THEORY OF MIND AND CREATIVE THOUGHT

One of the most exciting areas of current research in the cognitive sciences is that concerning ‘theory of mind’. This refers to an ability to attribute a full range of mental states to other individuals as well as oneself, and then to use such attributions to predict and understand behaviour. A vast literature has arisen regarding this issue, as it seems to be one of the most critical cognitive features humans possess. As such, theory of mind is a central element of what has been termed ‘social’ and ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ (Byrne and Whiten 1988) and is closely related to, perhaps synonymous with, ‘mind reading’ (Whiten 1991), ‘folk psychology’, ‘natural psychology’ (Humphrey 1976) and the ‘intentional stance’ (Dennett 1988).

The importance of theory of mind for human thought and behaviour has been stressed by Baron-Cohen (in press). He lists nine behaviours that depend on the possession of a theory of mind:

1 Intentionally informing others 2 Intentionally deceiving others

3 Intentionally communicating with others 4 Repairing failed communication with others 5 Teaching others

6 Intentionally persuading others 7 Building shared plans and goals

8 Intentionally sharing a focus or topic of attention 9 Pretending

Without these behaviours, human society would be very different. How different might be appreciated by considering that current research strongly suggests that a dysfunctioning of the part of the brain that enables theory of mind may be the root cause of autism (Baron-Cohen 1995). Autistic children do not appear to engage in any of the above behaviours—their lack of a theory of mind has a devastating effect on their abilities to socialise and communicate. It also appears to inhibit their imagination, which suggests that the possession of a theory of mind may provide a critical foundation for creative thinking. From the above list of behaviours, pretence is that which is most clearly linked to imagination and creative thinking. Pretending

requires one to hold in one’s mind the actual identity of an object, along with the pretend identity. As such, one must have knowledge about one’s own mind. If that is lacking, so too will be the ability to pretend.

Figure 10.2 The ‘cultural explosion’ as a consequence of cognitive fluidity Source: Mithen 1996b

The dependency of creative thinking on theory of mind is also apparent from a recent set of drawing experiments that makes a direct link between the experiments by Karmiloff-Smith, described above, and the imagery in the earliest of the Upper Palaeolithic art. This link is the ability to produce representations of unreal things. In Upper Palaeolithic art, imaginary beasts play a significant role. The most dramatic example is the lion/man from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany (Hahn 1993). This is a c.11-cm-high figure carved from a single mammoth tusk about 30,000 years ago, which has the body of a man and the head of a lion. A second impressive example is the bison/man painting from Chauvet cave, which has the head and shoulders of a bison and human legs (Chauvet et al. 1996). Other paintings within that cave date to 30,000 years ago, and appear to be part of the same early Upper Palaeolithic artistic tradition as the figure from Hohlenstein- Stadel. Imaginary animals, ‘monsters’ and composite figures are found throughout the Upper Palaeolithic art tradition, with a notable collection coming from the cave of Pergouset, assumed to be Magdalenian in date (15–12,000 BP, Lorblanchet and Sieveking 1997) and further examples from Les Trois Frères (Figure 10.3), Pech Merle and Gabillou (Leroi-Gourhan 1983).

A link to the research on the theory of mind from these images is that autistic children appear unable to draw imaginary animals. Scott and Baron-Cohen (1996) undertook a series of experiments that demonstrated that autistic children have a deficit in the representation of unreal things, as had been argued by Leslie (1991). They appear unable to produce just those type of images that we find in the earliest Upper Palaeolithic art, and which we intuitively feel are more creative than those other images of real animals and people. Two explanations were proposed for this deficit. The first is that those suffering from autism are unable to ‘fuse’ together two primary representations of real objects. Scott and Baron-Cohen give the example of representing a ‘flying pig’, which involves joining together representations of a real pig, and a real bird, to produce a representation of an unreal animal, the flying pig. An alternative idea relates more directly to an absence of a theory of mind. They argue that ‘representing an unreal object necessarily requires pretending, or representing that you (the agent) are holding a pretend attitude (or mental state) towards an object’ (Scott and Baron-Cohen 1996:381; italics in original).

A second deficit in those suffering from autism appears to be an inability to engage in pretend play (Baron-Cohen 1995). One might also draw links here with the new types of behaviour that emerge with the Upper Palaeolithic. Pretence is a critical feature of ritual in extant hunter-gatherer societies. There can be little doubt that ritualised behaviour was also a critical feature of the earliest Upper Palaeolithic societies. Some of the composite figures in the art seem most likely to be a shaman in costume. That from Trois Frères (Figure 10.3), for example, has the legs and posture of a man, the back and ears of a feline, the antlers of a deer and a phallus positioned like that of a feline (Bahn and Vertut 1988).

In summary, the possession of a theory of mind appears to be a critical requirement for imaginative play and creative thinking; it appears to be an essential prerequisite for the exploration and mapping of conceptual spaces, even if quite why and how are not fully understood. One possibility, therefore, is that the creative explosion of the Upper Palaeolithic is directly related to the evolution of the theory of mind. Does the absence of representations of imaginary animals and ritualised activities prior to 30,000 years ago suggest that a theory of mind was also absent?

The evolution of ‘theory of mind’

This appears to be unlikely for two reasons. The first is that evidence exists for a theory of mind among our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas. We shared a common ancestor with these species no more than 6 mya, and if they possess a theory of mind, then we must conclude that a theory of mind was also present in our own earliest ancestors. Byrne (1995, this volume) has summarised the experimental and

observational evidence for a theory of mind among chimpanzees, of which deceptive behaviour is the most important, and is confident that mental state attribution does exist (although this appears absent in monkeys). The major criticism of this evidence is that it is largely anecdotal (Heyes 1993a). Nevertheless, I find the material accumulated by Byrne sufficient to indicate that chimpanzees possess a form of theory of mind, admittedly one that may not be as well developed as that of modern humans.

As some degree of theory of mind exists in chimpanzees, and so by implication in our common ancestor of 6 mya, we are unable to attribute the creative explosion of 35,000 years to the emergence of this capacity. This is further supported by the substantial expansion of the brain that occurred after 2.5 mya (Aiello and Dunbar 1993). It seems most unlikely that this did not result in some elaboration of the theory of mind capacity—what else was the processing power of the enlarged brain being used for? Robin Dunbar (1993, 1996) has argued that the large brain of our human ancestors implies living in social groups substantially larger than those of existing non-human primates. It is clear from many recent studies that these non-human primates needed to deploy a Machiavellian intelligence to maintain the balance between group fusion and fission and hence maintain an appropriate group size for the efficient exploitation of foodstuffs and predator defence (Byrne and Whiten 1988; Humphrey 1976). Theory of mind is most likely to be an essential feature of this Machiavellian intelligence and would have become increasingly important if group size increased during the Middle Pleistocene in the manner that Dunbar claims. In other words, theory of mind appears to have been an essential prerequisite for social life of Early Humans.

One further strand of evidence to support this concerns the evolution of language. As I will summarise below, there is strong anatomical evidence that by 250,000 at least, Early Humans had anatomical adaptations for speech. This most likely implies intentional communication, which as Baron-Cohen (in press) argues, requires a theory of mind.

To summarise: if creativity is about the exploration and transformation of conceptual spaces, this appears to have been possible only with the existence of a theory of mind. But that appears to have arisen in human evolution much earlier than the creative explosion of the Upper Palaeolithic. Consequently, we must now turn to the issue of language, and its relationship to creative thought.