Abstract
It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option. In this paper I argue that this way of framing the debate is misleading. Although defenders of second person accounts make use of the vocabulary of the theory of mind debate, they understand some of the core expressions in a different way. I will illustrate this claim by focusing on Reddy’s and Gallagher’s accounts and argue that these authors use the notions of knowing and of understanding other minds differently than traditionally assumed. As a consequence, second person accounts thus conceived do not directly address the questions that gave rise to the theory of mind debate. They invite us, however, to critically reflect upon the way the debate has been set up.
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Notes
The target article was written by Barresi and Moore (1996), presenting a four-level framework for the developing understanding of intentional relations. Independently of each other, two psychologists critically pointed out that the authors neglected second person intentional relations which they describe as “involving the perception of an activity performed by another organism upon the perceiver” (Gomez 1996, p. 129f.) or relations that are “involved in self toward the other and in the other toward the self” (Reddy 1996, p. 140).
As Fodor (1975) has argued, cognitive psychologists’ theorizing at that time implied such a conception which he famously called a representational theory of mind. Premack and Woodruff do not refer to Fodor’s work, but it seems to be more than a coincidence that they use the very same expression as Fodor does.
I am referring here to what is commonly known as explicit (in contrast to implicit) theory of mind abilities. The last years have seen an explosion of empirical studies on implicit theory of mind abilities (see Sodian 2011 for an overview). However, this area of research is not particularly relevant in the context of this paper because a) the theoretical interpretation of these results is still under discussion, b) these studies (and their interpretation) do not play a systematic role for the arguments to be reviewed here.
The two questions are set apart here for the sake of clarity. In any particular situation, they are of course intimately connected.
Thanks to my anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.
Gallagher repeated and refined this argument at various places. I will focus on the original version from the article in 2001, but point to relevant changes that have been made in what follows.
Thanks to Uko Tooming and Andrea Lailach-Hennrich for drawing my attention to this point.
This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that Gallagher typically uses the notion of understanding others in contexts in which he also talks about engaging with others and relating to them (e.g. 2005, p. 208).
This means that the person who participated in the experiment was merely observing what other persons or animated agents where doing, but was not interacting with them. The (explicit or implicit) task was then to either explain or predict what the observed persons or agents were doing.
This reading is most obvious in e.g.: “I outline the case against theory of mind as an account of our everyday normal interaction with others.” (2004, p. 201).
Reddy’s following remark points to a similar line of reasoning: “Their approach [Barresi & Moore’s, MD] appears to assume, however, that social understanding can only ever exist in the individual in the form of representations and conceptual schemas. A worthy alternative location for understanding is in interaction between people.” (1996, p. 140)
In what follows I will use the German expressions instead of the more long-winded English translations. My understanding of the contrast between Verstehen and Verständigung profited a lot from remarks made in Waldenfels (1979). I am indebted to Michela Summa for this reference.
Note that these social acts—which do not necessarily have to be verbal, i.e. speech acts—all presuppose that the two (or more) participants address each other in the second person mode. I take this to be further evidence for the fact that Verständigung allows us to capture some of the essential ideas related to the notion of the second person.
In the original version: “Die Verständigung über eine Sache, die im Gespräch zustande kommen soll, bedeutet daher notwendigerweise, daß im Gespräch eine gemeinsame Sache erst erarbeitet wird. […] Verständigung im Gespräch ist nicht ein bloßes Sichausspielen und Durchsetzen des eigenen Standpunktes, sondern eine Verwandlung ins Gemeinsame hin, in der man nicht bleibt, was man war.” (2010, p. 384) Whereas the standard translation of “Verständigung” is thus “reaching an understanding”, I chose the expression “reaching a mutual understanding” for the context of this paper because it additionally emphasizes the collaborative aspect of Verständigung.
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This study was funded by the post-doc program of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg.
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Dullstein, M. The Second Person in the Theory of Mind Debate. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 231–248 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0095-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0095-2