Antonio Damiso’s popular book Descartes’
Error was first recommended to me by a psychiatrist in Germany.  She
explained to me that philosophers, such as myself, had been completely wrong in
assuming that such a thing as a soul or mind existed and that science proved
that we were not minds and bodies, but one unity–one embodied being–completely
assessable to any competent researcher in physiology and psychiatry.

I found myself both enchanted and
completely frustrated by this conversation.  On the one hand, it is a rare
occurrence as a philosopher to meet a non-philosopher who is interested in
philosophical topics of discussion (except for the general interest in
discussing ethics).  On the other hand, I felt great frustration at the gross
over-simplification and complete misrepresentation of René Descartes and
philosophy in general by writers like Damasio.  However, largely I am heartened
by such discussions since I feel to at least be discussed is worthwhile since
philosophy is typically not a bestseller and that the fallacious arguments
presented can only hope to be reconciled with further discussion.  Teaching at
a state university makes me even more happy to meet anyone who wants to tell me
there is no such thing as a mind as that our own administration looks
suspiciously at the humanities as something sucking up money while teaching
unpractical worthless nonsense.  (Wouldn’t the engineering or business program
be a better use of the university’s scare resources?)

So, I was extremely interested to
find yet another popular psychology book called Descartes’ Baby.  As
that I work on the relevance of psychology for philosophical claims about the
subject, I found Bloom’s book to be a great enterprise.  Instead of claiming
that Descartes had it all wrong, Bloom claims that, actually, he has it right,
at least as far as the descriptive explanation of the development of the human
sense of mind goes. 

What does it mean to say
"Descartes got it right"?  For a philosopher, this could mean a
thousand different things and certainly not all Descartes’ scholars are in
agreement about what Descartes’ philosophy means.  However, Bloom takes up the
typical one line explanation of Descartes’ broad and subtle philosophy. 
Frustrating as this is to read, the basic Cartesian claim Bloom takes up as
representative of Descartes is something along the lines: "there is a body
and there is a mind and they are separate."  In other words, "Dualism
(mind-body) exists."  Bloom writes intriguingly in the preface that
"Babies are natural-born dualists." (xiii) 

I should note here, as Bloom does
in reference to a later discussion of a potential innate desire to believe in
God, that to say that descriptively we are natural-born dualists does not prove
in any manner that ontologically dualism exists.  Bloom does not engage,
therefore, in the philosophical debate of the existence of dualism, i.e., is the
mind actually separate from the body?, but instead, he remains wisely
with a description of how we naturally see ourselves and others as having
minds.  Whether or not minds do exist and what they might be like is not
answered in this text.

What evidence exists for such a
radical claim that babies are "natural-born dualists"?  The idea of
babies having any preference for dualism, monism, or any philosophical theory
of mind seems absurd at first glance.  Yet, Bloom draws some upon some
interesting research on infant and child behavior mixed liberally in with
tangential comments on his own children, literary/historical sources, and a few
random philosophical ideas, to argue that one of the things that makes us human
is that we innately suppose the other person has intentions, plans, and
desires.  We don’t conclude that the other person has a mind by observing the
data of sense-perception the other person gives us (i.e. monitoring the other’s
behavior over an extended period of time).  Instead, infant behavior and more
strikingly child behavior, reveals a prejudice to simply assume intention is
present in all human and many non-human acts.

Abundant research in the past
thirty years has indicated that infants are a great deal more aware than
previously thought by past greats of psychology such as Jean Piaget, B.F.
Skinner and Sigmund Freud.  Infants do visually process their world and seem to
even comprehend its basic meaning.  To help support some of this research
claiming the intelligence of infants, Bloom cites various studies that show one
of the problems of autism is that high functioning autistic children and adults
do not have any problems with processing the raw sense-data they receive from
the world.  Their problem is that they don’t assume a "ghost is in the
machine" nor do they ascribe intentions to moving objects, persons, nature
(this comes later in the discussion of God).  Thus, they will report back all
sorts of "useless" data on a person’s acts when what the normal
person is looking for is a quick summary "Jane wanted to go to the
mall" instead of a minute description of Jane’s actual acts "she ate
a banana, she put on her clothes–blue pants, white top–she went at 8:28 into
the garage, she started the red Buick." 

