メタ表象についての心理・哲学的考察

抄録

The concept of metarepresentation has played a central part in the controversy about the ʻTheory of Mindʼ, because the ability to represent a representation (in anotherʼs mind) has been identified with the ʻTheory of Mindʼ. In order to prove possession of the ability of metarepresentation, it is sufficient to prove the ability to understand false representations. On the basis of this fact, Wimmer & Perner developed the so-called false belief task, and their experiment using this task revealed that children under three years of age could not perform it. From this result, it became accepted that the ability of metarepresentation ability appears at 4 years of age or older. However, in 2005, Onishi & Baillargeon reported that 15-month-olds could understand false beliefs, and this result called the accepted theory described above into question. Actually, there are various examples in child development research which have been supposed to have to do with the ʻTheory of Mindʼ and, therefore, to be metarepresentations: pretense, understanding of pictures, understanding of knowledge, visual perspective taking and so on. In this article, we will show that there exists a metarepresentation different from the understanding of false representations,i.e., that of the ʻaspectualityʼ of representation, on the basis of Dretskeʼs functionalist theory of representation. By applying this new concept of metarepresentation to the abilities listed above, it will become possible to examine whether each of them is a metarepresentation or not.