When we seek to understand behavior – our own and that of others – we suffer from philosopher's disease: the unnecessary, inappropriate, theoretically driven casting of behavior in terms of higher-order cognitive processes. In these accounts, we often commit the error of intentionality, the over-estimate of our voluntary, conscious control of behavior. The antidote for philosopher's disease and its associated theoretical biases is research based on the natural priorities of organisms that is derived from objective descriptions of behavior. I suggest that we are not very good philosophers and can benefit from the examination of nontraditional sources for insight and guidance, especially prenatal behavior and postnatal contagious behaviors such as yawning and laughing (Provine Reference Provine2012).

The best place to start the investigation of behavior is at the beginning – prenatal behavior. Early embryos are profoundly unphilosophical and unpsychological beings that start to move before they receive sensory input. They spond before they respond. Such motor precocity is an awkward fact for developmental psychologists who seek only environmentally driven causes of behavior (sensation/perception, learning, motivation, etc.) and neglect spontaneous movement (Provine Reference Provine2012). The agenda of postnatal psychology fares poorly when forced upon the prenatal domain. Even after sensory input becomes available, it has little impact on most ongoing behavior during the prenatal period (Provine Reference Provine1972). If this is not challenge enough, the spinal cord, not the brain, is the origin of the electrical discharges that drive much embryonic behavior (Provine & Rogers Reference Provine and Rogers1977). Both the functions and causes of embryonic behavior are novel and unique to the prenatal niche. Embryonic movement is essential for the development of joints, muscles, and the regulation of neuron numbers, behavioral consequences neglected by most developmental psychologists (Provine Reference Provine2012). How many developmental psychologists know that paralyzing embryos blocks the naturally occurring death of motor neurons?

Instinctive yawning (Provine Reference Provine2005), and laughing (Reference Provine2000; Reference Provine2016; Reference Provine2017) provide informative examples of erroneous thinking about the causes of behavior. Yawning is considered a pseudolinguistic gesture of sleepiness or boredom, and laughing is a play vocalization emitted in certain social settings, but neither is under strong voluntary control. We can neither convincingly yawn nor laugh on command, and attempts to do so seem fake and have long latencies (Provine Reference Provine2012). However, lack of conscious control does not curtail the composition of fictive narratives to explain their occurrence.

Contagion provides another challenge to the myth of conscious control that is especially relevant to the issue of infant imitation of the sort reported by Meltzoff and Moore (Reference Meltzoff and Moore1977) (Provine Reference Provine1989a; Reference Provine2012). When we yawn in response to observed yawns (Provine Reference Provine1986) or laugh in response to observed laughs (Provine Reference Provine1992), is it a conscious effort to imitate another person? Both options are unlikely, given the low level of voluntary control of yawning and laughing (Provine Reference Provine2012). I suggest, instead, that such contagion is the involuntary consequence of activation of a feature detector for yawns or laughs in the observer's brain. The detector for laughter is probably acoustic – the sound of laughter triggers laughter of the listener (Provine Reference Provine1992; Reference Provine2000). The trigger for yawning is more broadly tuned – almost any stimulus associated with yawning will trigger yawns, including looking at them (Provine Reference Provine1986; Reference Provine1989b), hearing them, thinking about them (Provine Reference Provine1986), or even reading about them as you are now doing (Provine Reference Provine1986). If you desire a broader menu of contagious and pseudo-imitative acts, examine coughing, vocal crying, emotional tearing, reddening of the eyes, nausea/vomiting, and itching/scratching (Provine Reference Provine2012).