence on theirattributions of pretense. As Woolley (1995, p. 183) suggests, it ‘‘might bethat young children do in fact have some awareness of the mental nature ofpretense, but the actions that accompany pretense are so salient that childrenmost often think of pretense primarily in terms of these actions.’’ The pre-school years might thus be characterized as development from a strict reli-ance on criteria (ages 2 to 4, perhaps) to a point where simple theory-likeunderstandings coexist with a criteriological understanding of the mind. Therelative influence of criteria may gradually shift during the preschool years


to the point where in the early grade school years (after age 6?) if theoreticalrelations mandate the attribution of one mental state and criterial featuresmandate another, the former will often exert more influence since the theoret-ical relations provide a more complete and exhaustive justification.

This developmental sequence presupposes that the language game of themind develops in complexity as new rules are added to accommodatechanges and advancements in the game for which old rules prove to be insuf-ficient (Brose, 1987). Such a process does not entail proposing that develop-mental change is the result of theory change involving successive conceptualrevolutions. To illustrate the distinction between these two different charac-terizations of development, consider 4-year-olds’ emerging grasp of the con-cept of false beliefs (see Flavell & Miller, in press, for a recent review of thisliterature). This development is an often cited illustration of theory change inthat children’s theory of mind progresses from conceptualizing the mind asa reflection of reality to a new awareness that the mind represents realityand can, therefore, represent propositions inconsistent with the true state ofaffairs found in the world (e.g., Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). If children’sunderstanding of the mind is, in essence, learning to play a language gameas Wittgenstein argues, then one might not expect pervasive errors such as3-year-olds’ failure to attribute false beliefs. This is so, Gopnik (1990, p. 194)points out, because one does not generally ‘‘adhere to wrong versions ofsocial conventions; instead you either internalize the convention or youdon’t.’’ However, Gopnik’s argument does not account for the possibilitythat children fail standard false belief tasks because they are simply playinga more basic and primitive language game than are adults. An analogy (withmore merit than the surface differences appear to warrant) can be made bycomparing understanding false beliefs with grasping the infield fly rule inthe game of baseball.

The infield fly rule specifies that a batter who hits a pop fly to an infielderis automatically called out when, for example, a baserunner is on first baseand another is on second base and there are less than two outs. The batteris called out even if the infielder drops the ball.1 Thus, the fundamental as-sumption (rule) that a batter is safe if a pop fly is dropped must be overriddenin this special circumstance. Analogously, the most common and adaptiveassumption in the language game of the mind is that mental states and realitycoincide (Mitchell, 1994). Questioning the veracity of every mental statebeing imputed would be a cumbersome and largely unproductive task. There-

1 This is so because if the ball is dropped the baserunners are obligated to leave their basebut if it is caught they must, essentially, remain on their base. A deceptive infielder couldappear ready to catch the pop fly but let the ball drop at the last moment. The baserunnerswho assumed they were obligated to remain on their base because the ball was going to becaught would then be suddenly obligated to run to the next base. The infielder who purposefullydropped the ball could then easily throw out the runners forced to advance to the next base.


fore, the exception to the assumption that beliefs are true (false beliefs) isa secondary consideration when learning to play the language game sinceexceptions to a rule will presumably be considered only after the rule hasbeen acquired and accepted as certain (Brose, 1987). In other words, childrencan play the game of baseball (a social convention) much as adults do evenwithout understanding the infield fly rule. The game the children are playingsimply proceeds if a rule has been unknowingly violated. So too, preschool-ers who lack an understanding of false belief can still participate in the lan-guage game of the mind, as evidenced by the relatively rich mental lexiconpossessed by 2- and 3-year-olds (Bartsch & Wellman, 1995).

The point is that if a child plays a game frequently (the language gameof the mind is played every day) then the need to acquire more complex ruleswill eventually emerge, but only after the fundamentals have been mastered.Eventually, occasions will arise that result in confusion if the infield fly ruleis not invoked and, as a result, children must seek out terms and rules toexplain this new conceptual dilemma. Of course, when the child needs a ruleclarification, she turns to adult members who are proficient and skilled atthe game being played. Thus, although children’s understanding of false be-liefs is an important and very intriguing development, its stage-like emer-gence is not damaging to Wittgenstein’s argument. The acquisition of a lan-guage game does not entail that the game will be acquired in an all-or-nothingfashion. In fact, one would expect developmental progression from rules thatare vital to the game and easy to teach to an eventual grasp of the game’ssubtleties.

