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Philosophy of cognitive science :: Folk psychology and theory of mind

• The nature of folk psychology [23]
• The theory theory [10]
• The simulation theory [36]
• Theory of mind, misc [34]
• Folk concepts and folk intuitions [19]

The nature of folk psychology

See also: The theory theory, The simulation theory, Theory of mind, misc, Folk concepts and folk intuitions, Eliminativism, Propositional attitudes, general.

• Kristin Andrews (online). It's in your nature: A pluralistic folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I suggest a pluralistic account of folk psychology according to which not all predictions or explanations rely on the attribution of mental states, and not all intentional actions are explained by mental states. This view of folk psychology is supported by research in developmental and social psychology. It is well known that people use personality traits to predict behavior. I argue that trait attribution is not shorthand for mental state attributions, since traits are not identical to beliefs or desires, and an understanding of belief or desire is not necessary for using trait attributions. In addition, we sometimes predict and explain behavior through appeal to personality traits that the target wouldn’t endorse, and so could not serve as the target’s reasons. I conclude by suggesting that our folk psychology includes the notion that some behavior is explained by personality traits–who the person is–rather than by beliefs and desires–what the person thinks. Consequences of this view for the debate between simulation theory and theory theory, as well as the debate on chimpanzee theory of mind are discussed
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/0260052g076urj17/fulltext.pdf
  
• Kristin Andrews (online). The functions of folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk psychology rest on a particular view about how humans understand other minds. That is, though folk psychology is described as “our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena” (Churchland 1981, p. 67), there have been implicit assumptions regarding the nature of that commonsense conception. It has been assumed that folk psychology involves two practices, the prediction and explanation of behavior. And it has been assumed that one cognitive mechanism subsumes both these practices
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.yorku.ca/andrewsk/documents/TheFunctionsofFolkPsychology.pdf
  
• Lynne Rudder Baker (1999). Folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In recent years, folk psychology has become a topic of debate not just among philosophers, but among development psychologists and primatologists as well
• Lynne Rudder Baker (1999). What is this thing called 'commonsense psychology'?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is this thing called ‘Commonsense Psychology’? The first matter to settle is what the issue is here. By ‘commonsense psychology,’ I mean primarily the systems of describing, explaining and predicting human thought and action in terms of beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, expectations, intentions and other so-called propositional attitudes. Although commonsense psychology encompasses more than propositional attitudes--e.g., emotions, traits and abilities are also within its purview--belief-desire reasoning forms the core of commonsense psychology. Commonsense psychology is what we use to explain intentional action as ordinarily described--e.g., Jack went to the store because he wanted some ice cream. Commonsense psychology also is used to explain mental states--e.g., Jill feared that she would be late because she thought that the meeting began at 4:00. Commonsense psychology is the province of everyone; we all use it all the time
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~lrb/work/presentations/baker_what_is_this_thing_called_commonsense_psychology.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/780184264.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a780184264~fulltext=713240930
  
• Radu Bogdan (1993). The architectural nonchalance of commonsense psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Eliminativism assumes that commonsense psychology describes and explains the mind in terms of the internal design and operation of the mind. If this assumption is invalidated, so is eliminativism. The same conditional is true of intentional realism. Elsewhere (Bogdan 1991) I have argued against this 'folk- theory-theory' assumption by showing that commonsense psychology is not an empirical prototheory of the mind but a biosocially motivated practice of coding, utilizing, and sharing information from and about conspecifics. Here, without presupposing a specific analysis of commonsense psychology, I want to challenge a key implication of the 'folk-theory-theory' assumption to the effect that commonsense psychology is committed to a definite architecture of the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1993.tb00279.x
  
• Richard Breheny (2006). Communication and folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Prominent accounts of language use (those of Grice, Lewis, Stalnaker, Sperber and Wilson among others) have viewed basic communicative acts as essentially involving the attitudes of the participating agents. Developmental data poses a dilemma for these accounts, since it suggests children below age four are competent communicators but would lack the ability to conceptualise communication if philosophers and linguists are right about what communication is. This paper argues that this dilemma is quite serious and that these prominent accounts would be undermined if an adequate more minimal alternative were available. Just such a minimalist account of communication is offered, drawing on ideas from relevance theory and situation theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/richardb/comm & folk psy.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2006.00307.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2006/00000021/00000001/art00007
  
