conversations with Gwen

[aryanhwy]

I've recorded most of these over on FB, but in years to come they'll be easier to find here.

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Gwen doesn't quite understand subset yet. If I call something a bird, she'll angrily correct me, "That's a [parrot|toucan|seagull|swallow|etc.]". Just now, I refered to her Duplo lion and tiger cubs as "animals" and she said "they're not animals, they're cubs!" "Cubs ARE animals." "No, they're not!" "Yes, they are; cubs are animals, cats are animals, humans are animals..."

"What are...hoo-mans?"

"We are. You and I are humans. And humans are animals."

"We are not animals! We are persons! Persons are not animals! It would be funny if persons were animals! I'm not an animal, I'm just a Gwen!"
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Gwen, on the way to nursery this morning: "There's nothing in my hat, there's nothing in my hat, E I N G O, there's nothing in my hat!"

*pause*

"MOM! What is nothing?"

Despite my training and my profession, I felt strangely ill-prepared to answer this question.
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What's on my mind, FB, you ask? Why, the epistemology of four year olds. "I don't think there is any more left, but I think there is a little more left" was just recently asserted, as if it were a perfectly consistent statement. (And substitution instances of this are not uncommon in this household.)

I do not understand what proposition is the desired one to be expressed by such a sentence. It clearly doesn't affect her ability to reason (in so far as it doesn't appear to license more inferences than she usually makes), so some sort of non-monotonic or incomplete inference system is at play, but the sad thing is, by the time she's able to answer any questions about what, really, does she mean when she reports beliefs in that way?, she probably won't have this epistemology any more. So I'll remain forever in the dark.

[Later comment on post] A similar example from just now: "Puppy is a bit small, but she IS big."
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I don't know what it is about this weekend, but we're really having the full gamut of philosophical discussions. First, what is nothing, then, what is a person, now: what are beliefs?

Gwen: "What's this song called?"

Me: "Don't Stop Believin'."

G: "What's 'believing'?"

M: "The act of having or holding a belief."

G: "What's a belief?"

M: "It's a thought that you think is true."
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Weird and wonderful.

Comments

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I would love to be able to reword and repeat back, to get confirmation that I understand, but right now, we're in a stage where her inner concepts are so complex, and the mismatch between them and her language is so great, that I often find myself at a complete loss.

I'll hazard a guess and say we'll be out of this stage within 6 months. We'll see!