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1. Mindreading
There's an important set of human cognitive capacities first noticed by social psychologists and
philosophers in the middle of last century (see for example Heider 1958 and Sellars 1956.) The members
of this set of cognitive capacities are almost always assumed to be closely related, perhaps in virtue of
their being produced by a single underlying cognitive mechanism. To a first approximation the set consists
of
1. The capacity to predict human behavior in a wide range of circumstances.
2. The capacity to attribute mental states to humans.
3. The capacity to explain the behavior of humans in terms of their possessing mental states.
(See for example Stich & Nichols 1992.) The second and third capacities are clearly related: explaining
the behavior of humans in terms of their mental states involves attributing mental states to them. But we
should not assume without further investigation that all mental state attributions take the form of
explanations of behavior.
The characterization of mindreading given above is too restrictive. In addition to attributing mental states
and predicting and explaining behavior, there is a wide range of closely related activities. To begin with,
we not only seek to predict and explain people's behavior, we also seek to predict and explain their mental
states. In addition, we speculate about, discuss, recall and evaluate both people's mental states and their
behavior. We also speculate about, discuss, recall and evaluate people's dispositions to behave in certain
ways and to have certain mental states; that is, we consider their character traits. It may be that these
additional activities are grounded in the three capacities mentioned above, but we cannot simply assume
that they are. Throughout this entry the term mindreading is used in a wide sense to include all of these
activities.
As characterized above, mindreading is a human capacity directed at humans. But in two ways this is
overly exclusive. First, we attribute mental states to non-human animals and to non-animal systems such
as machines and the weather. It's not uncommon to hear people say that their dog wants a bone, or that the
chess program is thinking about its next move. We do not have to accept every such attribution at face
value; plausibly, some of this talk is metaphorical. Nevertheless, there seem to exist plenty of examples of
non-metaphorical attributions of mental states to non-humans. (Notice that insisting that mental state
attributions to animals are not metaphorical is compatible with such attributions being systematically
false.) Consequently, we must be careful not to characterize mindreading in a way which makes it
definitional that only humans can be the objects of mindreading. The second way in which the
characterization of mindreading offered above is overly focused on humans is that it remains an open
question whether some non-human primates can predict the behavior of their conspecifics. (See for
example Call & Tomasello 2008.) Consequently, we should avoid characterizing the mindreading
capacities in a way that makes it analytic that non-human animals lack those capacities.
One way to avoid the risk of over-emphasizing human capacities when characterizing mindreading is to
begin with the human capacities and then let the empirical chips fall where they may. For example, it may
turn out that some non-human primates can predict the behavior of their conspecifics, and that there are
significant similarities (including neurological similarities) between the human capacity to predict the
behavior of others and that of the non-human primate. In that case we should widen the characterization
of mindreading given above so that it is not exclusively focused on human capacities. Similarly, it may
turn out that precisely the same cognitive mechanisms are engaged when humans attribute mental states to
their conspecifics and when they attribute mental states to animals and machines. In that case we should
widen the characterization of mindreading to allow that animals and machines can be the objects of
mindreading. Defining the precise extension of mindreading by stipulation from the armchair is not
likely to be fruitful.
A final comment on mindreading is in order. The characterization of mindreading given here is compatible
with the existence of first person mindreading. But it may turn out that we deploy quite distinct
mechanisms when we predict or explain our own behavior, or attribute mental states to ourselves, than
when we predict or explain other's behavior, or attribute mental states to them. However, this is not an
issue which can be settled here. (See the entry on self-knowledge.)
The remainder of this section is in two parts. Part 2.2 briefly surveys some of the important issues
surrounding the development of mindreading in children and its evolution in our lineage. Part 2.3
provides a quick overview of work in social psychology aimed at exploring mindreading.
theory of human psychology, and do so on a common developmental timetable. Surely individual childscientists beavering away in isolation would pass through different developmental stages to arrive at
divergent theories of human psychology, and do so on distinct developmental timetables (Carruthers
1996b: 23). The claim that there is a universal developmental time table for the acquisition of folk
psychology has not gone unopposed. Some author's have argued for the existence of considerable crosscultural variation in the development of mindreading. See for example Lillard 1997; 1998 and Vinden
1996; 1999; 2002. Assessing this literature is beyond the scope of this entry.
