Throughout this book, Gopnik talks about what we know about how babies perceive the world from experiments. This knowledge, in turn, provides insight into some of the most fundamental aspects of human experiment: love, truth, meaning, reasoning. Children, it seems, have a profoundly different experience of the world than adults do, but these differences are what give the most insight into the human condition.

The conclusion sums this up well:

We can return to the questions we started at the beginning of this book. How is it possible for human beings to change? What does this tell us about children and childhood, especially very young children and very early childhood? There are three intertwined strands in the answer -- learning, counterfactuals, and caregiving, or more poetically, truth, imagination, and love. In science and philosophy these three aspects of human experience are often treated as if they were quite separate from one another -- epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics all have very different traditions. But for young children, truth, imagination, and love are inextricably intertwined.

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Gopnik argues that human young (she discusses toddlers and elementary age children as much as babies) rely upon the evolutionary strategy of "protected immaturity" which allows individuals the possibility of learning how to live from others while their immediate needs are met by caregivers. "While children may be useless, they are useless on purpose." [72] And this "learning how to live" is not merely copying what they observe those others doing, rather it involves judicious imagination to consider how else it might be done, and whether (and precisely how) it would be better another way. It's also as much about how minds work as it is about how bodies or objects work.

Gopnik carefully reviews the evidence for this strategy, the various ways it shows up in human evolution and adaptation generally, as well as how it plays out for individuals. Think: teen rejection of parental lifeways, college graduates rejecting the experience of middle managers; the links between imaginary friends and novelists. The ways that individuals change and vary, is closely linked to the ways the species (and community) changes. And she drops more than a few film references.

We, and those around us, may create our psychological worlds more than we discover them, and discover our physical worlds more than we create them, but the same distinctive human reasoning is involved in both cases. The causal maps in our minds allow us both to understand the existing physical and psychological worlds and to invent and realize new physical and psychological worlds. They simultaneously let us make predictions, imagine alternative possibilities, and create fictions. [68]

The emphasis upon psychology as much as (empirical) philosophy is gratifying, with Gopnik considering some of how we develop a self ("executive control" and autobiographical memory) and not only how we come to understand how we might organise a home or plan a city. Love and attachment are as important concepts as causality or technological innovation. Morality is as relevant as logic, and both involve similar assumptions: that we can take the perspective of others; infer intention & distinguish from accident; that we can follow abstract rules. [204]

Easily the conversational yet substantial survey I'd hoped it would be, emphasizing the big picture over pieces. None of it was particularly surprising, neither was it anything I readily could have relayed to anyone else before reading it. Gratifying to have Gopnik sketch out in considerable detail a hazy picture I thought I had of how people work. ( )

Durante la última década se ha producido una revolución en nuestra comprensión de la mente de los más pequeños. Hasta hace poco, los cien­tí­fi­cos creían que los bebés eran seres irra­cio­na­les, de­bi­do a que te­nían un pen­sa­mien­to y ex­pe­rien­cia muy li­mi­ta­dos. Algo así como un ce­re­bro o un cua­derno en blan­co, donde está todo por es­cri­bir. Ahora Alison Gopnik, destacada psicóloga y filósofa además de madre, demuestra gracias a un innovador estudio que los niños apren­den más, son más crea­ti­vos y ex­pe­ri­men­tan el mundo que los rodea más in­ten­sa­men­te que los adul­tos, tie­nen más neu­ro­nas y más co­ne­xio­nes que los ma­yo­res, y menos sus­tan­cias que fre­nen el tra­ba­jo de sus cir­cui­tos ner­vio­sos. Algo que ex­pli­ca que sean ca­pa­ces de apren­der una can­ti­dad sor­pren­den­te de in­for­ma­ción, en un tiem­po re­la­ti­va­men­te corto.

En este ameno y accesible paseo por los novedosos avances psicológicos, neurocientíficos y filosóficos en el entendimiento de la mente de los más pequeños, Gopnik ofrece una brillante comprensión sobre cómo los bebés ven el mundo y cómo los padres pueden determinar la vida de sus hijos.

El Filósofo entre Pañales’ está escrito por Alison Gopnik, catedrática de psicología, catedrática asociada de filosofía de la Universidad de California en Berkeley y madre. Una experta de reconocido prestigio internacional apasionada del aprendizaje y el desarrollo infantil. Gopnik fue una de las primeras especialistas en la materia que sostuvo que la mente de los niños podía ayudar a comprender profundas cuestiones filosóficas.

En su libro viene a reflejar en todos los ámbitos posibles descubrimientos científicos de psicólogos y neurocientíficos que demuestran que: «los bebés no sólo aprender más y más rápido, sino que imaginan más, se preocupan más y experimentan más. (…) En ciertos sentido, los niños pequeños son más inteligentes, más imaginativos, más afectuosos e incluso más conscientes que los adultos«, demuestra la obra. Un compendio que ofrece un sinfín de respuestas sobre la mente de los pequeños genios que tenemos al lado. ( )

Enlightening, thought-provoking and often amusing. In someone else’s hands, all the concepts covered in this book could have been turned into pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. Gopnik, however, is an engaging thinker and writer who a) knows her stuff and b) can explain it to laypeople in a way that’s clear without being dumbed-down. Even if small children aren’t aware that they’re constantly developing, testing and revising their theories about how the world works (and imagining how it coulda shoulda woulda been different had things gone this way instead of that way), they -- and we -- certainly do it all the time. ( )

As this book points out, babies are not merely adorable little lumps. They're learning, observing and absorbing, on their way to the adults they'll become. She cites research but the book is written for the layman, so it's pretty readable although it can get dense here and there. Definitely a read for anyone who cares about children or has an interest in child development. ( )