Introduction
How children change the world
How childhood changes the world
A Road map
1. Possible worlds : why do children pretend?
The power of counterfactuals
Counterfactuals in children : planning the future
Reconstructing the past
Imagining the possible
Imagination and causation
Children and causation
Causes and possibilities
Maps and blueprints
Causal maps
Detecting blickets
2. Imaginary companions : how does fiction tell the truth?
Dunzer and Charlie Ravioli
Normal weirdness
Making a map of the mind
Imaginary companions and psychological knowledge
Autism, causation, and imagination
Maps and fictions
Why minds and things are different
Soul engineers
The work of play
3. Escaping Plato's cave : how children, scientists, and computers discover the truth
Observation : baby statistics
Experimentation : making things happen
Demonstration : watching mom's experiments
Understanding minds
4. What is it like to be a baby? Consciousness and attention
External attention
Internal attention
Baby attention
Young children and attention
What is it like to be a baby?
Travel and meditation
5. Who am I? Memory, self, and the babbling stream
Consciousness and memory
Children and memory
Knowing how you know
Constructing myself
Children and the future
The stream of consciousness
Living in the moment
Internal consciousness, free association, hypnagogic thought, and insight meditation
Why does consciousness change?
A map of myself : constructing consciousness
6. Heraclitus' River and the Romanian orphans : how does our early life shape our later life?
Life cycles
The paradox of inheritance
How babies raise their parents
7. Learning to love : attachment and identity
Theories of love
Beyond mothers : social monogamy and allomothering
Life's weather
The child inside
8. Love and law : the origins of morality
Imitation and empathy
Anger and vengeance
Beyond empathy
Psychopaths
Trolleyology
Not like me
Widening the circle
Following the rules
Baby rules
Doing it on purpose
Rules as causes
The perils of rules
The wisdom of Huck Finn
9. Babies and the meaning of life
Awe
Magic
Love
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index.