I want to look into roleplay in animals, but Google is giving me animal roleplay, which is interesting too, but not what I’m looking for right now 😅
I’m wonder how much roleplay there is in the animal kingdom. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was very few.
Maybe if you’re able to roleplay, then you’re able to communicate?? Like, roleplay might need to have a theory of mind, because you’re imagining yourself in someone else’s body.
Maybe you can teach words to an animal without a theory of mind, but they’ll be more like levers for them: for them, saying “banana” is like pressing a lever that gives you bananas rather than communicating the concept of banana to someone else.
And once you have a theory of mind, then this might unlock the ability to roleplay. If you have a culture of roleplay, then I guess that basically already gives you a basic “sign” language from which you gradually build abstractions as you climb the intelligence ladder. I guess, at first the cultural and genetic selection might be (a lot?) related to the size of the vocabulary, and we can model roleplaying as a (proto-)language.
Although a quick web search tells me that children develop language before a theory of mind; but maybe they wouldn’t come up with it even if they can learn it. And maybe “theory of mind” is more of a spectrum.
This is an idea the bloomed from talking to David Krueger about the progress of humans’ learning abilities, and zir pointing out that before language you might have roleplay.
I want to look into roleplay in animals, but Google is giving me animal roleplay, which is interesting too, but not what I’m looking for right now 😅
I’m wonder how much roleplay there is in the animal kingdom. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was very few.
Maybe if you’re able to roleplay, then you’re able to communicate?? Like, roleplay might need to have a theory of mind, because you’re imagining yourself in someone else’s body.
Maybe you can teach words to an animal without a theory of mind, but they’ll be more like levers for them: for them, saying “banana” is like pressing a lever that gives you bananas rather than communicating the concept of banana to someone else.
And once you have a theory of mind, then this might unlock the ability to roleplay. If you have a culture of roleplay, then I guess that basically already gives you a basic “sign” language from which you gradually build abstractions as you climb the intelligence ladder. I guess, at first the cultural and genetic selection might be (a lot?) related to the size of the vocabulary, and we can model roleplaying as a (proto-)language.
Although a quick web search tells me that children develop language before a theory of mind; but maybe they wouldn’t come up with it even if they can learn it. And maybe “theory of mind” is more of a spectrum.
This is an idea the bloomed from talking to David Krueger about the progress of humans’ learning abilities, and zir pointing out that before language you might have roleplay.
x-post: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10158914397244579