Happy Babies

For anyone who spends time around babies (or at least most babies; clearly, there are loads of exceptions), one of the most striking and wonderful things is their happiness, the contagious innocence of their smiles and giggles.  For someone like me who likes to think philosophically, this joy is wonderful, but it is also a philosophical problem: why?  Why are babies so happy so much of the time, while adults... well, simply, aren't.

There are lots of answers to such a simple question, of course, and I've tried out a bunch of them at different moments in this blog.  But as Helena Iara and I swung in the hammock yesterday, and she grinned at the swinging motion, at the huge lizard gliding across the yard, at the wind in the trees and the sound of my voice, I remembered some of my father's words from when I was a teenager: "The more different things you can enjoy in life, the better chance you have to be happy."

(Contrast with one of my favorite lines from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxication in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."

Sometimes, it's worthwhile to pay attention to one's parents.)

Dad's lecture... well, not so much a lecture, with the disciplinary tone that entails, but really a kind suggestion, came at the height of adolescent pretension, the moment when we show that we're better than other kids because of what we hate.  Country music, parachute pants, pet rocks, hot dogs, heavy metal... honestly, I don't remember what it was that brought on the conversation, but something I knew that I should not like, if I were to appear the sophisticated grown-up I wanted to be.  An American teenager puts a lot of time into learning how to dislike things, so that he can feel as if he is superior, cool, different, the same...

In truth, what what likes is more about identity, about constructing who I think I am and how I want others to see me, than it is about pleasure.  That's why the question, "What kind of music do you like?" is such a fraught one.  It's not really a question about aesthetics, but about whether you're going to be cool enough to be my friend.

Babies, as I told Helena, don't fall into those traps.  They can enjoy the play of light on the leaves without anyone laughing at them for being simple.  They can express their love for their mommies transparently without being accused of being "Mama's boy."  They haven't yet learned that enjoyment is a complex system of social controls.  They just enjoy.

Peek-a-Boo!

Over the last couple of weeks, Helena has come to love the game of peek-a-boo in its various forms: I cover my eyes with my hands, and then open them up to "peek-a-boo"; Rita hides behind a wall and then appears; I slide below the crib, makes sounds, and then lift my head up with a loud "beep!"  These games guarantee a laugh from Helena, and also gave an excuse for a brief talk on philosophy.

Most psychologists interpret babies' love for the game of peek-a-boo with their understanding of object permanence: when a child comes to understand that an object is there whether I look at it or not, the appearance and disappearance of objects becomes an intellectually challenging game.  "Where is the thing?  I can't see it, but it makes sounds, so it must be there... There it is!"  The confirmation of this knowledge brings the laugh.

As I told Helena, though, I think there is a basic epistemological error in this way of reading peek-a-boo.  It makes sense for when the baby's eyes are hidden, but babies love it even more when the adult hides his or her own eyes.  It is the adult who can't see, not the child, so object permanence isn't really at issue... unless, of course, we think that children are as stupid as the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, described in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as "A beast so mind-bogglingly stupid it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you."  Since I don't think babies are that mind-bogglingly stupid, we have to come up with another reason for why they love peek-a-boo.

My sense is that babies love to see their parents cover their eyes, pretend not to know where the baby is, and then open them to a "There you are!" because they are learning to recognize the perspective and subjectivity of the other.  The game plays with the slow realization that other people are not merely there to serve or impede the baby's desires, but have their own perspective on the world.  Babies come to see that others are also subjects with desires and perspectives... and limitations.  Dad is not a God-like figure, because he can't see when his eyes are covered; like the baby, he only know the world by the holes in his face that let sensations in.

Sara Hrdy gives the example of the “False-Belief Test”: sitting with a mother and a small child, Hrdy would ask the mother to cover her eyes. Then, she would hide a cookie that had been in plain sight before the mother had closed her eyes, and ask the child, “Where does you mother think the cookie is?” In general, middle-class American children younger than four years old said that their mothers believed that the cookie was hidden under the table. Older children, on the other hand, generally recognized that the mother would continue to think the cookie was on the table – a false belief – because she had not seen the cookie move.  Attributing a false belief of the other, the recognition that his or her point of view is incomplete, shows that I accept that the other has a mind with different beliefs and perceptions than my own... and in that way, exactly like my own perspective, which is also limited and often wrong.

Hrdy is talking about older kids, but playing peek-a-boo with Helena Iara suggests that this process happens much earlier.  In fact, I'd like to suggest that it's a central part of what it means to become human: for the Tupi-Guaraní Indians, for instance, this ability to recognize that the other has a perspective (and the desire to learn from that perspective) are the center of what it means to be a person.  And no less thinker than Emmanuel Kant insists that the essence of ethics is recognizing that the other is an "end-in-himself", a subject with a separate perspective on the world.

Peek-a-boo as an ethical exercise: who would have imagined that a baby's game would be so essential?