Tendencies of approach and avoidance seem to be a universal characteristic of humans. Specifically, individuals are faster in avoiding than in approaching negative stimuli and they are faster in approaching than in avoiding positive stimuli. The existence of this automatic approach-avoidance bias has been demonstrated in many studies. Furthermore, this bias is thought to play a key role in psychiatric disorders like drug addiction and phobias. However, its mechanisms are far from clear. Theories of embodied cognition postulate that the nature (...) of gestures plays a key role in this process. To shed light on the role of the involved gesture we employed a 2 × 2 factorial design with two types of stimuli. Participants had either to approach positive and avoid negative stimuli or to avoid positive stimuli and approach negative stimuli. Further, they responded either with a joystick or a button press on a response pad. Participants reacted faster in congruent conditions, i.e., avoiding negative stimuli and approaching positive stimuli, than in incongruent conditions. This replicates the known approach and avoidance bias. However, direct analysis of the button press condition revealed no reaction time advantage for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. In contrast, in the joystick condition participants were significantly faster performing congruent reactions than incongruent reactions. This interaction, a significant reaction time advantage, when the response is enacted by moving a joystick towards or away from the body provides evidence that approach-avoidance tendencies have a crucial bodily component. (shrink)

Despite growing evidence to the contrary, researchers continue to posit causal links between cannabis, crime, psychosis, and violence. These spurious connections are rooted in history and fueled decades of structural limitations that shaped how researchers studied cannabis. Until recently, research in this area was explicitly funded to link cannabis use and harm and ignore any potential benefits. Post-prohibition cannabis research has failed to replicate the dire findings of the past. This article outlines how the history of controlling cannabis research has (...) led to various harms, injustices, and ethical complications. We compare commonly cited research from both the prohibition and post-prohibition eras and argue that many popular claims about the dangers of cannabis are the result of ethical lapses by researchers, journals, and funders. We propose researchers in this area adopt a duty of care in cannabis research going forward. This would oblige individual researchers to establish robust research designs, employ careful analytic strategies, and acknowledge limitations in more detail. This duty involves the institutional recognition by funders, journals, and others that cannabis research has been deliberately misconstrued to criminalize, stigmatize, and pathologize. (shrink)

The term ‘identity politics’ is used to refer to a wide range of political movements. In this paper, we look at the theoretical ideas underpinning two strongly, mutually opposed forms of identity politics, and identify some crucial differences between them. We critically compare the identitarian ideology of the New Right with feminist standpoint theory, focusing on two issues: relativism and essentialism. In carrying out this critical comparison we illuminate under-theorized aspects of both new right identitarianism and standpoint theory; demonstrate how (...) the two are distinct; reveal the depth and pervasiveness of the new right ideology’s flaws; and show what a coherent left-wing identity politics could look like. (shrink)

In this volume, the author investigates and argues for, a particular answer to the question: What is the right way to logically analyze modalities from natural language within formal languages? The answer is: by formalizing modal expressions in terms of predicates. But, as in the case of truth, the most intuitive modal principles lead to paradox once the modal notions are conceived as predicates. -/- The book discusses the philosophical interpretation of these modal paradoxes and argues that any satisfactory approach (...) to modality will have to face the paradoxes independently of the grammatical category of the modal notion. By systematizing modal principles with respect to their joint consistency and inconsistency, Stern provides an overview of the options and limitations of the predicate approach to modality that may serve as a useful starting point for future work on predicate approaches to modality. Stern also develops a general strategy for constructing philosophically attractive theories of modal notions conceived as predicates. The idea is to characterize the modal predicate by appeal to its interaction with the truth predicate. This strategy is put to use by developing the modal theories Modal Friedman-Sheard and Modal Kripke-Feferman. (shrink)

