Mindreading (2) PDF

Mindreading (2) Making sense of other people Decoupling and Metarepresentation The Sarah earth believes is “The earth round is round.” Pretend METAREPRESENTAT PRIMARY ION REPRESENTATION This This is a banana...

Mindreading (2) Making sense of other people Decoupling and Metarepresentation The Sarah earth believes is “The earth round is round.” Pretend METAREPRESENTAT PRIMARY ION REPRESENTATION This This is a banana: banana. it is a telephon e  Question: If mindreading and pretending depend on the same mechanism, why does pretending develop much earlier? Why the gap between metarepresentational play and passing the false belief task? Leslie: The Selection Processor Hypothesis Passing the false belief task requires inhibiting the default assumption that other people’s beliefs are true Metarepresentation: present early and used to attribute true beliefs to others But: passing the false belief task requires attributing false beliefs – this is a separate ability that only emerges when children become able to inhibit the default assumption Perner: An Alternative Model Metarepresentation requires understanding that a belief can be true or false Theory of Mind Module vs. Simulation Both Leslie and Perner hold that mindreading is carried out by a dedicated cognitive system domain-specific proprietary database (theory of mind) Simulation theorists, in contrast, hold that there is no dedicated mindreading system social coordination and social understanding work by co-opting other cognitive systems Theory of Mind Module Mindreading is a theoretical activity; requires the use of a theory Metarepresentation requires drawing on a vast body of background knowledge including generalizations People who are thirsty want to drink Drinks are kept in fridges Fridges are kept in kitchens People like beer cold Simulationism: The basic idea We use our own mind as a model of other people’s minds Project ourselves into their position and try to work out what we would do in that position We do this by running our own decision-making systems with pretend inputs Decision-making systems run off-line – outputs are descriptions of actions, which we then use to predict other people’s behavior  Theory “How do we become aware of other people’s mental states? One possibility is that we are equipped with a theory whose domain of application is constituted by theory other agents’ mental states. On this view, becoming aware of someone else’s mental state is a case of inferring from a token behavior the mental state that has vs. caused it by applying the relevant part of a psychological theory. Another possibility is that we have the capacity to Simulatio simulate other people’s mental states; that is, we are able to put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes, and go through in imagination the mental states we would go through n theory were we really in the other person’s circumstances. The end result of such a process, namely the mental state in which the simulator finds herself, can now serve as a guide to what mental state the simulated person is in.” Deonna, Julien & Nanay, Bence (2014). Simulation versus theory-theory. A plea for an epistemological turn. In Anne Reboul (ed.), Mind, Value and Metaphysics. Springer. Simulationism Standard Simulation (Goldman): form beliefs about the other person’s beliefs, and then ask “what would I do if I had those beliefs? Radical Simulation (Gordon and Heal): Imagine how the world appears to the person being simulated and predict behavior on that basis Radical simulationsim Doesn’t start off from representations of other people’s mental states Simulator is thinking about the world, not about the other person’s psychological states Thinking about the world from the perspective of the other person Mindreading without metarepresentation?