• Andy Clark (1987). From folk psychology to naive psychology.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.leaonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15516709cog1102_1
  http://www.leaonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1207/s15516709cog1102_1
  http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15516709cog1102_1
  
• Henk de bij Weg (2001). The commonsense conception and its relation to scientific theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In studying what people do two points of view can be distinguished: We can choose the perspective of the actors themselves (the actor’s perspective), or we can look at what is going on from the outside, from a distance (the researcher’s perspective). Regarding the relation between both points of view three standpoints have been defended
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://home.hetnet.nl/~wegweeda/Summarydissertatie.htm
  
• Daniel Dennett (1991). Two contrasts: Folk craft vs folk science and belief vs opinion.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Let us begin with what all of us here agree on: folk psychology is not immune to revision. It has a certain vulnerability in principle. Any particular part of it might be overthrown and replaced by some other doctrine. Yet we disagree about how likely it is that that vulnerability in principle will turn into the actual demise of large portions--or all--of folk psychology. I am of the view that folk psychology is here for the long haul, and for some very good reasons. But I am not going to concentrate on that in my remarks. What nobody has bothered saying here yet, but is probably worth saying, is that for all of its blemishes, warts and perplexities, folk psychology is an extraordinarily powerful source of prediction. It is not just prodigiously powerful but remarkably easy for human beings to use. We are virtuoso exploiters of not so much a theory as a craft. That is, we might better call it a folk craft rather than a folk theory. The theory of folk psychology is the ideology about the craft, and there is lots of room, as anthropologists will remind us, for false ideology
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000261/00/twocontr.htm
  http://cogprints.org/261/00/twocontr.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:261
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:261
  
• Peter Godfrey-Smith (1981). Folk psychology as a model.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. One sense of "model" 3. Folk psychology as a model 4. Versions and construals 5. Folk psychology in cognitive science and analytic philosophy
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pgs/OnlinePapers/FPasModel-PGS-Imprint.pdf
  
• Peter Godfrey-Smith (2004). On folk psychology and mental representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: into the old view of the mind as a kind of “ghost inside the machine.”
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~pgs/Online_papers/PGSonFP&MR.pdf
  
• A. Goldman (1993). The psychology of folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomena, so it must study folk psychology, the common understanding of mental states. This subfield of scientific psychology is what I mean by the phrase 'the psychology of folk psychology'
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=190720
  
• Robert Gordon (online). Reason explanations and counterfactuals.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In evaluating conditionals concerning what a person would have done in counterfactual circumstances, we suppose the counterfactual antecedent to be true, just as in what I loosely term the standard "Ramsey" procedure; but then we follow a different path--a simulative path--in evaluating the consequent. The simulative path imposes an implicit restriction on possible worlds, a procedural guarantee that the individual simulated is aware of or knows about the counterfactual condition. This difference makes clear the way in which reason explanations are implicitly cognitive and psychological
• Till Gruene-Yanoff (online). Folk psychological realism without representational commitments - the measurement- theoretic account revisited.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Standardly, mental properties like beliefs, desires, fears, etc. are analysed as relations between the agent, to whom the predicate is ascribed, and a proposition, which is the intentional content of this property. According to this relational analysis, having a thought implies having its content present to the mind. This has wide-ranging philosophical implications, e.g. for the possibility of children and animals having intentional mental properties, or for the problem of knowing one’s own thoughts. Further, according to the relational analysis, the causal efficacy of mental properties must be in virtue of their content. This implies that folk-psychological explanations acquire a special status, for they employ mental properties as the explanans of behaviour. Mental properties can be conceived of as causally efficacious, and hence like standard scientific explanans, only if a satisfactory account is provided how they are causally efficacious in virtue of their semantic content. A successful account of this sort, I submit, does not exist as of yet; hence it seems, on the relational account, that folk psychological explanations are non-scientific, if they are explanations at all
• Joshua Knobe (2007). Reason explanation in folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Consider the following explanation: (1) George took his umbrella because it was just about to rain. This is an explanation of a quite distinctive sort. It is profoundly different from the sort of explanation we might use to explain, say, the movements of a bouncing ball or the gradual rise of the tide on a beach. Unlike these other types of explanations, it explains an agent’s behavior by describing the agent’s own _reasons_ for performing that behavior. Explanations that work in this way have a number of distinctive and important properties, and we will refer to them here as _reason explanations_. Looking at the use of reason explanations with a philosophical eye, one is apt to experience a certain puzzlement. One wants to know precisely what makes a given reason explanation true or false. So, for example, the explanation given above seems to be saying that George’s reason for taking his umbrella was that it was just about to rain. But what exactly makes it the case that this is George’s reason? Does he have to actually be
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4975.2007.00146.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/misp/2007/00000031/00000001/art00005
  
