#856 Frank Keil: The Development of Causal Thinking, Explanation, and the Institution of Science
RECORDED ON JUNE 26th 2023.
Dr. Frank Keil is Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology & Linguistics and Director of the Cognition and Development lab at Yale University. At the most general level, he is interested in how we come to make sense of the world around us. One set of his studies is examining a level of explanatory insight that functions without knowledge of specific mechanisms and instead involves knowing what sorts of properties are causally potent in a domain and how they are likely to interact. He also asks how emerging knowledge of concrete mechanisms can link up frequency-based information with abstract explanatory principles as well as cause distortions in judgment. He is the author of Developmental Psychology: The Growth of Mind and Behavior, and other books.
In this episode, we talk about topics in developmental psychology. We talk about how causal thinking develops, and its relationship with mechanistic thinking. We discuss explanation, and the development of explanation schema. We discuss if we are Bayesian reasoners. We discuss if scient is intuitive, the concept of “folk science”, the cultural division of labor, and if the thinking of scientists is much different from that of laypeople. Finally, we talk about how developmental research can inform the study of cognition in adults, and how developmental psychology applies across the lifespan.
Time Links:
Intro
Causal thinking, and its relationship with mechanistic thinking
Explanation, and the development of explanation schema
Are we really Bayesian reasoners?
The illusion of explanatory depth
Is science intuitive?
The cultural division of cognitive labor
Is the thinking of scientists much different from that of laypeople?
How developmental research can inform the study of cognition in adults
Follow Dr. Keil’s work!
Follow Dr. Keil’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3RYkQQ2
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/3I0xSrt
Books on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3S2a6Af