THE NORMS OF COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENT

Once the notion of a precursive relationship between developmental sta ges is fully articulated in terms of the distinction between 'role' an d 'realiser' states, it turns out that the 'Theory of Mind' literature operates with a notion of precursive relationships described at too h igh a level of abstraction to explain actual mechanisms of development . Furthermore, the tendency within that literature to explain precursi ve relationships in terms of role states with isomorphic linguistic/co mputational structures is misleading. Developmental relationships are more likely to exist between states which Flay a similar normative rol e in the agents's psychology than between states which can be describe d as sharing a similar computational architecture.