Nativists take the (purported) existence of a near-universal competence arrived at via a near-universal
developmental pathway as evidence that the development of folk psychology is very strongly influenced
by the child's genes: the species-wide developmental pattern is explained by our species-wide genetic
inheritance (Carruthers 1996b: 23). They also offer a poverty of stimulus argument to the same
conclusion. Children as young five are highly competent mindreaders and so must possess an extensive
array of psychological concepts and a rich body of information about human psychology. They could not,
though, have acquired those concepts and that information from their environmenttheir environment
simply does not provide sufficient learning opportunities. Consequently, a considerable amount of folk
psychology must be innate. (See for example Scholl & Leslie 1999.) A great deal of work is required,
however, to sustain an argument of this nature. The proponent of any poverty of stimulus argument must
demonstrate that the stimulus is impoverished relative to the mature competence. That in turn requires
measuring the information content of the environment and comparing it with the information demands of
the competence. In the case of folk psychology, we lack an accurate measure of the information demands
of the competence because crucial questions about the nature of mature mindreading remain unresolved.
For example, Daniel Hutto has suggested that many cases of successful behavior prediction rely not on a
sophisticated theory of mind but on simple generalizations (Hutto 2008: 6). Consider a case where John
predicts that Betty will stop at a red traffic signal. Perhaps John arrived at his prediction by reasoning as
follows.
1. Betty believes that it is safest to stop at red traffic signals.
2. Betty desires to be safe.
3. Ceteris paribus, people act so as to realize their desires in light of their beliefs.
Therefore,
4. Betty will stop at the red traffic signal.
However, John might arrive at his prediction in quite a different way. He might simply rely on the
following generalization: most drivers stop at red traffic signals. Hutto suspects that the latter explanation
is the right one (a similar observation is made in Goldman 1987). More generally, Hutto endorses a kind
of deflationism about mindreading: he thinks that philosophers and psychologists have exaggerated the
amount of folk psychologizing that occurs. If it could be demonstrated that a great deal of mindreading
rests not on folk psychologizing but on the deployment of simple generalizations, then we would have to
reduce our estimate of the information demands of mindreading. Such a reduction would in turn weaken
the plausibility of the poverty of stimulus argument. (See Hutto 2008: 1816; Sterelny 2003: 2148.)
So far we have seen that we are not presently in a position to accurately measure the information demands
of the human mindreading competence. In addition, we are only beginning to appreciate the informational
richness of the childs learning environment. Kim Sterelny (2003: Ch. 8) has placed great stress on what
he calls epistemic niche construction. Animals can modify their environments to generate new
information, make old information more salient, and reduce cognitive demands. Sometimes these
environmental modifications endure long enough to enhance the fitness of the next generation. In
particular, parents may modify their child's environment in ways which facilitate their acquisition of folk
psychological concepts and information (Sterelny 2003: 2215). Hutto has suggested that one way in
which this might occur is by story telling (Hutto 2008). As Hutto observes, many stories make apparent
the links between the characters environment, mental states and behavior, and so may facilitate the childs
understanding of those links. If Sterelny and Hutto are right, the childs learning environment is richer
than we might have supposed, and the poverty of stimulus argument for folk psychology is
correspondingly weakened.
Whilst the person-situation distinction has underpinned important research in the social psychology of
mindreading, it has not been universally endorsed. Lee Ross (1977: 176) invites us to consider the
following pair of explanations:
1. Jack bought the house because it was secluded.
2. Jill bought the house because she wanted privacy.
The cause cited in explanation (1) would standardly be coded as situational; that in explanation (2) as
personal. However, most people are inclined to say that Jack and Jill's respective house purchases were
motivated by the same reason. This strongly suggests that the linguistic structure of explanations is a poor
guide to the causal antecedents of behavior.
