“Theories can be unconscious states of mind as well as conscious ones, inexplicit ones as well as explicit ones, false ones as well as true ones, and conflicting ones as well as consistent ones.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
I had written about animals and newborn babies both having genetic theories built in, and mentioning babies’ control over their limbs suggesting built in theories about things like three-dimensional space. Someone replied:
“If moving one’s limbs is a theory, then animals have theories too. Sarah’s use of the term is stretching it well beyond recognition.”
A correspondent asked:
“What do you mean by ‘theory’? You seem to use that word for just about everything! Why not use a less academic word?”
I try to use a less perplexing, narrower word wherever I can, such as ‘idea’, ‘wish’ or ‘gene’ instead of the very broadly construed word ‘theory’. Sometimes it is quite difficult though, because so much of the explanation for what I am saying is in the underlying philosophy. Because of the very broad scope of Popperian epistemology (that is, Karl Popper’s philosophical theory of knowledge and how knowledge grows/improves), some stretching of everyday language is essential to express the epistemology accurately. The word ‘theory’ is a case in point. To give you an idea, here are just some of the things ‘theory’ can mean:
Aspect of personality, assumption, behavioural tendency, belief, concept, conception, conjecture, conviction, deduction, desire, disposition, ethical maxim, expectation, explanation, fear, gene, guess, habit, hope, hypothesis, idea, impression, impulse, inspiration, interpretation, mental image, meme, mental picture, metatheory, notion, opinion, postulate, predisposition, premise, presumption, presupposition, psychological characteristic, psychological tendency, rationale, sensation, skill, speculation, state of mind, supposition, surmise, suspicion, theory, thought, trait, wish,… etc.
Theories can be unconscious states of mind as well as conscious ones, inexplicit ones as well as explicit ones, false ones as well as true ones, and conflicting ones as well as consistent ones. They can be held rationally—open to modification in the light of new and better information/criticism—or they can be entrenched—stuck, fixed, immoveable, not open to criticism and modification.
Newborn babies and animals both have genetic theories built in, but unlike newborn babies, animals’ built-in theories are not replaced through creative rational processes.
See also:
- What do you mean by ‘enacting a theory’?
- Clarifying Karl Popper’s epistemology
- Children are autonomous sources of ends
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2023, Taking Children Seriously FAQ: ‘What do you mean by “theory”?’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/what-do-you-mean-by-theory