The Teleological Stance

Lecturer: Stephen A. Butterfill

How do infants (and perhaps adults) identify the goals of observed actions? The leading, best developed proposal is Gergely and Csibra’s Teleological Stance (Gergely, Nadasky, Csibra, & Biro, 1995; Csibra & Gergely, 2007; Gergely & Csibra, 2003).

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Notes

Csibra & Gergely (1998, p. 255) characterise the ‘Teleological Stance’ as exploiting this principle to track goals:

‘an action can be explained by a goal state if, and only if, it is seen as the most justifiable action towards that goal state that is available within the constraints of reality’

This implies that tracking goals is the reverse of planning an action.

Planning is the process of moving from goals to means, whereas tracking goes in the reverse direction, from means to goals. But what is common to the two is the relation between means and goals. In both cases, planning and goal-tracking, the means that are adopted should be a best available way of bringing the goal about.

Note that this is not exactly an answer to our question, How can infants track goals from nine months of age (or earlier)? It provides what Marr would call a computational description.

The Simple View

To answer that question, we need to combine the Teleological Stance with a hypothesis about the representations and algorithms which are involved in pure goal-tracking.

One hypothesis is the Simple View of goal tracking:

Infants’ (and adults’) goal tracking depends on beliefs concerning relations which hold quite generally between means and goals; and they identify particular goals by making inferences from these beliefs plus their observations.

I’m uncertain whether Csibra et al would endorse the Simple View. But there are some places where they appear to come close:

‘when taking the teleological stance one-year-olds apply the same inferential principle of rational action that drives everyday mentalistic reasoning about intentional actions in adults’ (Gergely & Csibra, 2003; compare Csibra, Bı́ró, Koós, & Gergely, 2003, Csibra & Gergely, 1998, p. 259 )

‘Such calculations require detailed knowledge of biomechanical factors that determine the motion capabilities and energy expenditure of agents. However, in the absence of such knowledge, one can appeal to heuristics that approximate the results of these calculations on the basis of knowledge in other domains that is certainly available to young infants’ (Csibra & Gergely, 2013).

However, at another point they could be interpreted as stepping back from the Simple View (Csibra & Gergely, 2007, pp. 72–4). There is also no clear reason for them to accept the Simple View: their overall theoretical position is consistent with it, but does not appear to require its truth.

Irrespective of who (if anyone) endorses it, the Simple View is a good starting point for at least three reasons. First, it involves postulating no novel psychological states, processes or systems. (It does not entail the existence of a goal-tracking module, for example.) Second, there are cases in which it is known to apply (you and I can work through an application of the Teleological Stance explicitly, writing down each step). Third, there are no published, suitably detailed accounts of any alternative.

Glossary

computational description : A computational description of a system or ability specifies what the thing is for and how it achieves this. Marr (1982) distinguishes the computational description of a system from representations and algorithms and its hardware implementation.

pure goal-tracking : Tracking goals is pure when does not involve ascribing intentions or any other mental states.

representations and algorithms : To specify the representations and algorithms involved in a system is to specify how the inputs and outputs are represented and how the transformation from input to output is accomplished. Marr (1982) distinguishes the {representations and algorithms} from the computational description of a system and its hardware implementation.

Simple View : This term is used for two thematically related claims. Concerning physical objects, the Simple View is the claim that the Principles of Object Perception are things we know or believe, and we generate expectations from these principles by a process of inference. Concerning the goals of actions, the Simple View is the claim that the principles comprising the Teleological Stance are things we know or believe, and we are able to track goals by making inferences from these principles.

Teleological Stance : To adopt the Teleological Stance is to exploit certain principles concerning the optimality of goal-directed actions in tracking goals (Csibra & Gergely, 1998).

References

Csibra, G., Bı́ró, S., Koós, O., & Gergely, G. (2003). One-year-old infants use teleological representations of actions productively. Cognitive Science, 27(1), 111–133.

Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (1998). The teleological origins of mentalistic action explanations: A developmental hypothesis. Developmental Science, 1(2), 255–259.

Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2007). Obsessed with goals’: Functions and mechanisms of teleological interpretation of actions in humans. Acta Psychologica, 124(1), 60–78.

Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2013). Teleological understanding of actions. In M. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 37–43). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gergely, G., & Csibra, G. (2003). Teleological reasoning in infancy: The naive theory of rational action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 287–292.

Gergely, G., Nadasky, Z., Csibra, G., & Biro, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165–193.

Marr, D. (1982). Vision : A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.