PROGRESS BOX 6:
DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIFICITY- Inference systems make us attend to partic-
ular cues in environments and produce specific
inferences from these cues. - Skeletal versions of the principles direct
knowledge acquisition from infancy. - All concepts develop as skills, which is why
discussions of innateness are often meaningless. - What principles you have depends on what
species you are: which is why evolution is relevant
to mental architecture.
[115]that the giraffe does not identify Mary as a predator) because neither is
conspecific, and a lamppost is just like a useless (leafless) tree. Now if a
dog were around, it would have yet another take on the scene. Because
dogs are domesticated animals, they make a clear distinction between
humans and other non-dog animals, so Mary and the sheep would
activate different systems in the dog's brain. But the dog would not
attend to the difference between a lamppost and a tree. Indeed, both
afford the same possibilities in terms of territorial marking.
So having particular ontological categories is a matter of "choice"
(the world lends itself to many different ways of categorizing its con-
tents) and the choice depends on which species you belong to. Consider
face-identification again. We automatically register the subtle features
that make two faces different, but we ignore these same cues when pre-
sented with animal faces. Now humans are born in a state of extreme
dependency. They need years of care to be able to survive on their own.
Also, they need to cooperate with other human beings to survive, so that
recognizing who's who in a group is crucial throughout their lives. This
is true not only of humans, but it is pushed to an extreme in our species.
THEKIND OF MIND ITTAKES