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Enactive and Behavioral Abstraction Accounts of Social Understanding in Chimpanzees, Infants, and Adults

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Abstract

We argue against theory-of-mind interpretation of recent false-belief experiments with young infants and explore two other interpretations: enactive and behavioral abstraction approaches. We then discuss the differences between these alternatives.

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Notes

  1. One very important difference between these models concerns the language used to describe the underlying systems that implement these abilities. Our behavioral abstraction model is subsumed by a more global relational reinterpretation hypothesis which argues that humans uniquely implement a system (or systems) for higher-order role-based relational reasoning that accounts for uniquely human capacities in many domains of cognition (see below; Penn et al. 2008). At the same time it posits that in addition to sensory inputs, feedback from perception–action loops, autonomic–visceral states, the physical structure and capabilities of the organism’s body and all the other many variables that influence the actions of situated, embodied, biological agents in the wild, much of the basic understanding of behavior characteristic of infants and chimpanzees (and adults most of the time!) as animals is supported by first-order perceptual-based relational reasoning. The enactive perception view would view these latter descriptions as excessively “cognitive” and would look for an explanation in terms of far more “embodied” understanding. These issues are discussed in more detail in the final section of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

    Shaun Gallagher

  2. School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK

    Shaun Gallagher

  3. Cognitive Evolution Group, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA, USA

    Daniel J. Povinelli

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  1. Shaun Gallagher
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  2. Daniel J. Povinelli
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Correspondence to Shaun Gallagher.

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Gallagher, S., Povinelli, D.J. Enactive and Behavioral Abstraction Accounts of Social Understanding in Chimpanzees, Infants, and Adults. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 145–169 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0093-4

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