Keil "The Origins of an Autonomous Biology"

103:     Even empiricists believe some faculties are innate (i.e. horizontal faculties, sensory faculties)
103-4:  Empiricists didn't have much to fear from Fodor's treatment of modularity

"a key aspect of this debate focuses on the level of cognitive 'abstraction' of modules and constraints, how far 'up-stream' they are from the sensory" (104).

"the predominant accounts" of biology have folk biological knowledge emerging late since younger children
    (a) apparently have false beliefs about the biological domain
    (b) they fail to recognize the biological as a coherent domain

THREE VIEWS OF ACQUISITION
1.  FB emerges from associative learning (104)
2.  FB emerges from applying folk psychology to objects (interpreting them teleologically, in terms of goals)
3.  FB emerges from a domain-specific proclivity (105)
    (but is it biology specific?)

DISTINGUISHING THE BIOLOGICAL WORLD (106-107)
  1. Reproduction
  2. Internal Complexity
  3. Canonical and irreversible patterns of change
  4. Intrinsic features features determine phenotypic properties “phenomenal”
  5. Typical properties are diagnostic of underlying ones.
  6. Properties have purposes.
  7. Homeostatic operation.

BIOLOGY OUT OF NOTHING: THE CASE OF CONCEPTS OF KINDS

RECEIVED VIEW:    SIMILARITY CATEGORIES -> THEORETICAL CATEGORIES

"Ever since people have looked at children's concepts, either naturalistically or through more formal assessments (such as vocabulary tests), one common theme has been to argue that the younger child's concepts seem to be unprincipled tabulations of all salient information that correlates with instances (salience being only perceptually driven) and that these early concepts shift to more principled, tightly organized ones, or theory-driven ones." (108)

Keil 1986 Finds even preschoolers's views of species membership seems similarity based

TROUBLES WITH TYPICALITY (109)
1.  No account of how the adult theory every emerges from concepts organized by similarity
2.  There is a history of underestimating children's conceptual competencies. (110)

PROBLEM for the anti-typicality theorist: show why similarity results emerge if the innate view is correct.

Proposal: Theories "run dry" and give away to similarity

NEW VIEW:  IBT Infant Biological Theory -> ABT Adult Biological Theory

"If some parts of theories are so basic that we do not normally even consider them, we may at first only notice those parts that change, which more closely resemble an associative to theory shift" (110).

FINDING: Young children will indeed overrride the phenomenal similarity spaces that we take to be hallmarks of simple associative representations.
    Experiment 1 (Chp. 11, p. 232)
Subjects: 37 preschoolers, ages 3-5 years of age
Procedure: One story type given to each child: costume, temporary surface parts, or permanent surface parts
3 point scale:
1 = similarity based (what it looks like)
3 = essence based (what it started as)
Mean scores:
Costume: 2.62
TSP: 2.0
PSP: 2.25

Example Probe:
Horse/Zebra (costume)
David was walking through a field when he saw this animal that looked just like a horse.  He walked over very quietly and started to pet it.  As he was patting its neck, he felt something funny.  When he looked really closely, he saw that there was a zipper around its neck that was all covered by hair.   When David undid the zipper he saw that the animal had a costume on and there was a zebra underneath the costume!  While David was standing looking at the animal with the costume head off, the person who owned the horse came into the field.  She put the mask back on the animal and zipped it up so you couldn't see the zipper.  When she was done, this is how it looked What do you think it really is?  A horse or a zebra?






INHERITANCE (112ff) (The Springer-Keil Studies)

Study 1 (Springer & Keil 1989)
1. inborn vs. experientially produced
2.  important to biological/physiological functioning vs. unimportant
3.  internal vs. external to the kind

"This is Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and they were both born with pink hearts inside their chests instead of normal-colored hearts.  These pink hearts inside their chests help Mr. and Mrs. Bull stay healthy.  This is Mr. and Mrs. Bull's son, Billy Bull.  When Billy is born, do you think that he'll have a pink heart like his parents, or will he have a normal colored heart?" (Springer and Keil 1989, 639)

Question 1:  Which properties (if any) will children judge to be heritable?
   
A: Functional is important early on, but shift to inborn occurs later.



Question 2.  Could social functions work as well as biological functions?
E.g. "if the parents lose all their hair and it results in their getting cold and sick in the winter (a biological/physiological effect), it is inherited; but if the same hair lost instead results in their being 'bare so that everyone can see their skin (A social effect) it is not inherited" (113).

A.  No.

Question 3.  Can children reason about social functions at all?

A: Yes.
Example

Study 2 (Springer & Keil 1991)
What determines inheritance?
a.  Internal
b.  External natural (e.g. like sunburn or flamingo color)
c.  External human agents






Color of animals (almost invariably internal)
Color of plants (either a or b)
Color of robot (far more likely to choose a human agent than they were for a dog (5x!) or plant).

Study 3 (Springer 1990)
Result: Children use kinship over similarity in attributing heritability to biological properties, but not biological properties. 
(See figure 4.2), p. 115



GROWTH - PATHS OF ORIGIN AND KINDHOOD (116)

Biological kinds vs. artifacts
"An understanding of the importance of canonical patterns of change to the individuation of biological kinds would seem to be linked to an understanding or how unseen causes can regulate enduring, species-specific properties." (116)

Studies: Children are shown sequences of 3-5 pictures depicting the origins of

Study 1: Shown a different sequence with identical end state
    "Is the entity depicted the same?"
Study 2: identical beginning
             -different sequence, identical end state
             -same sequence, different end state
     "which is of the same kind as in the first sequence?"
(see figure 4.3, 4.4)





DISEASE- PATTERNS OF CONTAGION (119)

1. Contagion

2.  Teleology
(1) Described a "thing" that gets inside a person and causes the person to have symptoms.

(2) Further describe the "thing" in one of several ways (of which here are three):

(a) Functional or Teleological: Thing needed to get inside the body and use parts of the body to make one sick.

(b) Mechanical: Thing rubbed around inside the body, causing sickness through mechanical damage.

(c) Intentional: Thing wanted to get inside the body and make it sick.