• David Landy (2005). Inside doubt: On the non-identity of the theory of mind and propositional attitude psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Eliminative materialism is a popular view of the mind which holds that propositional attitudes, the typical units of our traditional understanding, are unsupported by modern connectionist psychology and neuroscience, and consequently that propositional attitudes are a poor scientific postulate, and do not exist. Since our traditional folk psychology employs propositional attitudes, the usual argument runs, it too represents a poor theory, and may in the future be replaced by a more successful neurologically grounded theory, resulting in a drastic improvement in our interpersonal relationships. I contend that these eliminativist arguments typically run together two distinct capacities: the folk psychological mechanisms which we use to understand one another, and scientific and philosophical guesses about the structure of those understandings. Both capacities are ontologically committed and therefore empirical. However, the commitments whose prospects look so dismal to the eliminativist, in particular the causal and logical image of propositional attitudes, belong to the guesses, and not necessarily to the underlying mechanisms. It is the commitments of traditional philosophical perspectives about the operation of our folk psychology which are contradicted by␣new evidence and modeling methods in connectionist psychology. Our actual folk psychology was not clearly committed to causal, sentential propositional attitudes, and thus is not directly threatened by connectionist psychology
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/F4M04131105X8RX4.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/f4m04131105x8rx4/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2005/00000015/F0020003/00009004
  
• Edouard Machery (2006). The folk concept of intentional action: Philosophical and experimental issues.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: ^∗ Thanks for helpful comments to Gregory Currie, Josh Knobe, Ron Mallon, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Shaun Nichols, Steve Stich, Liane Young, the readers of the blog Experimental Philosophy (http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/) as well as two anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to my research assistant on this project, Julie Sokolow, for her help and her comments
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.pitt.edu/~machery/papers/The%20folk%20concept%20of%20intentionality_machery.pdf
  http://www.pitt.edu/~machery/papers/The folk concept of intentionality_machery.pdf
  
• Shaun Nichols (2002). Folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Contents: 1. Introduction – What Is Folk Psychology? 2. History 3. Folk Psychology and the Scientific View of the Mind 4. Folk Psychology as Tacit Knowledge 5. Simulation Theory 6. Introspection Revisited
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/Publications/Papers/FolkPsychology.pdf
  
• Gerard O'Brien (1993). A conflation of folk psychologies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Stich begins his paper "What is a Theory of Mental Representation?" (1992) by noting that while there is a dizzying range of theories of mental representation in today's philosophical market place, there is very little self-conscious reflection about what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. This is quite remarkable, he thinks, because if we bother to engage in such reflection, some very surprising conclusions begin to emerge. The most surprising conclusion of all, according to Stich, is that most of the philosophers in this field are undertaking work that is quite futile:

  It is my contention that most of the players in this very crowded field have _no_ coherent project
  that could possibly be pursued successfully with the methods they are using. (p.244)

