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Evidence for core social goal understanding (and, perhaps, core morality) in preverbal infants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2024

J. Kiley Hamlin Open the ORCID record for J. Kiley Hamlin [Opens in a new window]
J. Kiley Hamlin*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada cic.psych.ubc.ca
*
Corresponding author: J. Kiley Hamlin; Email: Kiley.hamlin@psych.ubc.ca
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Abstract

Spelke's What Babies Know masterfully describes infants’ impressive repertoire of core cognitive concepts, from which the suite of human knowledge is eventually built. The current commentary argues for the existence of a core concept that Spelke claims preverbal infants lack: social goal. Core social goal concepts, operative extremely early in human development, underlie infants’ basic abilities to interpret and evaluate entities within the moral world; such abilities support claims for a core moral domain.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 47 , 2024 , e130
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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