Background Despite the great benefits of intelligent assistive technology (IAT) for dementia care – for example, the enhanced safety and increased independence of people with dementia and their caregivers – its practical adoption is still limited. The social and ethical issues pertaining to IAT in dementia care, shaped by factors such as culture, may explain these limitations. However, most studies have focused on understanding these issues within one cultural setting only. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore and (...) compare the attitudes of Israeli and German dementia experts toward IAT in dementia care, to contribute to a more cultural-comparative perspective. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 experts (15 Israelis and 20 Germans) in key roles in health and community services for people with dementia as well as in the fields of dementia and IAT (e.g., computer science, electrical/biomedical engineering, ethics, nursing, and gerontology). Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings Israeli and German experts identified the same social accelerators in the development and implementation of IAT in dementia care (i.e., changes in family structure and social digitization) and benefits of adopting IAT (e.g., enhancing the safety of people with dementia and increasing their independence). However, there were differences in inhibitor/risk assessments between the two groups. Namely, economic considerations and the cognitive capacity of people with dementia were identified by both groups as inhibitors, while Israeli experts additionally reported stigma and ageism. Whereas both groups agreed that IAT might reduce human connection, and that the technology is not yet reliable enough, German experts highlighted concerns regarding privacy; in contrast, Israeli experts prioritized safety over privacy. Conclusions Our research findings allow for the identification of relevant similarities but also important differences between German and Israeli experts’ perspectives. As such, an important basis has been provided for a more in-depth discussion regarding where, why, and how culturally-sensitive technology development is needed. (shrink)

Several authors have recently questioned whether dehumanization is a psychological prerequisite of mass violence. This paper argues that the significance of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism can be understood only if its ideological dimension is taken into account. The author concentrates on Alfred Rosenberg’s racist doctrine and shows that Nazi ideology can be read as a political anthropology that grounds both the belief in the German privilege and the dehumanization of the Jews. This anthropological framework combines biological, cultural (...) and metaphysical aspects. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to biologism. This new reading of Nazi ideology supports three general conclusions: First, the author reveals a complex strategy of dehumanization which is not considered in the current psychological debate. Second, the analysis of the ideological mechanism suggests a model of dehumanization that is more plausible than other psychological models. Third, the author provides evidence that this kind of dehumanization had psychological consequences and hence was an important feature of Nazi reality. (shrink)

The logic of genetic discovery has changed little over time, but the focus of biology is shifting from simple genotype–phenotype relationships to complex metabolic, physiological, developmental, and behavioral traits. In light of this, the traditional reductionist view of individual genes as privileged difference‐making causes of phenotypes is re‐examined. The scope and nature of genetic effects in complex regulatory systems, in which dynamics are driven by regulatory feedback and hierarchical interactions across levels of organization are considered. This review argues that it (...) is appropriate to treat genes as specific actual difference‐makers for the molecular regulation of gene expression. However, they are often neither stable, proportional, nor specific as causes of the overall dynamic behavior of regulatory networks. Dynamical models, properly formulated and validated, provide the tools to probe cause‐and‐effect relationships in complex biological systems, allowing to go beyond the limitations of genetic reductionism to gain an integrative understanding of the causal processes underlying complex phenotypes. (shrink)

Kripke’s theory of truth is arguably the most influential approach to self-referential truth and the semantic paradoxes. The use of a partial evaluation scheme is crucial to the theory and the most prominent schemes that are adopted are the strong Kleene and the supervaluation scheme. The strong Kleene scheme is attractive because it ensures the compositionality of the notion of truth. But under the strong Kleene scheme classical tautologies do not, in general, turn out to be true and, as a (...) consequence, classical reasoning is no longer admissible once the notion of truth is involved. The supervaluation scheme adheres to classical reasoning but violates compositionality. Moreover, it turns Kripke’s theory into a rather complicated affair: to check whether a sentence is true we have to look at all admissible precisification of the interpretation of the truth predicate we are presented with. One consequence of this complicated evaluation condition is that under the supervaluation scheme a more proof-theoretic characterization of Kripke’s theory becomes inherently difficult, if not impossible. In this paper we explore the middle ground between the strong Kleene and the supervaluation scheme and provide an evaluation scheme that adheres to classical reasoning but retains many of the attractive features of the strong Kleene scheme. We supplement our semantic investigation with a novel axiomatic theory of truth that matches the semantic theory we have put forth. (shrink)

The original version of the article unfortunately contained a mistake. In the Acknowledgments section of the original version of the article, the grant number of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship supporting the author’s work was misstated.