  Stich readily admits that this is a startling conclusion; so startling, he thinks, that some may even take it as an indication that he has simply "failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to" (p.244). But it is a conclusion that he is willing to stand by, and he sets about it defending it in the body of his paper
• David Ohreen (2007). Why Folk Psychology Is Not Universal.   (More)
• Mark Sharlow (online). As true as "you think": Preserving the core of folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I argue in defense of an important fragment of folk psychology. Specifically, I argue that many propositions about the ontology of mental states and about mental causation are true largely because of certain observable features of human linguistic behavior. I conclude that these propositions are immune to common avenues of eliminativist criticism. I compare and contrast this argument with some previous arguments about the truth of folk psychology
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow/papers/folk_psychology.pdf
  
• Stephen Stich & Shaun Nichols (2002). Folk psychology.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For the last 25 years discussions and debates about commonsense psychology (or “folk psychology,” as it is often called) have been center stage in the philosophy of mind. There have been heated disagreements both about what folk psychology is and about how it is related to the scientific understanding of the mind/brain that is emerging in psychology and the neurosciences. In this chapter we will begin by explaining why folk psychology plays such an important role in the philosophy of mind. Doing that will require a quick look at a bit of the history of philosophical discussions about the mind. We’ll then turn our attention to the lively contemporary discussions aimed at clarifying the philosophical role that folk psychology is expected to play and at using findings in the cognitive sciences to get a clearer understanding of the exact nature of folk psychology
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1992.tb00196.x
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1993)3<225:FPSOTT>2.0.CO;2-H
  http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/Publications/Papers/FolkPsychology.pdf
  
• Stephen Stich & R. Ravenscroft (1994). What is folk psychology?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For the last two decades a doctrine called ‘‘eliminative materialism’’ (or sometimes just ‘‘eliminativism’’) has been a major focus of discussion in the philosophy of mind. It is easy to understand why eliminativism has attracted so much attention, for it is hard to imagine a more radical and provocative doctrine. What eliminativism claims is that the intentional states and processes that are alluded to in our everyday descriptions and explanations of people’s mental lives and their actions are _myths_. Like the gods that Homer invoked to explain the outcome of battles, or the witches that Inquisitors invoked to explain local catastrophes, they _do not exist_. According to eliminativists, there are no such things as beliefs or desires or hopes or fears or thoughts. These putative states and processes are the badly misguided posits of a seriously mistaken theory, just like phlogiston and caloric fluid and the luminiferous ether.¹
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/phil/teach/mmm/readings/Stich - Cognitive Science and the Appeal to Tacit Theory.rtf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/tech_rpt/folkpsych5.pdf
  http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0998dgh/philos/Texte/folkpsych5.pdf
  http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~snichols/Papers/FolkPsychologyECS.pdf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/papers/folkpsych5.ps
  http://www.blutner.de/NeuralNets/Texts/folkpsych5.pdf
  http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0998dgh/NeuralNets/Texts/folkpsych5.pdf
  http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/Publications/Papers/FolkPsychology.pdf
  http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0998dgh/NeuralNets/Texts/folkpsych5.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8039374&dopt=Citation
  

The theory theory

See also: Development of consciousness, The nature of folk psychology, The simulation theory, Theory of mind, misc, Eliminativism, The given, Causal role functionalism.

• Michael Bishop (2002). The theory theory thrice over: The child as scientist, superscientist, or social institution?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff have argued for a view they call the ‘theory theory’: theory change in science and children are similar. While their version of the theory theory has been criticized for depending on a number of disputed claims, we argue that there is a fundamental problem which is much more basic: the theory theory is multiply ambiguous. We show that it might be claiming that a similarity holds between theory change in children and (i) individual scientists, (ii) a rational reconstruction of a Superscientist, or (iii) the scientific community. We argue that (i) is false, (ii) is non-empirical (which is problematic since the theory theory is supposed to be a bold empirical hypothesis), and (iii) is either false or doesn’t make enough sense to have a truth-value. We conclude that the theory theory is an interesting failure. Its failure points the way to a full, empirical picture of scientific development, one that marries a concern with the social dynamics of science to a psychological theory of scientific cognition.  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0039368101000292
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00393681/2002/00000033/00000001/art00029
  http://www.fsu.edu/~philo/The%20theory%20theory%20thrice%20over.pdf
  