Over the last decade, Malle has urged a return to Heider's original insight, which marked an important
distinction between intentional and unintentional behavior (see especially Malle 2004). Malle's research
strongly supports the claim that people distinguish between intentional and unintentional behavior. For
example, Malle and Knobe (1997) gave subjects descriptions of 20 behaviors, and asked them to rate how
intentional the behaviors were on an eight point scale (0 = not at all; 7 = completely). (Half the
subjects were given a definition of intentionality; the other half had to rely on their untutored conception
of intentionality.) There was considerable agreement amongst all the subjects as to which of the described
behaviors were intentional and which were not.
Within the category of intentional behaviors, Malle has identified three different modes (his term) of
explanations.
1. Reason explanations locate the causes of an agent's behavior in his or her reasons for acting. (Sally
bought some vitamin C tablets because she believed taking vitamin C would prevent her getting a
cold.)
2. Causal history of reason explanations locate the causes of an agent's behavior in the background
conditions which caused the agent to have the reasons which in turn caused the behavior. (Sally
bought the vitamin C tablets because she had been convinced of vitamin C's efficacy by an article in
a magazine.)
3. Enabling factor explanations identify the conditions which enabled the agent to bring about her
intentions. (Sally bought the vitamin C tablets because she had some money left over after doing
the shopping.)
(See Malle 2004, Ch. 4.) Notice the centrality of reasons in all these modes of explanation. Reason
explanations and causal history of reason explanations are obviously concerned with the agent's reasons.
Enabling factor explanations also involve the agent's reasons since they concern the factors which render
the agent's reasons efficacious. In contrast, explanations of unintentional behaviors don't appeal to the
agent's reasons. Unintentional behaviors include overt behaviors over which the agent has no control
(slipping on an icy step) and emotional expressions such as blushing. In these cases the explanations
people offer resemble the kinds of explanations they offer for the behavior of inanimate objects (Malle
2004: 111).
In addition to identifying a variety of explanatory modes people adopt towards intentional behavior, Malle
also identifies the features of the explanatory situation which drive the selection of one explanatory mode
rather than another. Two examples of Malle's work in this area are as follows (Malle 2004, Section 5.2).
1. The action is difficult to perform v. the action is easy to perform. Difficult actions (eg Jill's riding a
unicycle) are usually explained by appealing to enabling factors (eg She practiced a lot). In contrast,
if the action is easy to produce (eg Jill went for a walk), we tend to produce either reason
explanations (eg She wanted to keep fit) or causal history of reason explanations (eg Her trainer told
her that walking is an ideal way to keep fit).
2. The explanation is produced by the agent v. the explanation is produced by an observer. Actors tend
to produce explanations of their own behavior which stress their beliefs. For example, consider Jack
who wrote a letter to the mayor protesting against the city's housing policy. Jack explains his action
by saying that he thought the mayor would listen. In contrast, observers tend to produce
explanations which stress the agent's desires. Jill, who has observed Jack's letter writing, explains
Jack's action by saying that he wanted to change the policy.
There is more to an explanation of intentional behavior than its mode. Jill did not explain Jack's letter
writing by merely saying that he had a desire; she said that he wanted to change the policy. Reasons are
propositional attitudes, and normally reason explanations specify the propositions involved as well as the
attitudes. How do folk psychologists identify the propositions of an agent's attitudes when offering reason
causes? Malle suggests a number of cognitive processes which perform this task. One of his central
claims is that propositional contents are inferred from specific or generic information about the agent
(Malle 2004: 140). Consider again Jill's explanation of Jack's writing to the mayor: He wrote to the mayor
because he wanted to change the city's housing policy. Jill might attribute this particular desire to Jack
because she has often heard Jack talk disparagingly about the city's current policy. However, there must be
inferential processes which enable Jill to (a) locate information relevant to explaining Jack's action and (b)
pass from the belief that Jack objects to the current policy to the conclusion that Jack wrote the letter
because he wanted to change the current policy. According to the theory-theory, these inferential
processes involve a theory which maps the complex relations between stimuli, mental states and behavior;
that is, the inferences involve folk psychology. So the account of propositional attitude attribution is
incomplete until we have a detailedand empirically validatedaccount of folk psychology. What is
required here is a response to item C in the list of empirical issues given in Part 2.1: What is the content of
folk psychology? What states and properties does it quantify over, and what regularities does in postulate?