When it comes to evaluating reductive hypotheses in metaphysics, supervenience arguments are the tools of the trade. Jaegwon Kim and Frank Jackson have argued, respectively, that strong and global supervenience are sufficient for reduction, and others have argued that supervenience theses stand in need of the kind of explanation that reductive hypotheses are particularly suited to provide. Simon Blackburn's arguments about what he claims are the specifically problematic features of the supervenience of the moral on the natural have also been (...) influential. But most discussions of these arguments have proceeded under the strong and restrictive assumptions of the S5 modal logic. In this paper we aim to remedy that defect, by illustrating in an accessible way what happens to these arguments under relaxed assumptions and why. The occasion is recent work by Ralph Wedgwood, who seeks to defend non-reductive accounts of moral and mental properties together with strong supervenience, but to evade both the arguments of Kim and Jackson and the explanatory challenge by accepting only the weaker, B, modal logic. In addition to drawing general lessons about what happens to supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions, our goal is therefore to shed some light on both the virtues and costs of Wedgwood's proposal. (shrink)

The career of the German physicist Walther Gerlach (1889–1979) spanned two world wars and the changing political systems in Germany in the twentieth century. As a physicist involved in the rapid development of atomic physics and the management of scientific research in Germany during World War II as well as in post-war West Germany, several attempts have been made in the past by historians of science to write his full biography. These projects have, among other foci, asked about Gerlach's role (...) and his position with respect to National Socialism. However, based on his extensive papers preserved in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich, none of these projects has so far been conclusive. In this article, we identify evidence for the selective deletion of personal files relating to his first wife and daughter. We argue that reconstructing this lacuna sheds new light on the influence of National Socialist ideology on Gerlach's personal life, making him both a profiteer and a victim of eugenics jurisdiction. (shrink)

In recent years there has been much psychological and neurological work purporting to show that consciousness and self-awareness play no role in causing actions, and indeed to demonstrate that free will is an illusion. The essays in this volume subject the assumptions that motivate such claims to sustained interdisciplinary scrutiny. The book will be compulsory reading for psychologists and philosophers working on action explanation, and for anyone interested in the relation between the brain sciences and consciousness.

In this essay, Johannes Giesinger comments on the current philosophical debate on educational justice. He observes that while authors like Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz develop a so-called adequacy view of educational justice, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift defend an egalitarian principle. Giesinger focuses his analysis on the main objection that is formulated, from an egalitarian perspective, against the adequacy view: that it neglects the problem of securing fair opportunities in the competition for social rewards. Giesinger meets this objection (...) by expressing two basic theses: First, he argues that Brighouse and Swift themselves fail to give an adequate account of fair competition; and, second, he shows that the adequacy view provides the theoretical resources to face this problem. (shrink)

This essay starts from the observation that the issue of talent, in relation to the problem of distributive justice, can be approached from two different angles. First, it is common to discuss the justificatory function of talent, that is, its role in the justification of educational or social inequalities. In addition, however, this essay proposes to look at practices of talent ascription and their causal role in the distribution of educational prospects. These practices tend to exacerbate educational inequalities due to (...) social background, especially when they are tied to selective educational settings. There is reason to avoid talent-based selection in education, in order to contain the negative effects of practices of talent ascription. (shrink)

Not so long ago, it seemed the intellectual positions on globalization were clear, with advocates and opponents making their respective cases in decidedly contrasting terms. Recently, however, the fronts have shifted dramatically. The aim of this publication is to contribute philosophical depth to the debates on globalization conducted within various academic fields – principally by working out its normative dimensions. The interdisciplinary nature of this book’s contributors also serves to scientifically ground the ethical-philosophical discourse on global responsibility. Though by no (...) means exhaustive, the expansive scope of the works herein encompasses such other topics as the altering consciousness of space and time, and the phenomenon of globalization as a discourse, as an ideology and as a symbolic form. (shrink)