• Nick Bostrom (online). Cortical integration: Possible solutions to the binding and linking problems in perception, reasoning and long term memory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The problem of cortical integration is described and various proposed solutions, including grandmother cells, cell assemblies, feed-forward structures, RAAM and synchronization, are reviewed. One method, involving complex attractors, that has received little attention in the literature, is explained and developed. I call this binding through annexation. A simulation study is then presented which suggests ways in which complex attractors could underlie our capacity to reason. The paper ends with a discussion of the efficiency and biological plausibility of the proposals as integration mechanisms for different regions and functions of the brain
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nickbostrom.com/old/cortical.html
  
• C. Glymour (2000). Android epistemology for babies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _Words_, _Thoughts and Theories _argues that infants and children discover the physical and psychological features of the world by a process akin to scientific inquiry, more or less as conceived by philosophers of science in the 1960s (the theory theory). This essay discusses some of the philosophical background to an alternative, more popular, “modular” or “maturational” account of development, dismisses an array of philosoph- ical objections to the theory theory, suggests that the theory theory offers an undeveloped project for artificial intelligence, and, relying on recent psychological work on causation, offers suggestions about how principles of causal inference may provide a developmental solution to the “frame problem”
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/glymour/glymour2000.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/UK0382115258756W.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=242118&PDF=1
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2000/00000122/F0020001/00242118
  
• Alison Gopnik (2003). The theory theory as an alternative to the innateness hypothesis.   (More)
• W. P., P. S., S. E. & J. L. (1999). Synchronous change and perception of object unity: Evidence from adults and infants.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Adults and infants display a robust ability to perceive the unity of a center-occluded object when the visible ends of the object undergo common motion (e.g. Kellman, P.J., Spelke, E.S., 1983. Perception of partly occluded objects in infancy. Cognitive Psychology 15, 483±524). Ecologically oriented accounts of this ability focus on the primacy of motion in the perception of segregated objects, but Gestalt theory suggests a broader possibility: observers may perceive object unity by detecting patterns of synchronous change, of which common motion is a special case. We investigated this possibility with observations of adults and 4-month-old infants. Participants viewed a center-occluded object whose visible surfaces were either misaligned or aligned, stationary or moving, and unchanging or synchronously changing in color or bright- ness in various temporal patterns (e.g. ¯ashing). Both alignment and common motion con- tributed to adults' perception of object unity, but synchronous color changes did not. For infants, motion was an important determinant of object unity, but other synchronous changes and edge alignment were not. When a stationary object with aligned edges underwent syn- chronous changes in color or brightness, infants showed high levels of attention to the object, but their perception of its unity appeared to be indeterminate. An inherent preference for fast over slow ¯ash rates, and a novelty preference elicited by a change in rate, both indicated that infants detected the synchronous changes, although they failed to use them as information for object unity. These ®ndings favor ecologically oriented accounts of object perception in which surface motion plays a privileged role. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ591846
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10476606&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00100277/1999/00000071/00000003/art00026
  
• Daniel Nazer, Aaron Ruby, Shaun Nichols, Jonathan Weinberg, Stephen Stich, Luc Faucher & Ron Mallon (2002). The baby in the lab-coat: Why child development is not an adequate model for understanding the development of science.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Alison Gopnik and her collaborators have recently proposed a bold and intriguing hypothesis about the relationship between scientific cognition and cognitive development in childhood. According to this view, the processes underlying cognitive development in infants and children and the processes underlying scientific cognition are _identical_. We argue that Gopnik’s bold hypothesis is untenable because it, along with much of cognitive science, neglects the many important ways in which human minds are designed to operate within a social environment. This leads to a neglect of _norms_ and the processes of _social_ _transmission_ which have an important effect on scientific cognition and cognition more generally
• Gloria Origgi (online). Theories of theories of mind.   (More)
• Eric Schwitzgebel (1996). Theories in children and the rest of us.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(199609)63:32.0.CO;2-I
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(199609)632.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/188528.pdf
  
• Stephen Stich & Shaun Nichols (1998). Theory theory to the Max.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00085
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00085
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1998/00000013/00000003/art00007
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1998/00000013/00000003/art00085
  
