Page 338 - Deep Learning

The Formation of Belief 321

CONVERSION: THE CHILD AS SCIENTIST

Cognitive psychologists, developmentalists and educational researchers have
explored the idea that everyday conceptual change involves the same processes
as scientific theory change. This science-inspired approach is clearly stated by
developmental psychologists Alison Gopnik, Andrew n. Meltzoff and Henry
M. Wellman: “The central idea of [our] theory is that the processes of cog-
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nitive development in children are similar to, indeed perhaps even identical
with [sic], the processes of cognitive development in scientists. scientific the-
ory change is, after all, one of the clearest examples we know of the deriva-
tion of genuinely new abstract and complex representations of the world from
experience.” And again: “in development we see the same kinds of phenom-
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ena brought about by radical conceptual change that we see in the history of
science.” The brains of scientists might not be less prone to resistance than
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the brains of nonscientists, but the processes of conversion might be more vis-
ible in science than elsewhere.

The Theory-Theory
The particular version of this hypothesis that is known as the theory­theory
retains the assumption that conflict is the driving force behind develop-
mental changes and that belief revision is a matter of evaluating evidence.
Gopnik and Meltzoff write: “Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with
the evidence, and because of this theories change.” And again: “Theories
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change as a result of a number of different epistemological processes. one
particularly critical factor is the accumulation of counterevidence to the
theory.” With respect to mechanism, the theory-theory claims that change
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occurs in five stages: encounter with counterevidence; denial; the devel-
opment of “ad hoc hypotheses designed to account specifically for such
counterevidence” ; the development of a new, alternative theory, perhaps
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by developing some idea that is “already implicit in some peripheral part
of the earlier theory” ; and “a period of intense experimentation and/or
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observation.” 73
Multiple problems adhere to this list of supposed stages, some of them
similar to the problems that plague historical and philosophical science
studies. The lack of specification of the relevant processes and the rigidity
common to all stage theories are among them. More important for current
purposes, there is no explanation in the theory-theory for why there is resis-
tance, nor for how resistance is overcome. Presumably, doubt is generated by