This emphasis upon the child as an active player in language games ofthe mind warrants the title of ‘‘Piagetianized Wittgensteinianism’’ (Russell,1987).2 Knowledge about the mind is not a cultural convention that childrenpassively acquire from direct instruction in the same way that they mightlearn about American History or the Dewey decimal system. Knowledgeabout the mind is influenced by active participation in language games andby using a language; recall that Wittgenstein maintains that the meanings ofwords are found in their usage (Wittgenstein, 1967, para 418). The processof understanding the mind is a ‘‘collaborative construction’’ between adultsand children (Nelson, 1996).

FUTURE DIRECTIONS: THE LANGUAGE GAME

In sum, Wittgenstein’s private language argument emphasizes the criticalroles of (a) talking about mental states and (b) recognizing them in the behav-ior and expressions of others. Generally speaking, if children’s early under-

2 Of course, the differences between Piaget and Wittgenstein should not be glossed: Witt-genstein’s perspective is certainly opposed to the view commonly attributed to Piaget thatthought precedes language, with language being a dependent variable upon which conceptsare mapped for the purposes of communication.


standing of the mind can be characterized as a language game in which theyare learning about the mind by learning to talk about it, then one shouldexpect language-related features of children’s development to be fertilegrounds for finding factors that cause individual differences in understandingthe mind. It is encouraging, therefore, that recent research has consistentlyrevealed the presence of such correlations (Astington, 1996). For example,Jenkins and Astington (1996) found a positive relation between preschoolers’overall language ability and their false belief understanding, leading to theproposal (p. 76) that ‘‘theory of mind development and language develop-ment are fundamentally related and interdependent.’’ This relation is alsofound in children with autism, although the reasons for the correlation maydiffer from those found among children in typical populations (Happe, 1995).Naturally, any correlation between linguistic competence and knowledgeabout the mind is open to at least two alternative explanations. It could bethat advances in children’s understanding of the mind result in greater com-municative competence and, hence, greater linguistic advancement. The con-verse, more consistent with Wittgenstein’s perspective, is that greater lin-guistic competence will positively influence children’s understanding of themind. Astington and Jenkins (1995) have presented much needed longitudi-nal evidence bearing on these perspectives. They observed significant corre-lations between a test of children’s linguistic competence (both semantic andsyntactic aspects were measured) and a later measurement of subsequentperformance on standard theory of mind tasks. The reverse relation, successon theory of mind tasks preceding increases in linguistic ability, did notoccur.

Longitudinal evidence relating features of children’s language-learningenvironment with subsequent understanding of the mind conveys a similarpicture of the importance of language in children’s developing understandingof the mind. For example, Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, and Young-blade (1991) have reported a correlation between the frequency with whichfamilies talked about emotional feelings and children’s performance on tasksof emotional understanding that were conducted 7 months later (see also,Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991). Similarly, the frequency with whichmothers used mental terms when their children were 2 years old was posi-tively correlated to the frequency with which the children used mental termsa year later (Furrow, Moore, Davidge, & Chiasson, 1992). Also, Moore,Furrow, Chiasson, and Patriquin (1994) have presented longitudinal evi-dence revealing that the frequency of maternal use of belief terms (e.g.,know, think, guess) when children were 2 years old was positively relatedto children’s subsequent comprehension of mental terms at age 4.

Clearly, the important questions following from such findings must ad-dress which factors are causing these correlations to occur. A criteriologicalview provides one avenue of inquiry by suggesting that the success withwhich children are taught to conceptualize mental states via criterial features


will be directly related to the acquisition of a mentalistic lexicon and, relat-edly, their general understanding of the mind. This view shares the assump-tions underlying some social constructivist accounts of development (mostnotably Vygotskian accounts) that emphasize the role of language in theformation of concepts and the importance of cultural conventions in imbuingthese concepts with meaning (Astington, 1996).3 Of course, to these socialconstructivist views Wittgenstein contributes the important considerationsof why meaning must be constructed on the social plane (private languageargument) and how that might be accomplished (his discussion of criteria).

A rich empirical literature exists that is devoted to children’s acquisitionand extension of object labels (e.g., Golinkoff, Mervis, & Hirsh-Pasek, 1994;Markman, 1989) and drawing on this literature may prove especially helpfulin examining young children’s acquisition of mental terms. For instance,children’s early word learning can be characterized as fast (Wilkinson,Dube, & McIlvane, 1996) and the rapidity with which children acquire andextend terms suggests the need for principles or constraints that greatly nar-row the possible meanings of any one word (Markman, 1989). It is difficultto imagine how words could be acquired through ostensive definitions alone,without some sort of explicit or implicit constraining features (e.g., Witt-genstein, 1953, para 28) and it would be of interest to examine whethersuch principles play a critical role in children’s acquisition of the mentalisticlexicon.