• Dan Zahavi (2004). The embodied self-awareness of the infant: A challenge to the theory-theory of mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This was originally written and presented at the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers on Folk Psychology vs. Mental Simulation: How Minds Understand Minds, run by Robert Gordon at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, June-July 1999. It has been only lightly revised since, and should be considered a rough draft. Needless to say, the ideas herein owe a lot to what I learned at the seminar from Robert Gordon and the other participants, particularly Jim Garson. However, any errors are my responsibility alone
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cfs.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/The embodied self-awareness.pdf
  http://www.imagery-imagination.com/sim-elim.htm
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=s38ZIzXth5gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&ots=igjyPI_jAV&sig=S_97hshyvz6kf3jI3F6jDIGTQkY
  

The simulation theory

See also: The nature of folk psychology, The theory theory, Theory of mind, misc.

• Emma Borg (2007). If mirror neurons are the answer, what was the question?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mirror neurons are neurons which fire in two distinct conditions: (i) when an agent performs a specific action, like a precision grasp of an object using fingers, and (ii) when an agent observes that action performed by another. Some theorists have suggested that the existence of such neurons may lend support to the simulation approach to mindreading (e.g. Gallese and Goldman, 1998, 'Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind reading'). In this note I critically examine this suggestion, in both its original and a revised form (due to Iacoboni et al., 2005, 'Grasping the intentions of others with one's own mirror neuron system'), and argue that the existence of mirror neurons can in fact tell us very little about how intentional attribution actually proceeds
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2007/00000014/00000008/art00001
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2007/00000014/00000008/art00001
  
• Joe Cruz (online). A Humean psychological alternative to Kant and Wittgenstein: Comments on Stueber's Importance of Simulation for Understanding Linguistic and Rational Agency.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Let me begin by saying that I am sympathetic to the simulation theory, especially where it is conceived of as a crucial and central addition alongside the theory-theory as the explanation of our capacity to attribute mental states, rather than as an exclusive and exhaustive account by itself.1 I part company with Professor Stueber, however, in that I view the recent simulation theory/theory- theory controversy as subject to resolution primarily through empirical findings. Still, it cannot be denied that Stueber has helped to crystallize elements of the simulation theory/theory-theory debate that have been lurking all along, and has illuminated an important avenue of inquiry into the status of simulation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.williams.edu/philosophy/fourth_layer/faculty_pages/jcruz/Comments_on_Stueber.pdf
  
• Martin Davies & Tony Stone (1998). Folk psychology and mental simulation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.¹ At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~mdavies/papers/simrip.pdf
  
• Martin Davies & Tony Stone (2001). Mental simulation, tacit theory, and the threat of collapse.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to the theory theory of folk psychology, our engagement in the folk psychological practices of prediction, interpretation and explanation draws on a rich body of knowledge about psychological matters. According to the simulation theory, in apparent contrast, a fundamental role is played by our ability to identify with another person in imagination and to replicate or re-enact aspects of the other person’s mental life. But amongst theory theorists, and amongst simulation theorists, there are significant differences of approach
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~mdavies/papers/collapse.pdf
  http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/psycho/teaching/pdf/Mental-Simulation.pdf
  
• Martin Davies & Tony Stone (2000). Simulation theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mental simulation is the simulation, replication or re-enactment, usually in imagination, of the thinking, decision-making, emotional responses, or other aspects of the mental life of another person. According to simulation theory, mental simulation in imagination plays a key role in our everyday psychological understanding of other people. The same mental resources that are used in our own thinking, decision-making or emotional responses are redeployed in imagination to provide an understanding of the thoughts, decisions or emotions of another
• Martin Davies (1994). The mental simulation debate.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1994)5<189:TMSD>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1994)5<189:TMSD>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522880.pdf
  
• Martin Davies (1994). The mental simulation debate.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1994)5<189:TMSD>2.0.CO;2-Q
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522880.pdf
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1994)5<189:TMSD>2.0.CO;2-Q
  
