172 Giacomo Romano
systems of core knowledge that provide part of the material from which it is constructed, and... gen-
eral theory building processes that guide the child toward essentializing and theorizing about artifacts
in terms of their origins. (2007: 228)
Their idea does not differ much from the previous hypothesis. However, Kelemen and
Carey provide their proposal with an additional idea that makes their picture more con-
vincing. They assert that children have an original, primitive bias for teleological accounts
of all of the phenomena, labeled “promiscuous teleology”:^7 “the tendency to treat... ob-
jects of all kinds as occurring for a purpose” (2007: 229). Humans start with such a bias
to explain not only artifactual entities but also biological entities (both whole organisms
and body parts) in terms of “what they are for.” Promiscuous teleology is the natural bias
that frames the development of the conceptual tools of children who will then acquire the
Stance of Design. To further clarify how these ideas differ from the ideas of German and
Defeyter, for Kelemen and Carey this primitive tendency to conceive of everything as
being for something drives children to learn (arguably at a younger age than seven, perhaps
at fi ve or even at four) the Design Stance: promiscuous teleology is an inborn drive of
human beings who apply that drive as a complementary trigger for the categorization and
conceptualization, in the beginning, of all kinds of phenomena, but later mainly of artifacts.
For Kelemen and Carey, promiscuous teleology is the characterizing feature that leads to
the acquisition of the Stance of Design. The Stance of Design therefore appears as a special
cognitive ability, even though it is based on other prior cognitive faculties. It is derived
from the combination of core cognitive competencies, which are bound by promiscuous
teleology. For Kelemen and Carey, the Stance of Design is the result of an inborn, natural
predisposition that is peculiar to human beings; it is not just an acquired skill in
reasoning.
10.2 Doubts About the Design Stance
The two hypotheses, one by German and Defeyter and the other by Kelemen and Carey,
explain the Stance of Design as based on metaintentional capacities. They are intriguing,
even though they both require a much better formulation as well as stronger empirical
confi rmation. Insofar as they have been advanced, they are more speculations than actual
hypotheses, and present some considerable fl aws.
The fi rst hypothesis, by German and Defeyter, is questionable, not only because of the
developmental data. In fact there is now evidence of design stance understanding at least
by the age of fi ve years and perhaps even earlier, when children are not normally thought
to have much competence in second-order mental reasoning (cf. Diesendruck, Markson,
and Bloom 2003). It is also questionable because it is not clear that recursive reasoning
is needed in order to think about design (e.g., “the maker intends that X does Y” or “the
maker intends that the user does X with Y” might suffi ce).^8 Furthermore it does not account