Recently, Golinkoff and colleagues (Golinkoff et al., 1994; Golinkoff,Hirsh-Pasek, Mervis, Frawley, & Parillo, 1995) have organized and com-bined the proposals of various researchers and have provided a comprehen-sive framework of important principles that they suggest guide early wordlearning. Of particular interest to the present discussion is the principle ofextendibility, that is, the principle that terms can apply to more than theoriginal referent. What is important from a criteriological view is that exten-sion among word learners is often based upon shared perceptual features forboth object labels (e.g., Smith et al., 1996) and verbs (Golinkoff et al., 1995).If, as Wittgenstein asserts, mental terms are essentially no different than otherlinguistic terms, then perceptual similarity should also play an important rolein the early extension of mental verbs. As already noted, the importance ofcriterial features in word learning clearly implies a critical role for perceptionin acquiring the meaning, and basis for extension, of mental terms. A secondprinciple of interest is the apparent reluctance young children have in label-

3 It should be noted that Wittgenstein’s discussion of the role of language in affectingthought distinguishes his perspective from some other social constructivist theorists (e.g., Ro-goff, 1990). As Nelson (1996, p. 20) states, ‘‘It is somewhat surprising that even among thosewho see the child essentially as a product of the social-cultural world, language per se is notfor most a focus; rather, the emphasis is on the child’s participation in activities guided byadults.’’


ing the same object or event with more than one term (see, especially, Clark,1987; Markman, 1989). If criterial features are important in teaching themeaning and applicability of mental terms, then children may initially findit difficult to use a new label or term for a situation in which a criterion ispresent. For example, if correct behavior signifies knowledge, then youngchildren may find it particularly difficult to label a situation in which some-one is correct as something other than knowledge (e.g., ‘‘guessing’’). Thisis consistent with the evidence reviewed earlier.

Future research examining the social environment in which the mentalisticlexicon is acquired would also be useful. Little is known, for example, abouthow parents would attempt to teach children experiencing difficulty on stan-dard ‘‘theory of mind’’ tasks or how parents react in general to young chil-dren’s incorrect uses of mental terms. Do parents provide ‘‘negative evi-dence’’ in such circumstances (e.g., Bohannon, MacWhinney, & Snow,1990) and would such restatements and corrections benefit the child (e.g.,Farrar, 1992)? Observing parents might convey whether negative evidencewould take the form of teaching theory-like postulates and principles, point-ing out the criteria that have been violated in the language game, or somecombination of both methods.

Relatedly, it may be beneficial simply to ask parents how they teach themeanings of various mentalistic terms to children. Of course, asking parentsto state, hypothetically, how they teach children is no substitute for naturalis-tic observations. However, such questioning provides a relatively shorthandcommunication of information about how the word learning process mightproceed and also provides information about which aspects of this processshould be closely examined during subsequent naturalistic observations. Byway of illustration, consider the questioning of mothers about how they teachtheir young children what it means to ‘‘lie’’ to another (Stouthamer-Loeber,1991). Within a theory view, a ‘‘lie’’ is an untruthful utterance made withthe speaker’s knowledge and intent that the statement is untrue. In contrast,however, when asked how they teach their children what it means to ‘‘lie’’the majority of mothers (83% of codable responses) said that they focusedsimply on the truth value of the statement. Only a handful of mothers re-ported mentioning anything about the speaker’s knowledge or motive whenteaching about lying. Defining a lie as a statement that is not true is consistentwith the criteriological view outlined earlier. Moreover, it is consistent withthe developmental evidence that preschoolers judge a false statement as alie even if the statement is believed by the speaker to be true and is notspoken with the motive of deceiving (Wimmer, Gruber, & Perner, 1984;Strichartz & Burton, 1990; see also, Astington, 1988). This ‘‘lexical real-ism’’ occurs even though preschoolers have an implicit awareness that falseutterances spoken in ignorance are less morally reprehensible than those spo-ken with the awareness of the falsity of the message (Siegal & Peterson,1996; Wimmer et al., 1984).