• Shaun Gallagher (2006). Logical and phenomenological arguments against simulation theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Theory theorists conceive of social cognition as a theoretical and observational enterprise rather than a practical and interactive one. According to them, we do our best to explain other people's actions and mental experience by appealing to folk psychology as a kind of rule book that serves to guide our observations through our puzzling encounters with others. Seemingly, for them, most of our encounters count as puzzling, and other people are always in need of explanation. By contrast, simulation theorists do their best to avoid the theoretical stance by using their own experience as the measure of everyone else's. When it comes to explaining how we understand other people some of the very best contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists are simulationists. For example, Vittorio Gallese, Alvin Goldman, Robert Gordon, Jane Heal, Susan Hurley, and Marc Jeannerod. This short list of simulationists, however, already involves some problems. Not everyone on this list understands simulation in the same way. In effect, there are different simulation theories, and although it is important to distinguish them, and I will do so before I go much further, I will in the end argue against all of them. For several reasons I don't think that the concept of simulation explains our primary and pervasive way of understanding others, any more than theory theory does
• Shaun Gallagher (2001). The practice of mind: Theory, simulation or primary interaction?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2001/00000008/F0030005/1207
  
• Vittorio Gallese (2007). Before and below 'theory of mind': Embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/Gallese_PhilTransRSocB_2007.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17301027&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=17301027&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  
• Vittorio Gallese (2001). The 'shared manifold' hypothesis: From mirror neurons to empathy.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2001/00000008/f0030005
  
• James Garson (2003). Simulation and connectionism: What is the connection?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Simulation has emerged as an increasingly popular account of folk psychological (FP) talents at mind-reading: predicting and explaining human mental states. Where its rival (the theory-theory) postulates that these abilities are explained by mastery of laws describing the connections between beliefs, desires, and action, simulation theory proposes that we mind-read by "putting ourselves in another's shoes." This paper concerns connectionist architecture and the debate between simulation theory (ST) and the theory-theory (TT). It is only natural to associate TT with classical architectures where rule governed operations apply to explicit propositional representations. On the other hand, ST would seem better tuned to procedurally oriented non-symbolic structures found in connectionist models. This paper explores the possible alignment between ST and connectionist architecture. Joe Cruz argues that connectionist models with distributed non-symbolic representations are particularly well suited to simulation theory. The purported linkage between connectionist architecture and simulation theory is criticized in this paper. The conclusion is that there are reasons for thinking that connectionist forms of representation are the enemy of both TT and ST. So the contribution of connectionism may be to suggest the need for an alternative to both views
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713629984~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/XN6T5C9CLGER7UYC.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2003/00000016/00000004/art00002
  
• Robert Gordon (online). Representing minds.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: investigation).^{1} We project ourselves into what, from his remarks and other indications, we imagine the speaker's state of mind to have been, . . . even into what from his behavior we imagine a mouse's state of mind to have been, and dramatize it as a belief, wish or striving, verbalized as seems relevant and natural to us in the state thus
• Robert Gordon (2001). Simulation and reason explanation: The radical view.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Alvin Goldman's early work in action theory and theory of knowledge was a major influence on my own thinking and writing about emotions. For that reason and others, it was a very happy moment in my professional life when I learned, in 1988, that in his presidential address to the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Goldman endorsed and defended the “simulation” theory I had put forward in a 1986 article. I discovered afterward that we share a strong conviction that empirical evidence is relevant to a full assessment of the theory. We both find the burgeoning evidence from cognitive neuroscience to be of particular interest, I believe, in part because it makes possible a major departure for the philosophy of mind: turning its attention from

