MODULE 2: Exam practice & babies

 Exam practice

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Module 2: Childhood

Question for this module: is childhood good or bad for children?

• good or bad during the period of childhood
• good or bad intrinsically, not instrumentally
• next time: Sarah Hannan, "Why childhood is bad for children"
• today: babies

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Alison Gopnik

• The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life (Picador, 2009)
• Alison Gopnik is a professor of philosophy and psychology at Berkeley

Chapter 1: What is childhood? Why is human childhood so long?

"What is childhood? It's a distinctive developmental period in which young human beings are uniquely dependent on adults." (Gopnik p. 10) DEPENDENCY

Humans have a wealth of knowledge that enables us to adapt to and modify different environments, so children have a huge amount to learn. (Gopnik p. 10) DEFICIENCY 

But Gopnik is arguing for a positive view of childhood

• "In some ways, young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring, and even more conscious than adults are." (Gopnik p. 5).
• "Human development is more like metamorphosis, like caterpillars becoming butterflies." (Gopnik p. 9) 
• Except children are butterflies and gradually become boring ol' caterpillars

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Chapter 4: What is it like to be a baby? Babies are "more conscious"

Babies = children under 3 years old

Gopnik's argument:

1. If you are conscious of more, then you are more conscious. 
2. Babies are conscious of more.  THEREFORE
3. Babies are more conscious.

lantern awareness  (babies) vs. spotlight awareness (adults)

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Note: We didn't discuss the material below

How she supports premise 2 -- babies are conscious of more

1. babies mostly have exogenous attention (from outside) (p. 116-120) whereas adults have endogenous & exogenous attention; our endogenous attention reduces our exogenous attention
• the gorilla example
2. we do routine things on "automatic pilot" (little consciousness) but babies don't
3. a baby's frontal cortex (which supplies focus) is undeveloped
4. the two-card experiment (p. 118)
5. "Infant brains have abundant cholinergic [excitatory] transmitters but the inhibitory transmitters only develop later." (p. 119)
• excitatory: if N fires, M is more likely to fire
• inhibitory: if N fires, M is less likely to fire
6. more drugs are needed to anesthetize a baby (p. 120)
• note: people used to think just the opposite

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We gradually lose this sort of consciousness as we grow up, but can regain it

• travel to a new place without a purpose
• unfocused meditation

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Do babies enjoy their heightened consciousness?