Do Apes Read Minds?

by Andrews, Kristin

• ISBN13: 9780262017558
• ISBN10: 0262017555
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-20
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

By adulthood, most of us have become experts in human behavior, able to make sense of the myriad behaviors we find in environments ranging from the family home to the local mall and beyond. In philosophy of mind, our understanding of others has been largely explained in terms of knowing others' beliefs and desires; describing others' behavior in these terms is the core of what is known as folk psychology. In Do Apes Read Minds? Kristin Andrews challenges this view of folk psychology, arguing that we don't consider others' beliefs and desires when predicting most quotidian behavior, and that our explanations in these terms are often inaccurate or unhelpful. Rather than mindreading, or understanding others as receptacles for propositional attitudes, Andrews claims that folk psychologists see others first as whole persons with traits, emotions, and social relations. Drawing on research in developmental psychology, social psychology, and animal cognition, Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices (including prediction, explanation, and justification) and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and generalization from self) that are involved in our folk psychological practices. According to this understanding of folk psychology--which does not require the sophisticated cognitive machinery of second-order metacognition associated with having a theory of mind--animals (including the other great apes) may be folk psychologists, too.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Identifying the Problem	p. 1
Do Apes Read Minds?	p. 3
Social Apes	p. 3
Standard Views of Folk Psychology	p. 7
A Pluralistic Folk Psychology	p. 10
Baby Humans and Adult Chimpanzees: Propositional Attitude Attribution in Philosophy and Psychology	p. 13
From Philosophy to Psychology	p. 13
Belief Attribution in Philosophy	p. 14
Belief Attribution in Psychology	p. 18
Theory of Mind in Children	p. 22
Infant Belief Attribution	p. 25
Children's Changing Understanding of Other Minds	p. 33
The Asymmetry of Folk Psychological Prediction and Explanation	p. 37
Standard Folk Psychology Emphasizes Prediction (and Assumes Explanation Follows)	p. 37
The Symmetry Thesis	p. 39
Criticisms of the Symmetry Thesis	p. 41
An Asymmetric Folk Psychology	p. 43
Prediction	p. 45
How Do You Know What I'm Going to Do? You Know My Beliefs	p. 47
Prediction and the Propositional Attitudes	p. 47
Predicting Behavior	p. 49
Accuracy of Predicting Behavior by Relying on the Attitudes	p. 51
Propositional Attitude Attribution Is Not Sufficient for Accurate Predictions	p. 52
Propositional Attitude Attribution Is Not Necessary for Accurate Predictions	p. 54
Prediction in Theory Theory and Model Theory	p. 56
Prediction in Simulation Theory	p. 60
Leaving the Armchair	p. 63
How Do You Know What I'm Going to Do? You Know Me	p. 65
Mental Content and Intentionality	p. 65
Methods of Prediction	p. 67
Predicting from the Situation	p. 70
Predicting from Self	p. 75
Predicting from Stereotypes	p. 81
Predicting from Traits	p. 88
Other Factors Involved in Predicting Behavior	p. 93
The Role of Propositional Attitudes in Behavior Prediction	p. 99
Predicting Behavior and Mental Content	p. 99
Does Trait Attribution Require Attribution of Mental Content?	p. 101
How Accurate Is Standard Folk Psychology?	p. 105
What Place Is There for Traditional Folk Psychological Prediction?	p. 109
Predicting Behavior without Attributing Propositional Attitudes	p. 111
Explanation	p. 113
What Is Folk Psychological Explanation?	p. 115
A Preliminary Account of Folk Psychological Explanation	p. 115
Explanation and Prediction	p. 126
Four Questions about FP Explanation	p. 128
Explanation in Theory Theory	p. 129
Explanation in Simulation Theory	p. 132
Explanation in Model Theory	p. 138
My Answers to the Four Questions	p. 143
The Science of Folk Psychological Explanation	p. 145
Aspects of Explanation	p. 145
Explanation Seeking in Children	p. 146
Infants	p. 146
Verbal Children	p. 148
Explanation Generating in Children	p. 151
The Purposes of FP Explanation	p. 153
Explanation Types and Contents	p. 156
Explanatory Pluralism	p. 161
Worries about Explanation and Mental State Attribution	p. 163
Explaining Behavior without a Theory of Mind	p. 163
Nonverbal Explainers	p. 164
Automatic Mental State Attribution	p. 168
Explanations, Reasons, and Causes	p. 175
Toward a New Way	p. 178
The Solution	p. 181
Folk Psychological Pluralism: Reading People, Not Minds	p. 183
The Principles of a Pluralistic Folk Psychology	p. 183
Folk Psychological Pluralism	p. 197
How Do the Traditional Accounts of Mind Reading Stack Up?	p. 198
Reading People, Not Minds	p. 206
Implications of the Account	p. 213
Social Intelligence and the Evolution of Theory of Mind	p. 215
The Social Intelligence Hypothesis	p. 215
Deceiving without a Theory of Mind	p. 218
Predicting with a Theory of Mind	p. 220
Norms and Theory of Mind	p. 222
An Adaptive Function of Explaining Behavior	p. 224
Social Intelligence as Explaining Behavior	p. 229
Being a Critter Psychologist	p. 231
Problems with the Chimpanzee Theory of Mind Research Program	p. 231
Chimpanzee Critter Psychology	p. 234
Intentional Agency	p. 234
Predicting and Coordinating	p. 237
Explanation Seeking	p. 240
Belief Attribution	p. 243
Moving Forward	p. 247
Conclusion	p. 249
Seeing People	p. 249
Notes	p. 253
References	p. 255
Index	p. 289
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