Was macht das vergleichende Sehen mit Bildern und Betrachter*innen? Wie wird der Blick durch das Vergleichen gelenkt und wie werden Bilder vergleichbar gemacht? Ob unter Kunstkenner*innen des 18. Jahrhunderts, in Ausstellungen oder in der Videokunst des 20. Jahrhunderts: Überall animieren Vergleichspraktiken zu körperlichen, medialen oder metaphorischen Blickwechseln. Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes nehmen in breiter historischer sowie systematischer Perspektive die Praktiken in den Blick, die dem Vergleichen von Bildern und Artefakten zugrunde liegen. Ein besonderes Augenmerk liegt dabei auf den Verkettungen von (...) Praktiken, Akteur*innen und Objekten. (shrink)

Accounts of ontic explanation have often been devised so as to provide an understanding of mechanism and of causation. Ontic accounts differ quite radically in their ontologies, and one of the latest additions to this tradition proposed by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver reintroduces the concept of activity. In this paper I ask whether this influential and activity-based account of mechanisms is viable as an ontic account. I focus on polygenic scenarios—scenarios in which the causal truths depend on (...) more than one cause. The importance of polygenic causation was noticed early on by Mill (1893). It has since been shown to be a problem for both causal-law approaches to causation (Cartwright 1983) and accounts of causation cast in terms of capacities (Dupré 1993; Glennan 1997, pp. 605-626). However, whereas mechanistic accounts seem to be attractive precisely because they promise to handle complicated causal scenarios, polygenic causation needs to be examined more thoroughly in the emerging literature on activity-based mechanisms. The activity-based account proposed in Machamer et al. (2000, pp. 1-25) is problematic as an ontic account, I will argue. It seems necessary to ask, of any ontic account, how well it performs in causal situations where—at the explanandum level of mechanism—no activity occurs. In addition, it should be asked how well the activity-based account performs in situations where there are too few activities around to match the polygenic causal origin of the explanandum. The first situation presents an explanandum-problem and the second situation presents an explanans-problem—I will argue—both of which threaten activity-based frameworks. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second variety offers (...) a potential how-explanation of X. It is usually followed by a range of further potential how-explanations of the same phenomenon. In recent literature the factual claims implied by the second variety have been downplayed whereas the heuristic role of mapping the space of conceptual possibilities has been emphasized. I will focus especially on this truth-bracketing sense of potentiality when looking closer at the second variety in the paper. The third variety has attracted less interest. It presents a partial how-explanation of X. Typically it aims to establish the existence of a mechanism by which X could be and was generated. The third conception stands out as the natural alternative for the advocate of ontic how-possibly explanations. This article transfers Salmon’s view that explanation-concepts can be broadly divided into epistemic, modal, and ontic to the context of how-possibly explanations. Moreover, it is argued that each of the three above-mentioned varieties of how-possibly explanation occurs in science. To recognize this may be especially relevant for philosophers. We are often misled by the promises of various why-explanation accounts, and seem to have forgotten nearly everything about the diversity of how-possibly explanations. (shrink)

Gareth Evans famously affirmed an explanatory connection between answering the question whether p and knowing whether one believes that p. This is commonly interpreted in terms of the idea that judging that p constitutes an adequate basis for the belief that one believes that p. This paper formulates and defends an alternative, more modest interpretation, which develops from the suggestion that one can know that one believes that p in judging that p.

This chapter argues that recent attempts to make sense of the delusion of thought insertion in terms of a distinction between two notions of thought ownership have been unsuccessful. It also proposes an alternative account, in which the delusion is to be interpreted in the light of its prehistory.