Future research would also be helpful in assessing children’s sensitivityto the wealth of nonverbal cues used to make mentalistic inferences. Witt-genstein clearly emphasizes such cues as important features in understandingthe mind. He writes (1967, para, 220), ‘‘Look into someone else’s face, andsee consciousness in it, and a particular shade of consciousness. You see onit, in it, joy, indifference, interest, excitement, torpor and so on.’’ Then, tocontrast this view with a simulation perspective Wittgenstein asks, ‘‘Do youlook into yourself in order to recognize the fury in his face? It is there [inhis face] as clearly as in your own breast.’’ The ability to distinguish andrespond to various perceptual cues emerges during infancy and provides anonverbal means to communicate about the mind. For example, infants ap-pear capable of reading psychological meaning into cues such as gaze direc-tion, facial expressions, and specific patterns of motion (Gergely, Nadasdy,Csibra, & Biro, 1995; Moore, 1996). An important question is the source ofthe meaning of these nonverbal cues for infants. From a Wittgensteinianstandpoint preverbal concepts of the mind, like later concepts, would be ex-pected to result from social constructions rather than from some form ofintrospection. Wittgenstein’s view is not compatible with the suggestion thatinfants have direct access to their own internal sensations and innately as-sume an equivalency between their internal experiences and those of otherswhen there is an equivalency in overt behavioral patterns (Meltzoff & Gop-nik, 1993). Infants would not be expected initially to regard psychologicalexperiences as belonging to ‘‘self ’’ and then, by analogy, to ‘‘other;’’ in-stead, psychological concepts would emerge initially as public, shared, andthe property of ‘‘we’’ (see Moore & Corkum, 1994). In the Vygotskian sense,mental concepts would begin as interpersonal concepts rather than intraper-sonal concepts (see Astington, 1996).

Also of particular interest is whether these preverbal psychological mean-ings directly map onto children’s eventual mentalistic lexicon. Given theimportance Wittgenstein places on language in forming mentalistic concepts,the emergence of a mentalistic lexicon would be expected fundamentally toalter any rudimentary psychological concepts an infant may have. As Bruner(1990, pp. 75–76) states, language does not directly reflect and map ontoprelinguistic behaviors and practices: ‘‘It is, I think, impossible in principleto establish any formal constructs between an earlier ‘preverbal’ and a laterfunctionally ‘equivalent’ linguistic form.’’

Thus, even if infants are perceptually sensitive to the same cues as adults(e.g., gaze direction and facial expressions), the meanings of those cueswould be gradually constructed as the child enters into the language gameof the mind. For example, although infants can perceive differences betweenaction that is self-initiated and action that is externally caused, it does notnecessarily follow that preschoolers will use these differences as cues to inferthe volitional nature of action in the same way that adults do (Montgomery,1996). Moreover, some cues may be more readily tied to a specific mental


state than others in the word learning process; for example, facial expressionsmay be more readily used to signify emotions than one’s gait. Although bothcues may be perceptually distinguished early in life, those cues typicallyused to assist children in word learning would be expected developmentallyto precede in importance other perceptible, yet less central cues.

In conclusion, Wittgenstein’s private language argument provides compel-ling reasons to question whether introspection can be the essential mecha-nism guiding young children’s understanding of the mind. To make senseof whatever phenomenological experiences young children have, they needguidance from others to provide interpretations and labels for those experi-ences as well as to provide a means for generalizing those labeled experi-ences to others. Publicly observable criteria help parents to achieve thesegoals by enabling them to monitor children’s grasp of mentalistic terms andconcepts. Further, observable criteria provide a shared basis by which parentand child can refer to various mentalistic concepts and ensure they are bothtalking about the same thing. This aspect of Wittgenstein’s private languageargument implies that children’s early attempts at solving the problem ofother minds are better characterized as criteriological rather than theoretical.Accordingly, evidence was presented to illustrate the distinction betweenthese two views and to suggest that the sequence by which children under-stand the mind proceeds from criteriological to theoretical. Fruitful areas forfuture research would be to examine more closely the role that criterial fea-tures play within the linguistic environment influencing children’s devel-oping understanding of the mind as well as the role that nonverbal cues playin children’s emerging mentalistic attributions and metalinguistic judgments.

Chapman and Dixon (1987, preface) have observed that although Witt-genstein’s philosophy holds ‘‘special promise for the study of human devel-opment, the philosopher and his work could walk virtually unrecognizedthrough the landscape of contemporary developmental issues.’’ Clearly, thepresumption of this paper is that their indictment is valid. Wittgenstein’sprivate language argument is surprisingly fresh and relevant to one of thefastest growing areas of research in contemporary developmental psychol-ogy, children’s understanding of the mind. The problems faced by research-ers in seeking to unravel the process by which children come to understandthe mind are illuminated by Wittgenstein’s philosophical insights. The pri-vate language argument is Wittgenstein’s prescription for, in his own words,showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

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Received May 16, 1996; revised November 1, 1996

wittgenstein's private language argument and children's understanding of the mind

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