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De Kleine Filosoof : Wat Het Kinderbrein Ons Vertelt Over Waarheid, Liefde En De Zin Van Het Leven (2010)

by Alison Gopnik(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Amsterdam, Nieuwezijds

review 1: This is a review of the audible audiobook version, since that version is not available as a choice.I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, there are some thought-provoking ideas presented in the bulk of the book about the nature of consciousness, and how viewing the experience of a baby through the lens of philosophy (and vice versa) can give us unique perspectives. I quite enjoyed large sections of the content of this book, though the last chapter and conclusion were so dull and unconsidered that I found myself fading out towards the end. There was, however, enough here that I would recommend reading this book, provided it is not in audiobook format.While the ending was a bit uninspired, what really hurt this book was the single most annoying vocal tic I h... moreave ever heard in a narrator, where she places intense emphasis on the last syllable in a sentence. It doesn't happen all the time, and goes away during long stretches of text. It is particularly egregious in the introduction and conclusion, and I nearly stopped listening after the introduction, but stuck with it, only to have it reappear randomly later, where I just tried my best to ignore it. It was really bad enough to almost ruin this book.
review 2: A common angle for scientific books about human nature is to show how we have been shaped by the world over evolutionary time periods. For example, it is thought that the development of uniquely human nature was heavily influenced by the nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle we maintained throughout the Pleistocene. Humans living several tens of thousands of years in the past were thus likely very similar to modern humans in all the fundamentals (such as in their capacities to feel and learn in specific ways, their basic personalities, their phenomenological experiences, etc.). However, Alison Gopnik doesn’t appear to care about any of that. Rather than focusing on how the world has shaped human nature, the author here flips the question to ask how human nature allows us to shape the world (and by “shape the world”, she appears to be referring to the impressive developments in human culture and technology). While this could certainly be an intriguing question, I don’t feel that the data she goes on to present are really getting at the answer, except in a very general, unsatisfying way: e.g., babies learn about the world using x (where “x” stands for some particular mental capacity that babies possess), and thus x is what helps allow humans to formulate new ideas that can change the world. Given her supplied thesis, I guess that I was expecting the author to discuss more specifically the nature of human creativity (using babies of course) and how this can help us understand the origin of novel ideas or the transformation of human culture. But, alas.I also found some of her claims within this overall theme to be a bit platitudinous and hollow, particularly given that they are not exactly addressed by the data she later presents. For example, the part about children being the creative “brainstormers” and “discoverers” while adults are merely the unimaginative “implementers” of those discoveries - what is she talking about? As far as I know, the vast majority of human “advances” are invented by grownups. She also claims that Peter Singer’s arguments (i.e., that the granting of personhood to babies to the exclusion of some other animals, e.g., apes and whales, is untenable given the richer mental life of these animals) can be put to rest by research showing that babies are in some ways even more conscious than adult humans! She’s obviously equating very different types of consciousness. Sentience (i.e., awareness of the external world) possessed by babies and many other animals is very different from the sort of self-consciousness that Singer was talking about. And when discussing ethics, although she begins by arguing that human morality is principally learned as children observe the morality of others (as opposed to being innate), the data she then presents on the subject only speak to the young age at which mainstays of human morality (empathy, fairness, etc.) appear, not to the role of the environment in moral sense development. I’m all for celebrating the suppleness of human brain tissue, but I think Gopnik’s lofty ideals about the vast potential of the human mind to change (and thus be a force for change in the world) are here sometimes an awkward fit to the data she presents. But to land on a more positive note, by far the most interesting parts of the book are in chapters 4-5, where she tones down some of the inspiration philosophy and focuses on how subjective conscious experience changes from early childhood into adulthood and why this shift might exist. The picture she paints (citing several clever studies) is one where babies (children < 3) are in the total enthrallment of that which is positioned right in front of them, in the present moment. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, no sense of a chronological self that ties together one’s past, present, and future, no inner dialogue or ceaseless mental cross-talk, no sense of an executive making plans (as illusory as that sense may be), no “me”. Although babies possess a memory, it is not intertwined with the sensation of being a traveler through life, and thus is not really “theirs” (babies appear not to distinguish their memories from someone else’s). Nor do they seem able to imagine a distinct future state with them in it. Much like other animals, babies possess a mind in which simply one idea after another pops in and then pops out (Gopnik suggests that this type of mental experience might be simulated by being in between states of waking and sleeping). However, unlike (most?) other animals, baby human minds are equipped to use these observations as the basis for mapping out causal relationships in the particular physical and social world they find themselves in. And because babies are not sidetracked from the present world by focused learning, goal execution, and streams of mental commentary (“spotlight” consciousness), they are remarkably effective at making impartial and diffuse observations concerning whatever is in their field of vision (“lantern” consciousness). For example, although three-year-olds were much worse at recalling focal objects shown to them than older children, they actually performed better than older children at recalling non-focal objects that were peripherally shown at the same time.The evolution (or retention) of a distinct baby consciousness may have resulted from the fact that a certain level of basic knowledge about the local environment must be mastered before one can be expected to effectively establish a life strategy or self-concept that will be most advantageous within the physical and cultural situation one happens to have landed in. Another possibility is that fully developed self-consciousness requires language, which takes a few years to learn. Either way, there is a real (if gradual) metamorphosis in the fundamental nature of consciousness experienced by babies and adults. And these different types of consciousness accompany distinct divisions of labor between the two life stages. Babies are generalist observers with the capacity for learning the basic workings of the physical and social infrastructure of the local environment. Once this world is mapped out, they are then able to construct a “self” who can navigate and manipulate the environment “effectively” (I use quotes because some of us achieve this ideal better than others). Hyper-awareness of our daily surroundings is dialed down in adulthood so that we can often “autopilot” through the physical world, thus reserving limited mental resources for “important” functions such as planning and judging, second-guessing and self-loathing.You would think that because we have all experienced baby consciousness, that this would supply us with some sort of deep appreciation for the mental life of other sentient animals whose conscious experiences are probably qualitatively similar to those of our past selves. That the very nature of that conscious experience precludes our ability to remember and process it is one of life’s bitter pills. Thus, baby consciousness remains a phenomenological mystery. When I recently saw a photograph of my two-year-old self looking up at me with a curious expression, my one thought was, “who the hell was that person?” I suppose I must forever wonder, but in fundamental ways, I'm not sure he was really “me”, not yet. But of course it’s still very interesting to speculate about. It is unfortunate that a lot of the mushy, bait-and-switch context and grandiose implications that Alison Gopnik employs in most of these chapters ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Oh well! With all the love, magic, and babies in the world, it doesn’t especially matter what I think anyway :) less

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