(See Von Eckardt 1994.) It's fair to say that, at present, we lack detailed answers to these questions.
false and its T-terms fail to refer (Lewis 1972: 205). He therefore adopts the modified Ramsey sentence
!(x1 xn)T(x1 xn),
which says that there exists a unique n-tuple of entities that realizes T.
The Carnap sentence is a conditional with the Ramsey sentence as antecedent and T as its consequent:
(x1 xn)T(x1 xn) T[t1 tn].
The Carnap sentence says that if T is realized, the t-terms name the corresponding entities of some
realization of T. Given Lewis's aversion to multiple realization, he prefers the modified Carnap sentence
which is a conditional with the modified Ramsey sentence as antecedent and T as the consequent:
!(x1 xn)T(x1 xn) T[t1 tn].
The modified Carnap sentence says that if T is uniquely realized, the t-terms name the corresponding
entities of the unique realization of T. To cover those cases in which T is not uniquely realized, either
because it is multiply realized or not realized at all, Lewis adds an additional conditional:
~!(x1 xn)T(x1 xn) (t1 = * & & tn = *).
This conditional says that, if T is not uniquely realized, then t1 tn name nothing. Taken together, the last
two conditionals are equivalent to a series of sentences which define each T-term strictly in O-terms:
T1 = !x1T[x1]
.
.
.
Tn = !xnT[xn]
We have now obtained an explicit definition for each T-term. Moreover, says Lewis, the definitions are
functional definitions: The t-terms have been defined as the occupants of the causal roles specified by the
theory T; as the entities, whatever those maybe, that bear certain causal relations to one another and to the
referents of the O-terms (Lewis 1972: 207). These definitions were implicit in the original theory T in the
sense that no additional content has been added to T in their derivation. (Lewis observes that the
definitions do in fact contain additional content, for their derivation assumes that T is uniquely realized.
He claims, though, that the assumption of uniqueness was made implicitly when T was stated. See the
remarks about uniqueness scattered through out Section I of Lewis 1972.) Let's now turn to the way Lewis
applies his theory of theoretical terms to the everyday psychological vocabulary.
Lewis begins by imagining the set of all the everyday, commonsense platitudes about mental states. He
treats this set of platitudes as a term-introducing psychological theory, with the T-terms being the names
of the commonsense psychological statesbeliefs, desires, pains, hungers, etcand the O-terms being
terms drawn from the non-psychological part of the everyday English vocabulary. The formal method
sketched above yields explicit definitions of the T-terms. These definitions are functionalist in that they
describe the causal roles in which the named entities participate: pain names the state which occupies
so-and-so causal role. (Lewis 1966 (fn 6) distinguishes between pain and the attribute of having pain.
Pain is the state which plays the pain-role, and which state plays the pain-role may differ from world to
world. The attribute of having pain is the having of a statewhatever state that might bewhich plays
the pain-role.)
Clearly, we need an account of the platitudes. Which everyday claims about mental states count as part of
the term-introducing theory? Here's Lewis (1972: 2078. See also Lewis 1966: 100):
Collect all the platitudes you can think of regarding the causal relations of mental states,
sensory stimuli, and motor responses. Perhaps we can think of them as having the form:
When someone is in so-and-so combination of mental states and receives sensory stimuli of
so-and-so kind, he tends with so-and-so probability to be caused thereby to go into so-and-so
mental states and produce so-and-so motor responses.
Also add all the platitudes to the effect that one mental state falls under anothertoothache
is a kind of pain and the like. Perhaps there are platitudes of other forms as well. Include
only platitudes which are common knowledge among useveryone knows them, everyone
knows that everyone knows them, and so on.
Lewis uses the explicit functional definitions of the commonsense psychological terms he has obtained as
premises in an argument for physicalism about mental states (Lewis 1972: 204):
1. Mental state M = the occupant of causal role R.
2. The occupant of causal role R = neural state N.
From (1) and (2) by transitivity we obtain:
3. Mental state M = neural state N.
Premise (1) is a functional definition of M obtained by the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method sketched above.
