Emotion Review

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Comment: Understanding Reasons Without Reenactment: Comment on Stueber

Daniel D. Hutto
Emotion Review 2012 4: 66
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421384
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EMR4110.1177/1754073911421384HuttoEmotion Review

Comment

Understanding Reasons without Reenactment:

Comment on Stueber

Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 6667
The Author(s) 2012
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421384
er.sagepub.com

Daniel D. Hutto

School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Abstract
This comment on Stuebers article clarifies the nature of the core
disagreement between his approach to understanding reasons and mine.
The purely philosophical nature of the dispute is highlighted. It is argued
that understanding someones narrative often suffices for understanding
the persons reasons in ordinary cases. It is observed that Stueber has yet
to provide a compelling counter case. There is also a brief clarification of
some of the empirical commitments of the narrative practice hypothesis.

Keywords
folk psychology, reasons, reenactment, simulation

In his article Stueber (2012) makes a case for thinking that we

simply cannot do without reenactive empathy when engaging
with others viscerally or making sense of their actions in
terms of reasons. He is right to set out his stall differently along
these two fronts. One concerns low-level forms of intersubjective interacting (which I call unprincipled enactive/embodied
engagements) and the other concerns much more sophisticated,
articulate and conceptually based forms of understanding
(which I call folk psychology, stricto sensu). In this short commentary I focus exclusively on what Stueber has to say about
the latter, for reasons of space.
Stueber (2012) acknowledges that the new trend of supposing that narratives might play an important, and perhaps even
fundamental, part in our understanding reasons has enriched
the theory of mind debate. Nevertheless, he regards it as stepping over the mark if we imagine that to understand Xs reason
we need only understand Xs narrative. He rejects the idea that
narrative understanding suffices or exhausts what it is to understand someones reason. Call this the narrative suffices for reason understanding (or NSRU) claim. Steuber thinks the NSRU
cannot be true because it fails to acknowledge the utterly necessary and central (i.e., nonsuperfluous) role of reenactive empathy (or simulation) in enabling us to understand a persons
reasons for acting. Call this the reenactment is necessary for
reason understanding (or RNRU) claim.

Inspired by Collingwood and others, Stueber (2012) wants to

establish the truth of the RNRU (and hence the falsity of its
competitor, the NSRU). To assess the success of his efforts one
must recognize the thoroughly philosophical character of this
debate. Both claims under examination are claims about what is
minimally required for understanding reasons, advanced on
a priori grounds (no doubt some would regard them as attempts
to express analytic truths). In his 2006 book, Stueber is admirably frank about the status of his claim (Stueber, 2006, p. 152).
Recognizing this point is important when it comes to assessing different strands of Stuebers argument. He devotes space
to discussing some empirical findings and raises questions
about how best to interpret them. But this is orthogonal to his
main concern. Although the empirical issues are worthy of further scrutiny and discussion, they make exactly no contribution
to deciding what is at stake in the NSRURNRU debate. Still,
I cant resist clarifying my views on one issue (especially since
Stueber invites me to do so). How do children move from
having a piecemeal and partial grasp of mental state concepts
to an integrated, articulate understanding of reasonsthat is, a
full folk psychological competence? Children do this, I conjecture, by mastering and deepening their capacities for producing
and consuming narratives. This is a slow process. It involves
participating in shared, scaffolded, story-telling practices. The
narrative skills required for this are in place only very weakly
in early childhood, becoming stable only at around age 5 and
growing more secure after that. Thus the proposal that our
capacity to understand reasons only comes by developing
narrative abilities concurs with the findings that
5- and 6-year-old children (who are old enough to pass false-belief
tasks) still have problems understanding: how beliefs are acquired
(Carpendale & Chandler, 1996; Robinson & Apperly, 2001) how beliefs
interact with desires (Leslie et al., 2005; Leslie & Polizzi, 1998) and the
emotional consequences of false beliefs (e.g., Harris, Johnson, Hutton,
Andrews, & Cooke, 1989; Ruffman & Keenan, 1996). (Apperly &
Butterfill, 2009, p. 957)

Mastering all of this, the child in effect learns the core

principles of folk psychology (as some philosophers would

Corresponding author: Daniel D. Hutto, School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK. Email: d.d.hutto@herts.ac.uk

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Hutto Understanding Reasons without Reenactment 67

put it), but they do this, remarkably, without coming to possess

or acquire any principles at all.
It is true, as Stueber (2012) stresses, that I accept that
the exercise of imaginative capacitieseven capacities for
cocognitionare important in enabling children to develop an
understanding of reasons. But imaginative and cocognitive
capacities do not, individually or jointly, add up to understanding an agents reasons. Full mastery of that special kind of
understanding only comes as the result of engaging with
narratives. If so, it follows that it cannot be a prerequisite for
entering into the relevant narrative practices. Philosophers of a
certain Platonic mindset tend to marvel as to how it is possible to
learn something without already knowing it, but gradual mastery
of skills and techniques is a quite common phenomenon.
This brings us back to the main question. Is it possible to
fully understand someones reason for acting without putting
ourselves in their shoes, identifying with them, or otherwise
simulating their mindset? I agree with Stueber that theory
theory is inadequate. Having general knowledge about the laws
of folk psychologythat is, how mental states interrelatewill
not suffice for understanding a persons reasons for acting on
some occasion. For example, without knowing the appropriate
backstory, being told that X ate an acorn because he believed it
was an acorn and desired to eat an acorn it is likely to leave us
puzzled, even though it is not irrational to do such a thing (in a
strict sense of rational).
By contrast, if we flesh out enough of Xs story, Xs stated
reason may become intelligible. Thus if we learn that this is part
of an important religious ritual for Xif we can see a link
between this sort of activity and activities that play, or could
have played, a similar role in our lives, then it becomes possible
to make sense of Xs reason. In getting the bigger picture by
fleshing out Xs narrative we dont typically need the whole of

Xs story, we need just enough to see the relevant connections.

But for Stueber, apparently even having the whole story would
not suffice. Even if we had the full details of Xs storyin every
detail and particularitywe wouldnt be able to understand Xs
reasons; that is, until we also put ourselves in Xs shoes. For
Stueber (2012), using all of this information provided by the
narrative could provide a frame for making the relevant adjustments that would allow us to do just that.
A great deal in this debate hangs on what we mean by
understanding a reason. Note that it seems perfectly possible
to understand someones reason without endorsing it. We can
understand someones reason while still finding it strange,
unattractive, or repugnant to our moral sensibilities (as in
thehopefully, imaginarycase of the student who desires to
shoot his professor; or that of a suicide bomber). There is no
doubt that more needs to be said about what that involves and
what goes on in the closely connected phenomenon of imaginative resistance (for a good discussion see Currie, 2010, Chapter
6). But careful scrutiny of Stuebers (2012) article reveals only
the repeated claim that understanding reasons, in folk psychological fashion, essentially requires reenactment. What are
not provided are compelling arguments or examples to support
that claim.

References

Apperly, I., & Butterfill, S. A. (2009). Do humans have two systems to track
beliefs and belief-like states? Psychological Review, 116, 953970.
Currie, G. (2010). Narratives and narrators. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Stueber, K. R. (2006). Rediscovering empathy: Agency, folk psychology and
the human sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stueber, K. R. (2012). Varieties of empathy, neuroscience and the
narrativist challenge to the contemporary theory of mind debate.
Emotion Review, 4, 5563.

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