Do you think they’re actually struggling to distinguish real from fiction, or merely struggling to keep two complex distinct worlds in their working memory/stack/context window and keep the details straight?
E.g. many animals will play and chase, understanding both that there’s different rules because it’s play, yet still transfer the skills to actually hunting or fighting. Seems more a matter of degree?
I think they simply lack the mental machinery to think about hypotheticals in general. So there’s no struggle really, because they have no conception of fiction.
It is a matter of degrees, though. Some animals show the ability for social deception. That’s a limited form of fictional thinking, and is probably the basis from which humans developed the skill (because chimps can also do some amount of social deception).
As for play fighting, I think this is better understood as a different behavioral mode. It doesn’t actually require conceptualization, just an ability to engage in a ritualized behavior with others that may be similar to but is safely different from real fighting. Also don’t forget that play fights sometimes accidentally become real fights!
Do you think they’re actually struggling to distinguish real from fiction, or merely struggling to keep two complex distinct worlds in their working memory/stack/context window and keep the details straight?
E.g. many animals will play and chase, understanding both that there’s different rules because it’s play, yet still transfer the skills to actually hunting or fighting. Seems more a matter of degree?
I think they simply lack the mental machinery to think about hypotheticals in general. So there’s no struggle really, because they have no conception of fiction.
It is a matter of degrees, though. Some animals show the ability for social deception. That’s a limited form of fictional thinking, and is probably the basis from which humans developed the skill (because chimps can also do some amount of social deception).
As for play fighting, I think this is better understood as a different behavioral mode. It doesn’t actually require conceptualization, just an ability to engage in a ritualized behavior with others that may be similar to but is safely different from real fighting. Also don’t forget that play fights sometimes accidentally become real fights!