Premise (2) is overwhelmingly supported by physiology. (In Lewis 1966, the second premise is more
general: the occupant of the causal role is identified with a physical state. Lewis then defends the second
premise by endorsing the explanatory adequacy of physics.) So Lewis argues straightforwardly from
functionalism to physicalism.
With this picture in place, it is worth asking what precisely folk psychology is on Lewis's approach. To
my knowledge, Lewis never explicitly defines the term. However, when giving the semantics of the
everyday psychological vocabulary, he treats the conjunction of commonsense platitudes about mental
states as a term-introducing theory, so it is natural to identify folk psychology with that conjunction.
Alternatively, we could think of folk psychology as a systematization of the set of platitudes.
It is important to stress that Lewis's position has not been without its detractors. In particular, many
philosophers of language have objected to Lewis's semantic theory. In the 1960s and 1970s an alternative
approach to semantics was introduced by David Kaplan (1968), Keith Donellan (1970), Hilary Putnam
(1975) and Saul Kripke (1980). This approach separates the meaning of a theoretical term from the role it
plays in the theories in which it is found; that is, it separates meaning from use. These alternative
conceptions of meaning are broadly compatible with of Lewis's metaphysical conclusions; for example,
they are compatible with Lewis's physicalism. However, they are incompatible with the way Lewis
obtains his conclusions.
Setting aside questions of semantics, note that Lewis is hostage to empirical fortune in ways he does not
acknowledge. Lewis's claims about the platitudes are empirical claimsthey are claims about what is
commonly believed about mental states and as such can only properly be investigated by careful scientific
research. There is no evidence that Lewis undertook the appropriate studies. Moreover, it is very likely
that Lewis's own intuitions about mental states were influenced by his theoretical stance, and
consequently there is little reason to think that Lewis's own intuitions are a good guide to what people
typically believe about the mind.
Notice that Lewis only recognizes two kinds of platitudes: those that express causal relations between
mental states, stimuli and behavior, and those that indicate when one type of mental state is contained by
another. He admits that there maybe platitudes of other forms as well (Lewis 1972: 2078), but this is
disingenuous because his overall functionalist conclusion requires that all platitudes take one of the two
forms he identifies. Thus the functionalist conclusion could not be obtained if there were platitudes
expressing the view that mental states are substances which have their causal powers non-essentially, or
which lack causal powers altogether. It may turn out, for example, that the folk conceive of pain as an
essentially experiential state with non-essential causal connections to stimuli and behavior. Lewis is
simply assuming that commonsense is resolutely committed to the idea that mental states are
characterized by causal role; that is, the functionalist conclusion drives the characterization of the
platitudes. No doubt Lewis has philosophical arguments for denying that mental states are substances
which have their causal powers non-essentially, or substances that lack causal powers altogether. But that
is beside the present point. Lewis's intention was to capture what the folk think about mental states, not
what the philosophical literati think about mental states. Lewis also assumes that the platitudes form a
largely coherent set. He can handle minor inconsistencies because he proposes to form not a grand
conjunction of all the platitudes, but a grand disjunction of conjunctions of most of the platitudes.
However, he is still assuming that consistent sets containing most of the platitudes can be obtained. This
may or may not be the case, and we will only find out by doing the relevant empirical research.
There is some evidence that Lewis recognized these difficulties himself. In his Reduction of Mind he
remarks that Pace Lewis, 1972, p. 256, eliciting the general principles of folk psychology is no mere
matter of gathering platitudes (1994: 416). He also remarks that folk psychology is common knowledge
among us; but it is tacit, as our grammatical knowledge is (1994: 416). These remakes are consistent
with his adopting some version of the mindreading sense of folk psychology (see section 2 above);
however, they are too cryptic for us to establish exactly what Lewis's final position was.
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Related Entries
folk psychology: as mental simulation | functionalism | Lewis, David | materialism: eliminative | Sellars,
Wilfrid
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Daniel Hutto, Frank Jackson and (especially) Barbara Von Eckardt for
helpful comments on a draft of this entry, and thank his home institution Flinders University.
Copyright 2010 by
Ian Ravenscroft <ian.ravenscroft@flinders.edu.au>
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