Episodic representations can be entertained either as “remembered” or “imagined”—as outcomes of experience or as simulations of such experience. Here, we argue that this feature is the product of a dedicated cognitive function: the metacognitive capacity to determine the mnemicity of mental event simulations. We argue that mnemicity attribution should be distinguished from other metacognitive operations (such as reality monitoring) and propose that this attribution is a “cognitive gadget”—a distinctively human ability made possible by cultural learning. Cultural learning is a (...) type of social learning in which traits are inherited through social interaction. In the case of mnemicity, one culturally learns to discriminate metacognitive “feelings of remembering” from other perceptual, emotional, action-related, and metacognitive feelings; to interpret feelings of remembering as indicators of memory rather than imagination; and to broadcast the interpreted feelings in culture- and context-specific ways, such as “I was there” or “I witnessed it myself.” We review evidence from the literature on memory development and scaffolding, metacognitive learning and teaching, as well as cross-cultural psychology in support of this view before pointing out various open questions about the nature and development of mnemicity highlighted by our account. (shrink)

On a widely held view, the canonical way to make sense of intentional actions is to invoke the agent's ‘motivating reasons’, where the claim that X did A for some ‘motivating reason’ is taken to be neutral on whether X had a normative reason to do A. In this paper, I explore a challenge to this view, drawing on Anscombe's ‘second-personal’ approach to the nature of action explanation.

Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of the world around us, unavailable in ‘blindsight’. This is often interpreted in terms of the idea that perceptual experience, through its representational content, provides us with justifying reasons for beliefs about the world around us. I argue that this analysis distorts the explanatory link between perceptual experience and knowledge, as we ordinarily conceive it. I propose an alternative analysis, on which representational content plays no explanatory role: we make (...) perceptual knowledge intelligible by appeal to experienced objects and features. I also present an account of how the commonsense scheme, thus interpreted, is to be defended: not by tracing the role of experience to its contribution in meeting some general condition on propositional knowledge (such as justification), but by subverting the assumption that it has to be possible to make the role of experience intelligible in terms of some such contribution. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to further our understanding of mechanisms conceived of as ontologically separable from laws. What opportunities are there for a mechanistic perspective to be independent of, or even more fundamental than, a law perspective? Advocates of the mechanistic view often play with the possibility of internal and external reliability, or with the paralleling possibilities of enforcing, counteracting, redirecting, etc., the mechanisms’ power to produce To further this discussion I adopt a trope ontology. It is independent of (...) the notion of law, and can easily be adapted to account for such characteristics of mechanisms. The idea of tropes as mechanisms is worked out in some detail. According to the resulting picture, there is still an opportunity to link mechanisms and laws. But while the predominant law view conceives of mechanistic approaches as special kinds of law accounts, this study indicates that the converse may be true. Law accounts are special cases of mechanistic accounts, and they work only in those worlds where the mechanisms are of the right kind. (shrink)

Taken as a philosophical issue, the idea of representation implies the prior assumption of a difference between reality and its “doubles.” Things are paired with images, concepts, or symbols, acts with rules and norms, events with structures. Traditionally, the problem with representations has been their “accuracy,” the degree of fit between reality and its reproductions in the mind. When philosophers lost the hope of ever determining accuracy , they found consolation in the test of usefulness: a good representation is one (...) that works. The proof of its working is that it enables us to act on the world together.1 In such a frame, science, including anthropology, is conceived as the pursuit of privileged representations, privileged in that, by their nature of by their combination, they establish knowledge of a special kind. In the case of anthropology, “culture” has served as a sort of umbrella concept for representations. The strcuturalists have been most explicit about the need to think of representation in the plural, but their position is shared, in varying degrees, by all those who conceive of knowledge as the selection and combination of signs in systems, patterns, or structures, in short, as some kind of conceptual order ruling perceptual chaos. 1. Remember the connection between the Kantian quest for synthetic forms and Émile Durkheim’s idea of collective representations sustained by the moral authority of a society. Durkheim certainly was one to look for the “ethic” in the “ethnic” primitive, and it makes me wonder whether Stephen A. Tyler’s characterization of postmodern ethnography as a return to “an earlier and more powerful notion of the ethical character of all discourse, as captured in the ancient significance of the family of terms ‘ethos,’ ‘ethnos,’ ‘ethics’” might not signal a return to the Durkheimian fold . Johannes Fabian is professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include Jamaa: A Charismatic Movement in Katanga , Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object , and Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 . Two books will appear in 1990: History from Below: The Vocabulary of Elisabethville by André Yav, a commented edition-translation of a colonial history written in Swahili by the colonized for the colonized, and Power and Performance, a study of conceptions of power through popular wisdom and theater in Shaba/Zaire. (shrink)

