The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life

Have you ever wondered about the inner life of children, how they understand things, what their stream of consciousness is like, how they perceive the world, what their feelings are really like? I watched my own children grow up, talked with them daily, fed them, played with them, but always felt that I was missing a lot about their inner world. Gopnik answered some of my questions and showed me other questions that I hadn't thought of asking. Gopnick argues, for example, that young children don't have the same self narrative adults have. I remember being appalled by my daughter's inability to describe what happened on her recent trip to the zoo. Gopnick argues that this happens because very young children haven't developed the story about themselves that allows them to go back and fetch prior events the way adults do. When I return from a trip to the zoo, I retain a story about finding a parking spot, paying admission, watching the monkeys near the entrance, etc. With very young children, there is no such narrative, only a series of events. These events are remembered. So if I ask a more direct question, like did you enjoy the monkeys in the big cage, she tells me about the big monkey chasing the smaller monkey. Gopnik emphasizes the sophistication of children who can easily distinguish between imaginary, possible, and real objects. She tells us about how children can make sophisticated judgments about causal relationships after having seen only a few relevant events. She tells us how children can distinguish acts which are wrong because they hurt someone as opposed to things which are wrong because they are against the rules Gopnik frames her discussion around philosophical themes such as reality versus fiction, discovery of reliable truth from messy observations, consciousness, nature of the self, love, morality, etc. She rightly argues that although topics such as these have long been important to philosophers, potential insights that could be provided by studying children have not been considered by philosophers. Specialists will find this book unsatisfactory. There isn't a single graph. There are no statistics or numbers of any kind. There are no literature reviews describing areas where researchers get conflicting results. When experiments are reported at all, they are mentioned briefly with no detail. Gopnik is more interested in the big picture, discussing the main themes using mostly informal language. Just the same, she takes you through some of the toughest concepts in the field and isn't afraid to bring up technical terms, like lantern consciousness, whenever it is helpful to do so. Finally, Gopnik's wit, graceful writing, and genuine feeling for children make her book a pleasure to read.

Anyone interested in the mind will find this facinating. Anyone involved in early childhood development will find confirmation of much that they suspected to be true. Anyone interested in the fate of humankind will deplore that we waste so much of this precious asset.

This book will be especially helpful to the family law attorney (and to anyone dealing with children and the judicial system). The court systems rely on a legal concept termed "bests interest of the child." This book will help me, parents and psychologists address the 'best interests of the child' in a new and challenging way. I especially liked the reports about various kinds of tests that have been conducted in recent years regarding developing children. I believe the insights about those tests and the comparisons to how we previously thought about childhood development address serious issues that lawyers, judges, psychologists and parents talk about everyday in these United States. Too many times we are all rooted in psychological development concepts that were developed in the 40's and 50's and taught through the 1980's. All of us have needed something new to address our changing world. Gopnik successfully deals with the concepts that established our roots about the psychological developments of children and then showed the path to a new way of looking backward while firmly establishing more modern thinking about children. I will be carrying this book into the courtroom with me and discussing it with parents, opposing counsel, psychologists and judges.

The book is a little dry but it provides great insights (backed up by the actual research) into understanding what is going on inside kids' heads. As opposed to what many past generations had thought, babies and kids actually posess tremendous capacity for the information processing, they are very smart and intuitive. And they are also much more empathetic, creative, and imaginitive than most adults. The book provides lots of actual examples of what you might have been observing in your kids but not understanding fully what it means. I liked the chapter about role-playing and imaginary friends. It is helpful to know that that child is capable of making a very clear distinction between what is imaginary and what is real. Some parents worry that their kids would wander off "too far" into imaginary world. The book provides ideas for the easy to do reality checks for the parents :) Great idea to read the book even before you become a parent.

Don't be swayed by the austere title, what this book does best is corral and explain recent studies on what babies and toddlers understand and when: When do they start to feel empathy? When are they able to understand that hitting hurts? When can they be expected to understand rules? What's the deal with invisible friends? It's given me a new perspective and a lot more sympathy for my into-everything son. It's also a page-turning easy read and utterly fascinating-- you'll want to go through with a highlighter to pick out all of the brilliant points. Would make a great gifts for parents & parents-to-be!