Thus, "[w]e are Descartes’
babies" insofar as we organize our relations with others around
intentionality and, therefore, the assumption of a mental organizing agent
behind the physical givens we encounter.(xiii)  People, for young children, are
not first perceived and then through an intellectual process the child develops
and understands that these perceptions are the result of human beings like the
child.  Rather, the child almost immediately ascribes desires, intentions,
wants to the other even before she can completely understand the larger
environmental world she lives in.  Children naturally, thus, think there is
something behind the perceived changing set of sense-data.  They are,
seemingly, naturally predisposed to ascribing intent behind visible acts. 

Now, for a philosopher, dualism is
not the only way to explain how one might ascribe intentionality to another. 
And, indeed, this seems to be Bloom’s general point of view.  With a rather
vague evolutionary argument, Bloom suggests that there are Darwinian reasons
for such an innate tendency.  If I watch my fellow caveman throw a spear at the
Wooly Mammoth and miss and he grunts to me to do the same and I mimic him by
missing, we won’t catch that Mammoth anytime soon.  The obvious point is
"Hit that Mammoth!"  even if I don’t witness the "desired"
act itself.  So, Bloom remains a materialist suggesting a material origin for
an innate belief of a mind and a body. 

However, since I also see
intentionality in animals (i.e. "the cat wants to be let
outside") but I don’t think they have minds in the way Descartes
understood minds, why would dualism be the proper way to describe our
infantile ability to intuit intentions in others?  It seems that all Bloom
really wants to say is that we are predisposed to assuming other people have
"mental states" instead of having to conclude this by witnessing
their behavior over our developmental history.  To be a true
"natural-born" dualist would be to innately assume that these mental
states occupy some qualitatively different realm than the physical body; something
akin to a soul.  However, children seem to be natural realists in that they
will ascribe fantastical explanations if they have heard them (ghosts, witches,
etc.) but tend toward trying to explain unknown circumstances with the material
world they are familiar with.  Bloom himself cites such studies and explains
children’s occasional fantastical explanations as simply a response to the
difficulty of questions posed to them, not because they have committed
ideological preferences for non-material entities.

Thus, the title Descartes’ Baby
is catchy, but I think something more along the lines of "Primary
Inter-subjectivity" would have been more accurate than to bring Cartesian
dualism into the discussion given Bloom’s general theoretical starting point. 

The largest portion of the book is
unfortunately not spent discussing all the manifold interesting studies on
these suggested basic structures of organizing the world and others.  Rather,
Bloom strays into the favorite area of non-philosophers to discuss
philosophical themes: morality and ethics.  I found these chapters tremendously
frustrating and ill-conceived.  To say that we innately ascribe intentional
states to others seems a defensible claim.  To throw in some vague ideas about
innate tendencies to have "moral circles" and ideas about God is so
problematic with the more, in my view, compelling empirical starting point of
the first chapters.  Chapters 4-8 are extremely tangential in structure and
seem to be essentially an intelligent man musing out loud possible ideas about
where morality comes from without having really organized or researched the
domain. 

My own musings on the nature of
good and evil suggest that without any systematic thought on the matter, human
beings seem in the current day and in history to be remarkably violent and
ill-disposed toward peace.  Nonetheless, Bloom remains a rosy-eyed Darwinan
optimist (perhaps an oxymoron) about love among mankind.  It turns out, history
be damned, that we are innately wired to love one another and to be
empathetic.  As often with evolutionary thoughts on morality, a promissory note
is attached suggesting that since we are so wired somehow it will all work out
one day since it just doesn’t make sense if we don’t get along.  Are you not
inspired with hope upon hearing this claim?  Well, Bloom cites a study that
shows rats don’t like seeing other rats be tortured so they will starve rather
than press a lever than tortures other rats.  (pg. 113-114)  I was tormented by
a continual "what!?"  when reading these chapters after such a
promising beginning and from a person who seemed to base his starting
assumptions on facts.  I’m no expert, but I think it is fair to say that humans
are not rats.  We engage in torture and we like torture.  Although I would like
to think otherwise, I assume that given the chance humans will continue to
torture and abuse other humans and will very often abuse their very own family
members.  I don’t see why this innate desire for empathy hasn’t been a bit more
forceful in showing itself as the innate tendency toward ascribing
intentionality has been.  If one is a materialist cum evolutionary
psychologist, one cannot blame "society" since society too is nothing
but a natural creation, no better or worse than incisors or claws.

Nonetheless, I did enjoy reading
the text and I hope it inspires more works of a similar nature.  Anyone with an
interest in thinking about how our existential origins impact our later
theories about ourselves would do well to take a look at this text.

 

© 2004 Talia Welsh

 

Talia
Welsh, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Categories: Psychology, ChildhoodDisorders