PSYCH 709Reasoning about Beliefs and Desires

The ability to reason about what others think (believe) and want (desire) is crucial to social interaction, and when making sense of what we and others do. For example, in explaining why someone goes to a certain store we might say the she DESIRES to buy a hammer, and BELIEVES the store sells them. The ability to reason about beliefs, desires, and other mental states is often called "theory of mind." How this ability develops in childhood, has been greatly debated over the past 20 years, and remains mysterious (e.g. how can we learn that people have mental states when we cannot see mental states, but only infer them by observing people's behaviour). This course will mainly concern the development of theory of mind in childhood, and we will discuss the major empirical discoveries and theoretical positions in this area of investigation.