  (a)
  the neural basis of mental states,

  to
• Robert Gordon (2000). Simulation and the explanation of action.   (More)
• Robert Gordon & Joe Cruz (2002). Simulation theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is the simulation theory? Arguments for simulation theory Simulation theory versus theory theory Simulation theory and cognitive science Versions of simulation theory A possible test of the simulation theory
• David Henderson & Terence Horgan (2000). Simulation and epistemic competence.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Epistemology has recently come to more and more take the articulate form of an investigation into how we do, and perhaps might better, manage the cognitive chores of producing, modifying, and generally maintaining belief-sets with a view to having a true and systematic understanding of the world. While this approach has continuities with earlier philosophy, it admittedly makes a departure from the tradition of epistemology as first philosophy
• Chris Jarrold, Peter Carruthers, Jill Boucher & Peter Smith (1994). Pretend play.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Children’s ability to pretend, and the apparent lack of pretence in children with autism, have become important issues in current research on ‘theory of mind’, on the assumption that pretend play may be an early indicator of metarepresentational abilities
• Marc Jeannerod & Elisabeth Pacherie (2004). Agency, simulation and self-identification.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   This paper is concerned with the problem of selfidentification in the domain of action. We claim that this problem can arise not just for the self as object, but also for the self as subject in the ascription of agency. We discuss and evaluate some proposals concerning the mechanisms involved in selfidentification and in agencyascription, and their possible impairments in pathological cases. We argue in favor of a simulation hypothesis that claims that actions, whether overt or covert, are centrally simulated by the neural network, and that this simulation provides the basis for action recognition and attribution
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/04/45/ijn_00000445_00/ijn_00000445_00.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/35/19/PDF/ijn_00000445_00.pdf
  http://www.unites.uqam.ca/cnc/psy7123/simulationandself.pdf
  http://pacherie.free.fr/papers/Jeannerod-Pacherie_M&L-2004.pdf
  http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/05/35/19/PDF/ijn_00000445_00.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00251.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00251.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2004/00000019/00000002/art00001
  
• Barbara Montero (ms). Proprioceiving someone else's movement.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Proprioception - the sense by which we come to know the positions and movements of our bodies - is thought to be necessarily confined to the body of the perceiver. That is, it is thought that while proprioception can inform you as to whether your left knee is bent or straight, it cannot inform you as to whether someone else's knee is bent or straight. But while proprioception certainly provides us with information about the positions and movements of our own bodies, I will argue that it does more than that. Surprising as this may sound, one can proprioceive someone else's movement. To show this, I first present the results of some studies that suggest that in seeing others move, we kinesthetically represent their movement in our bodies. I then argue, by means of an analogy to prosthetic vision, that such 'kinesthetic vision' should count as proprioceiving others move
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/747861419.pdf
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/VXK356N167164725.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a747861419~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rpex/2006/00000009/00000002/art00001
  
• Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich & Alan Leslie (1995). Choice effects and the ineffectiveness of simulation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1995.tb00023.x
  
• Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich (1998). Rethinking co-cognition: A reply to Heal.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00089
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1998/00000013/00000004/art00089
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1998/00000013/00000004/art00003
  
• Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich, Alan Leslie & David Klein (1996). Varieties of off-line simulation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The debate over off-line simulation has largely focussed on the capacity to predict behavior, but the basic idea of off-line simulation can be cast in a much broader framework. The central claim of the off-line account of behavior prediction is that the practical reasoning mechanism is taken off-line and used for predicting behavior. However, there's no reason to suppose that the idea of off-line simulation can't be extended to mechanisms other than the practical reasoning system. In principle, any cognitive component can be taken off-line and used to perform some other function. On this view of off-line simulation, such accounts differ radically from traditional information-based accounts of cognitive capacities. And cognitive penetrability provides a wedge for empirically determining whether a capacity requires an information-based account or an off-line simulation account. Stich and Nichols (1992) argued that the simulation theory of behavior prediction was inadequate because behavior prediction seemed to be cognitively penetrable. We present empirical evidence that supports the claim that the behavior prediction is cognitively penetrable. As a result, the simulation account of behavior prediction still seems unpromising. However, off-line simulation might provide accounts of other cognitive capacities. Indeed, off- line simulation accounts have recently been offered for a strikingly diverse set of capacities including counterfactual reasoning, empathy and mental imagery. Goldman, for instance, maintains that counterfactual reasoning and empathy clearly demand off-line simulation accounts. We argue that there are alternative information-based explanations of these phenomena. Nonetheless, the off-line accounts of these phenomena are interesting and clearly worthy of further exploration
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/376/00/sim3.html