In this second and last paper of the two part investigation on "Modality and Axiomatic Theories of Truth" we apply a general strategy for constructing modal theories over axiomatic theories of truth to the theory Kripke-Feferman. This general strategy was developed in the first part of our investigation. Applying the strategy to Kripke-Feferman leads to the theory Modal Kripke-Feferman which we discuss from the three perspectives that we had already considered in the first paper, where we discussed the theory Modal (...) Friedman-Sheard. That is, we first show that Modal Kripke-Feferman preserves theoremhood modulo translation with respect to modal operator logic. Second, we develop a modal semantics fitting the newly developed theory. Third, we investigate whether the modal predicate of Modal Kripke-Feferman can be understood along the lines of a proposal of Kripke, namely as a truth predicate modified by a modal operator. (shrink)

The English language has adopted the word Tardis for something that looks simple from the outside but is much more complicated when inspected from the inside. The word comes from a BBC science fiction series, in which the Tardis is a machine for traveling in time and space, that looks like a phone booth from the outside. This paper claims that simulation models are a Tardis in a way that calls into question their transferability. The argument is developed taking Molecular (...) Modeling and Simulation as an example. There, simulation models are force fields that describe the molecular interactions and that look like simple and highly modular mathematical expressions. To make them work, they contain parameters that are adjusted to match certain data. The role of these parameters and the way they are obtained is seriously under-appreciated. It is constitutive for the model and central for its applicability and performance. Hence, the model is more than it seems so that working with adjustable parameters deeply affects the ontology of simulation models. This is particularly crucial for the transferability of the models: the information on how a model was trained is like luggage the model must carry on its voyage. (shrink)

This chapter argues for a structural injustice approach to the governance of AI. Structural injustice has an analytical and an evaluative component. The analytical component consists of structural explanations that are well-known in the social sciences. The evaluative component is a theory of justice. Structural injustice is a powerful conceptual tool that allows researchers and practitioners to identify, articulate, and perhaps even anticipate, AI biases. The chapter begins with an example of racial bias in AI that arises from structural injustice. (...) The chapter then presents the concept of structural injustice as introduced by the philosopher Iris Marion Young. The chapter moreover argues that structural injustice is well suited as an approach to the governance of AI and compares this approach to alternative approaches that start from analyses of harms and benefits or from value statements. The chapter suggests that structural injustice provides methodological and normative foundations for the values and concerns of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The chapter closes with an outlook onto the idea of “structure” and on responsibility. The idea of a structure is central to justice. An open theoretical research question is to what extent AI is itself part of the structure of society. Finally, the practice of responsibility is central to structural injustice. Even if they cannot be held responsible for the existence of structural injustice, every individual and every organization has some responsibility to address structural injustice going forward. (shrink)

In this investigation we explore a general strategy for constructing modal theories where the modal notion is conceived as a predicate. The idea of this strategy is to develop modal theories over axiomatic theories of truth. In this first paper of our two part investigation we develop the general strategy and then apply it to the axiomatic theory of truth Friedman-Sheard. We thereby obtain the theory Modal Friedman-Sheard. The theory Modal Friedman-Sheard is then discussed from three different perspectives. First, we (...) show that Modal Friedman-Sheard preserves theoremhood modulo translation with respect to modal operator logic. Second, we turn to semantic aspects and develop a modal semantics for the newly developed theory. Third, we investigate whether the modal predicate of Modal Friedman-Sheard can be understood along the lines of a proposal of Kripke, namely as a truth predicate modified by a modal operator. (shrink)

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. (shrink)