Some details about how exactly it works for homo sapiens could be found in works of Vygotsky and Piaget—they did some cool experiments about what kind of reasoning is human child generally able at what age. Some models need time and experience to develop, though maybe we have some hardware support that makes it click faster. For example at some age children start to understand the conservation of momentum (when an interesting object disappears behind a barrier, they no longer look at the point where it disappeared, but at the opposite side of the barrier, where it should appear). At some age children start to understand that their knowledge is different from other people’s knowledge (a child is shown some structure from both sides, another person only from one side, and a child has to say which parts of structure did the other person see). So our models develop gradually.
Modelling thinking is difficult, because we cannot directly observe the thoughts of others, and the act of observing interferes with what is being observed. There are techniques that help. It is difficult to recognize oneself as a physical system, when one doesn’t know how exactly does the system work. If I wouldn’t have any information about how brain works, what reason would I have to believe that my mind is a fuction of my brain? My muscles are moving and I can see their shapes under my skin, but I never observe a brain in action. In a similar way, by observing a robot you would understand the wheels and motors, but not the software and the non-moving parts of hardware; even if you were that robot.
Some details about how exactly it works for homo sapiens could be found in works of Vygotsky and Piaget—they did some cool experiments about what kind of reasoning is human child generally able at what age. Some models need time and experience to develop, though maybe we have some hardware support that makes it click faster. For example at some age children start to understand the conservation of momentum (when an interesting object disappears behind a barrier, they no longer look at the point where it disappeared, but at the opposite side of the barrier, where it should appear). At some age children start to understand that their knowledge is different from other people’s knowledge (a child is shown some structure from both sides, another person only from one side, and a child has to say which parts of structure did the other person see). So our models develop gradually.
Modelling thinking is difficult, because we cannot directly observe the thoughts of others, and the act of observing interferes with what is being observed. There are techniques that help. It is difficult to recognize oneself as a physical system, when one doesn’t know how exactly does the system work. If I wouldn’t have any information about how brain works, what reason would I have to believe that my mind is a fuction of my brain? My muscles are moving and I can see their shapes under my skin, but I never observe a brain in action. In a similar way, by observing a robot you would understand the wheels and motors, but not the software and the non-moving parts of hardware; even if you were that robot.