The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2016.
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | eng |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106433 |
| _version_ | 1811096212891238400 |
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| author | Jara-Ettinger, Jose Julian |
| author2 | Laura E. Schulz. |
| author_facet | Laura E. Schulz. Jara-Ettinger, Jose Julian |
| author_sort | Jara-Ettinger, Jose Julian |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2016. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:40:03Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/106433 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:40:03Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1064332019-04-12T09:30:27Z The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology Jara-Ettinger, Jose Julian Laura E. Schulz. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2016. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 131-143). By kindergarten, our knowledge of agents has unfolded into a powerful intuitive theory that enables us to thrive in our social world. In this thesis I propose that children build their commonsense psychology around a basic assumption that agents choose goals and actions by quantifying, comparing, and maximizing utilities. This naive utility calculus generalizes infants' expectation that agents navigate efficiently, and captures much of the rich social reasoning we engage in from early childhood. I explore this theory in a series of experiments looking at children's ability to infer costs and rewards given partial information, their reasoning about knowledgeable versus ignorant agents, and their reasoning about the moral status of agents. Moreover, a formal model of this theory, embedded in a Bayesian framework, predicts with quantitative accuracy how humans make cost and reward attributions. by Jose Julian Jara-Ettinger. Ph. D. 2017-01-12T18:33:18Z 2017-01-12T18:33:18Z 2016 2016 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106433 967336542 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 143 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Jara-Ettinger, Jose Julian The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title | The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title_full | The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title_fullStr | The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title_full_unstemmed | The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title_short | The inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology |
| title_sort | inner life of goals costs rewards and commonsense psychology |
| topic | Brain and Cognitive Sciences. |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106433 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jaraettingerjosejulian theinnerlifeofgoalscostsrewardsandcommonsensepsychology AT jaraettingerjosejulian innerlifeofgoalscostsrewardsandcommonsensepsychology |