Theory of Mind

Richard Dawkins insists on applying a probability test on the hypothesis of God. For him it is the right thing to do. He believes that if the probability is infinitesimally small, we can, as we use to do in physics and mathematics, assume that it is equal to zero.

Well, I have a problem with this approach. If we are talking about an entity that is intelligent, wilful, planning and executing, we are talking about a mind.

The problem with the mind is that we all experience directly only our own minds. They are the only reality. Minds of other people we learn to accept as existing and we assume that they are similar to ours but we never know for sure.
The ability to imagine another mind, to create a model of another intelligent entity that is different from us and yet able to proceed and understand the information about shared reality is one of the skills that most of us learn from during the preoperational developmental stage at the age of about 4.
J Piaget, the psychologist I mentioned earlier, called it the Theory of Mind.

They designed a test, which younger children usually fail. In this test children observe a play between two puppets. One of them hides something in a box and then goes away. Then the other one comes and moves the hidden object into another location. When the first puppet returns, children are asked where she will look for her property. Children who mastered the theory of mind usually rightfully answer that she will look for in the box she put it in. They know that their knowledge is not automatically shared by others.

This is a very important competence. It lays a foundation for our ability to empathise and sympathise with others. It is finely tuned in psychologists and psychiatrists but also in detectives and salesmen.

Funny thing is, we cannot prove that the other person has a mind of their own. There is no probability test and if one needs such a test to decide if their fellow human has a mind, they will probably decide against it.

As I mentioned it is a skill not mastered by everybody. Psychopaths and narcissists as well as these with the Asperger’s disorder just cannot imagine that other people feel and react like them. That is, they observe other people’s behaviour, their face expression; they hear their words and screams, but they cannot internalise their feelings. We know that the part of the brain that contains ‘mirroring’ neurons is damaged in people who suffer with these disorders.

They are really terrifying because they don’t care. They don’t feel responsible for the harm they cause to others, because, for them, they are the only conscious beings. They see the world as full of machines, whose functions they need to learn to be able to use them adequately. They no more feel remorse for hurting another man that we would when breaking a car. Yes, we can be unhappy about the loss, but we wouldn’t apologise to it.

What I am trying to say is that even if this Super-Brain, which possible existence I outlined previously, existed, we wouldn’t be able to design an experiment to test its Mind. There is no way of knowing if he is/would be conscious.

But we can choose whether we believe he is – or not.