Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Theory-Theory and the Direct Perception of Mental States

  • Published:
Review of Philosophy and Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Philosophers and psychologists have often maintained that in order to attribute mental states to other people one must have a ‘theory of mind’. This theory facilitates our grasp of other people’s mental states. Debate has then focussed on the form this theory should take. Recently a new approach has been suggested, which I call the ‘Direct Perception approach to social cognition’. This approach maintains that we can directly perceive other people’s mental states. It opposes traditional views on two counts: by claiming that mental states are observable and by claiming that we can attribute them to others without the need for a theory of mind. This paper argues that there are two readings of the direct perception claims: a strong and a weak one. The Theory-theory is compatible with the weak version but not the strong one. The paper argues that the strong version of direct perception is untenable, drawing on evidence from the mirror neuron literature and arguments from the philosophy of science and perception to support this claim. It suggests that one traditional ‘theory of mind’ view, the ‘Theory-theory’ view, is compatible with the claim that mental states are observable, and concludes that direct perception views do not offer a viable alternative to theory of mind approaches to social cognition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Many, but not all. Some philosophers believe that a large part of our social cognition takes place without having to attribute mental states to others, e.g. Daniel Hutto (2008; 2012), Adam Morton (2007) and Matthew Ratcliffe (2006).

  2. Whilst my focus is on the Theory-theory, many of the arguments discussed apply to the more general view that we need a theory of mind to know other people’s mental states.

  3. You can only understand a movement as a reach if you already understand that the movement is caused by an intention to grasp the cake. If you didn’t have this background knowledge you would not understand the movement as a ‘reach’.

  4. In later writings Dretske prefers to use the terms ‘simple seeing’ and perception (1979/2000). Dretske is not the only philosopher to have noted this distinction. Norwood Russell Hanson distinguishes between seeing and ‘seeing as’; the distinction also corresponds with Gallagher’s ‘smart’ and ‘not-so-smart’ perceptions.

  5. This distinction is also made by Paul Churchland (1979, p. 14)

  6. ‘Intention’ is thus used in this literature slightly differently to its use in the philosophy of mind.

  7. I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer who suggested this possibility.

References

  • Baron-Cohen, S., and Swettenham, J. 1996. The relationship between SAM and ToMM: Two hypotheses. In Theories of theories of mind, ed. P. Carruthers, and P. Smith, 158–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Botterill, G. 1996. Folk psychology and theoretical status. In Theories of theories of mind, ed. P. Carruthers, and P. Smith, 105–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Carruthers, P. 2009. How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 32: 121–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Churchland, P. 1979. Scientific realism and the plasticity of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Csibra, G. 2005, January 2. Mirror neurons and action observation. Is simulation involved? Retrieved from http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/4.

  • Csibra, G. 2007. Action mirroring and action understanding: An alternative account. In Sensorimotor foundations of higher cognition: Attention and performance XXII, ed. P. Haggard, Y. Rosetti, and M. Kawato, 435–459. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dretske, F. 1969. Seeing and knowing. London: Routledge & K.Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor, J., and Z. Pylyshyn. 1981. How direct is visual perception? Cognition 9: 139–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. 2005. How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. 2007. Simulation trouble. Social Neuroscience 2: 353–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. 2008. Direct perception in an intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 535–543.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S., and D. Zahavi. 2008. The phenomenological mind. Oxford: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. 2001. The ‘shared manifold’ hypothesis: From mirror neurons to empathy. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 33–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. 2006. Embodied simulation: From mirror neuron systems to interpersonal relations. Empathy and fairness, 3–20. Novartis Foundation.

  • Gallese, V. 2007. Before and below ‘theory of mind’: Embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of the Biological Sciences 362: 659–669.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. 2009a. Motor abstraction: A neuroscientific account of how action goals and intentions are mapped and understood. Psychological Research 73: 486–498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. 2009b. We-ness, embodied simulation and psychoanalysis: Reply to commentaries. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19: 580–584.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J. 1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, A. 1989. Interpretation psychologized. Mind and Language 4: 161–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, A. 2006. Simulating minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gopnik, A., and A. Meltzoff. 1997. Words, thoughts and theories. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gopnik, A., and H. Wellman. 1992. Why the child’s theory of mind really is a theory. Mind and Language 7: 145–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, R. 1996. ‘Radical’ simulationism. In Theories of theories of mind, ed. P. Carruthers and P. Smith, 11–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, N. 1958. Patterns of discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heal, J. 1996. Simulation, theory and content. In Theories of theories of mind, ed. P. Carruthers and P. Smith, 75–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, C.M. 2001. Causes and consequences of imitation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5: 245–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, C.M. 2005. Imitation by association. In Perspectives on imitation: From mirror neurons to memes, ed. S. Hurley and N. Chater, 157–176. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, C.M. 2010. Where do mirror neurons come from? Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews 34: 575–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. 2008. Folk psychological narratives: The sociocultural basis of understanding reasons. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. 2012. Elementary mindreading, enactivist style. In Joint attention: New developments in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, ed. A. Seeman, 307–342. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Iacoboni, M., I. Molnar-Szakacs, V. Gallese, G. Buccino, J. Mazziotta, and G. Rizzolatti. 2005. Grasping the intentions of others with one’s own mirror neuron system. PLoS Biology 3: 529–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacob, P. 2008. What do mirror neurons contribute to human social cognition? Mind and Language 23: 190–223.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, S. 2000. The recognition of mentalistic agents in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4:22–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. 1970. How to define theoretical terms. The Journal of Philosophy 67: 427–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morton, A. 2007. Folk psychology does not exist. In Folk psychology re-assessed, ed. D. Hutto and M. Ratcliffe, 211–223. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Premack, D., and G. Woodruff. 1978. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 1: 515–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratcliffe, M. 2006. ‘Folk psychology’ is not folk psychology. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5: 31–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, V. 2008. How infants know minds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti, G., and L. Craighero. 2004. The mirror neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience 27: 169–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapere, D. 1982. The concept of observation in science and philosophy. Philosophy of Science 49: 485–525.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Southgate, V., M. Johnson, T. Osbourne, and G. Csibra. 2009. Predictive motor activation during action observation in human infants. Biology Letters 5: 769–772.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Riel, R. 2008. On how we perceive the social world. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 544–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wellman, H. 1992. The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Jane Suilin Lavelle

Authors
  1. Jane Suilin Lavelle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jane Suilin Lavelle.

Additional information

This paper was written whilst I was being supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) award. It has also benefitted from a number of discussions I had whilst attending the AHRC Culture and the Mind workshops. I would like to thank George Botterill, Rob Hopkins, Stephen Laurence and Paul Sludds for their comments on earlier drafts of this work.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lavelle, J.S. Theory-Theory and the Direct Perception of Mental States. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 213–230 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0094-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0094-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation