The simulation theory is an account of our everyday ability to attribute mental states and predict and explain human behavior. It has been developed both as an empirical hypothesis in cognitive science and as an account of mental concepts in the philosophy of mind.
I argue that there is no conflict between the simulation theory, once it is freed from certain constraints carried over from theory theory, and Gallagher's view that our primary and pervasive way of engaging with others rests on 'direct', non-mentalizing perception of the 'meanings' of others' facial expressions, gestures, and intentional actions.
An ascent routine (AR) allows a speaker to self-ascribe a given propositional attitude (PA) by redeploying the process that generates a corresponding lower level utterance. Thus, we may report on our beliefs about the weather by reporting (under certain constraints) on the weather. The chief criticism of my AR account of self-ascription, by Alvin Goldman and others, is that it covers few if any PA's other than belief and offers no account of how we can attain reliability in identifying our (...) attitude as belief, desire, hope, etc., without presupposing some sort of recognition process. The criticism can be answered, but only by giving up a tacit—and wholly unnecessary—assumption that has influenced discussions of ascent routines. Abandoning the assumption allows a different account of ARs that avoids the criticism and even provides an algorithm for finding a corresponding lower level utterance for any PA. The account I give is supported by research on children's first uses of a propositional attitude vocabulary. (shrink)
Robert M. Gordon (2007). Moorean Pretense. In Mitchell S. Green & John N. Williams (eds.), Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person. Oxford University Press.
investigation).{1} We project ourselves into what, from his remarks and other indications, we imagine the speaker's state of mind to have been, . . . even into what from his behavior we imagine a mouse's state of mind to have been, and dramatize it as a belief, wish or striving, verbalized as seems relevant and natural to us in the state thus.
What is the simulation theory? Arguments for simulation theory Simulation theory versus theory theory Simulation theory and cognitive science Versions of simulation theory A possible test of the simulation theory.
The wealth of important and convergent evidence discussed in the target article contrasts with the poorly conceived theory put forward to explain it. The simulation theory does a better job of explaining how automatic “mirroring” mechanisms might work together with high-level cognitive processes. It also explains what the authors' PAM theory merely stipulates.
Alvin Goldman's early work in action theory and theory of knowledge was a major influence on my own thinking and writing about emotions. For that reason and others, it was a very happy moment in my professional life when I learned, in 1988, that in his presidential address to the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Goldman endorsed and defended the “simulation” theory I had put forward in a 1986 article. I discovered afterward that we share a strong conviction that empirical (...) evidence is relevant to a full assessment of the theory. We both find the burgeoning evidence from cognitive neuroscience to be of particular interest, I believe, in part because it makes possible a major departure for the philosophy of mind: turning its attention from
In evaluating conditionals concerning what a person would have done in counterfactual circumstances, we suppose the counterfactual antecedent to be true, just as in what I loosely term the standard "Ramsey" procedure; but then we follow a different path--a simulative path--in evaluating the consequent. The simulative path imposes an implicit restriction on possible worlds, a procedural guarantee that the individual simulated is aware of or knows about the counterfactual condition. This difference makes clear the way in which reason explanations are (...) implicitly cognitive and psychological. (shrink)
Wilfrid Sellars's essay, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," (1) introduced, although it did not exactly endorse, what many philosophers consider the first defense of functionalism in the philosophy of mind and the original "theory" theory of commonsense psychology.
Given Heyes's construal of “theory of mind,” there is still no convincing evidence of theory of mind in human primates, much less nonhuman. Rather than making unfounded assumptions about what underlies human social competence, one should ask what mechanisms other primates have and then inquire whether more sophisticated elaborations of those might not account for much of human competence.
Philosophers have been debating the nature of folk or commonsense psychology for three decades. We ask: What are the resources that enable us to navigate the social world, anticipating what others do, explaining what they’ve done, and perceiving them--and ourselves--as selves, subjects, persons, with beliefs, desire, perceptions, and feelings? Unlike traditional philosophy of mind, instead of directly confronting the mind-body problem and subproblems such as intentionality and qualia, we step back and look at the resources that give us the concepts (...) that get us into these knots. (shrink)
The Structure of Emotions argues that emotion concepts should have a much more important role in the social and behavioural sciences than they now enjoy, and shows that certain influential psychological theories of emotions overlook the explanatory power of our emotion concepts. Professor Gordon also outlines a new account of the nature of commonsense (or ‘folk’) psychology in general.
