Explorations of the (Meta)Representational Status of Desire in the Theory-Theory of Mind Framework

Some researchers have proposed that what accounts for children’s earlier ability to reason by means of desire compared to reasoning by means of belief is the fact that desires do not necessarily invoke the ability to metarepresent. In this paper, I argue that this is a misconception stemming from the confusion between desire ascription and simple desire states. In other words, there would be no way to entertain a thought about someone’s desire without metarepresenting, in Leslie’s (1991) terms. I provide some empirical evidence in the fashion of Bartsch and Wellman (1995) that also points in this direction.