Online research in philosophy

The question of what it means to be aware of others as subjects of mental states is often construed as the question of how we are epistemically justified in attributing mental states to others. The dominant answer to this latter question is that we are so justified in virtue of grasping the role of mental states in explaining observed behaviour. This chapter challenges this picture and formulates an alternative by reflecting on the interpretation of early joint attention interactions. It argues that the standard picture is committed to an implausible account of children's awareness of the co-attender's focus of attention. On a more natural interpretation, children engaged in joint attention perceptually recognize the co-attender's attitude to some object, as something like the (correct) answer to the question of what the object is like. The developmentally basic case is not that of attributing mental states as the causes of observed behaviour but of understanding perceived attitudes and actions as appropriate responses to the shared world. The chapter concludes by exploring how this developmental claim bears on mature adult knowledge of other minds.

The notion of empathy has more recently seen a considerable revival—notably (first) in connection with Quine's empathy model of radical interpretation, in contrast to which Davidson has developed his triangulation model, and (secondly) in the context of the debate between simulation theory vs. theory theory about propositional attitude ascription. So far, these debates have been carried on fairly independently of each other. This paper is an attempt to utilize the interpretation-theoretical discussion in order to argue for a moderate version of simulation theory. To this end, Davidson's explanation of the radical interpretation scenario in terms of triangulation is reconstructed by comparison to some relevant ideas of Husserl's.

In this paper, I am concerned with the practical aspect of joint attention. In particular, I ask what enables us to engage in joint activities, and go on to suggest that on a representational account of joint attention, this question cannot be satisfactorily answered. I explore John Campbell's "relational" approach and suggest that if one couples it with Peter Hobson's notion of "feeling perception", one may be in a position to account for the action-enabling aspect of joint engagements. This approach can usefully be thought of as describing a practical kind of collective knowledge.

This chapter argues that a central division among accounts of joint attention, both in philosophy and developmental psychology, turns on how they address two questions: What, if any, is the connection between the capacity to engage in joint attention triangles and the capacity to grasp the idea of objective truth? How do we explain the kind of openness or sharing of minds that occurs in joint attention? The chapter explores the connections between answers to both questions, and argues that theories can be divided into two distinct types according to how these connections are developed.

Donald Davidson used triangulation to do everything from explicate psychological and semantic externalism, to attack relativism and skepticism, to propose conditions necessary for thought and talk. At one point Davidson tried to bring order to these remarks by identifying three kinds of triangulation, each operative in a different situation. Here I take seriously Davidson’s talk of triangular situations and extend it. I start by describing Davidson’s situations. Next I establish the surprising result that considerations from one situation entail the possibility that at any one time one language is partially untranslatable into another. Because the possibility is time-indexed, it need not conflict with Davidson’s own argument against the possibility of untranslatability. I derive the result, not to indict Davidson, but to propose a new kind of triangulation, the reconciliation of untranslatability, which I investigate. Insofar as triangulation is central to Davidson’s views, getting a handle on his various triangular situations is key to getting a handle on his contributions to philosophy. Insofar as those contributions have enriched our understanding of how language, thought, and reality interrelate, extending Davidson’s model promises to extend our understanding too.

Recent literature comparing the works of Heidegger and Davidson suggests that one of the main differences between these two thinkers is that the latter lacks any notion of non-linguistic interpretation and understanding; the only way of making sense of a domain of entities for Davidson is theory. I argue against this common perspective and show that Davidson is committed to a primitive, pre-conceptual form of understanding that is socially mediated. This primitive form of understanding is essential to the functioning of what Davidson calls 'primitive triangulation'. Properly understood, primitive triangulation shares many structural features with Dasein's comportment.

According to Davidson, 'triangulation' is necessary both to fix the meanings of one's thoughts and utterances and to have the concept of objectivity, both of which are necessary for thinking and talking at all. Against these claims, it has been objected that neither meaning-determination nor possession of the concept of objectivity requires triangulation; nor does the ability to think and talk require possession of the concept of objectivity. But this overlooks the important connection between the tasks that triangulation is meant to perform. One cannot fix concepts or meanings, which one must do for there to be any concepts or meanings at all, without having the concept of objectivity.

You and I are watching a spider crawl across the carpet. We are both aware of the spider, and aware that both are so aware. We are jointly attending to it. This collection of essays addresses a bewildering array of questions that arise regarding the notion of joint attention. How should joint attention be characterised in adults? In particular, how can we articulate the sense in which it is plausible to say that nothing is hidden from either participant in cases of joint attention? What is the relationship between joint attention and the much discussed phenomenon of common, or mutual, knowledge? What account should be given of the development of the capacity for joint attention in children (and in non-human primates)? At what age is it correct to say that children are engaging in episodes of full blown joint attention? Relatedly, what is the relation between joint attention and pointing behaviour, gaze following and mutual affect regulation? Why is it that autistic children appear to exhibit a joint attention deficiency, and what might this tell us about autism, or about joint attention itself? Does the capacity for joint attention presuppose an understanding of the notion of attention, or more generally a subject of experience, and if so what is the relation between that understanding and the types of behaviour associated with joint attention? More generally, how does joint attention relate to our understanding of others? Finally, is the capacity for joint attention pivotal for the development of linguistic communication, or perhaps even a sense of objectivity—of the mind independence of the world?

This chapter makes the case for a relational version of an experientialist view of joint attention. On an experientialist view of joint attention, shifting from solitary attention to joint attention involves a shift in the nature of your perceptual experience of the object attended to. A relational analysis of such a view explains the latter shift in terms of the idea that, in joint attention, it is a constituent of your experience that the other person is, with you, jointly attending to the object. We need such an analysis of joint attention to explain the possibility of success in tasks such as coordinated attack.

In this article we aim to reconstruct some aspects of Davidson's idea of triangulation, and against this reconstruction, ask whether the idea is viciously circular. We begin by looking at the claim that without a triangularn setting, there is no saying what the cause of a being's responses is. In the first section we discuss the notion of relevant similarity, and what difference the presence of a second non?linguistic being could make for the individuation of a common focus of attention. In the second section we look at the role of a second person in language?acquisition. It is important that being corrected to ?go on as others do? does not yet presuppose thought, and similarity standards can be applied to a learner's reactions even before she is aware of these standards. We also show why Davidson is not committed to any consensus view of correctness. In the last section we discern three charges of circularity that can be levelled against the idea of triangulation. We argue that Davidson can respond to the first two charges, and point to a way of answering the third. But the response we propound raises a new question, namely, why does the second being have to be a speaker or thinker even before the learner is aware of the three points of the triangle?