In this paper I want to explore the arguments for so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ (UCs). Unarticulated constituents are supposed to be propositional elements, not presented in the surface form of a sentence, nor explicitly represented at the level of its logical form, yet which must be interpreted in order to grasp the (proper) meaning of that sentence or expression. Thus, for example, we might think that a sentence like ‘It is raining’ must contain a UC picking out the place at which (...) the speaker of the sentence asserts it to be raining. In §1 I will explore the nature of UCs a little further, and, in §2, suggest that we can recognise two different forms of argument for them.. (shrink)

This paper examines the dynamics of thought-language interactions within the organisational context of business. Based on an assessment of the cognition-voice debate within the cognitive sciences and related areas of philosophical enquiry, the paper proposes that thought and language are distinct systems. This notion of modularity is developed into a framework within which the two systems interact and, in doing so, influence and shape each other. These interactions form multiple thought and voiced drafts, reflecting the ‘multiple drafts’ model developed by (...) Daniel Dennett to examine the phenomenon of consciousness. The drafting and re-drafting of thought and language are analysed via critical consideration of two transcripts of interviews with owner-managers. The overall theoretical approach suggests that the dynamics of voice-cognition drafting offer insights into: the development of expert cognitive frameworks; patterns in group development — in particular the emergence of shared values and concepts within the business; and processes of experiential learning within organizations. (shrink)

This paper examines the dynamics of thought-language interactions within the organisational context of business. Based on an assessment of the cognition-voice debate within the cognitive sciences and related areas of philosophical enquiry, the paper proposes that thought and language are distinct systems. This notion of modularity is developed into a framework within which the two systems interact and, in doing so, influence and shape each other. These interactions form multiple thought and voiced drafts, reflecting the ‘multiple drafts’ model developed by (...) Daniel Dennett to examine the phenomenon of consciousness. The drafting and re-drafting of thought and language are analysed via critical consideration of two transcripts of interviews with owner-managers. The overall theoretical approach suggests that the dynamics of voice-cognition drafting offer insights into: the development of expert cognitive frameworks; patterns in group development — in particular the emergence of shared values and concepts within the business; and processes of experiential learning within organizations. (shrink)

This paper examines the dynamics of thought-language interactions within the organisational context of business. Based on an assessment of the cognition-voice debate within the cognitive sciences and related areas of philosophical enquiry, the paper proposes that thought and language are distinct systems. This notion of modularity is developed into a framework within which the two systems interact and, in doing so, influence and shape each other. These interactions form multiple thought and voiced drafts, reflecting the ‘multiple drafts’ model developed by (...) Daniel Dennett to examine the phenomenon of consciousness. The drafting and re-drafting of thought and language are analysed via critical consideration of two transcripts of interviews with owner-managers. The overall theoretical approach suggests that the dynamics of voice-cognition drafting offer insights into: the development of expert cognitive frameworks; patterns in group development — in particular the emergence of shared values and concepts within the business; and processes of experiential learning within organizations. (shrink)

Research has shown that “no use” drug education programs, with the objective of scaring or shaming youth into abstinence, have not been effective in addressing problematic substance use. The ineffectiveness of such scare tactic approaches has led program developers to focus on prevention and harm reduction associated with drug use, or in general, health literacy promotion. While significant ‘discussion-based’ drug education programs have been developed over the past decade and has encouraged students to be expressive and critical thinkers regarding drug (...) use, their effective implementation has been a challenge. This paper introduces Engaged Philosophical Inquiry as a pedagogical approach in order to promote drug literacy. The EPI approach is used both as the content and means of professional development for high school teachers to address the significant role of teachers in these programs. Its goal is to help teachers become aware of and re-evaluate their biases, beliefs and behaviors, before they are able to facilitate a non-stereotyped, open, and thoughtful discussion on drug use related topics. The overall idea of this paper is based on an in-progress research project sponsored by Mitacs organization. It discusses the significance of the project by first presenting the existing methods and theoretical approaches to drug education. On that basis, it shows how EPI can contribute to traditional drug education approaches. It then describes how the methodology and phases of the project are rooted in a dialogical process that aim for a close collaboration with teachers. (shrink)

The thesis of Ineffability has it that no proposition can be fully expressed by a sentence, this meaning that no sentence-type, or even sentence-token whose indexicality and ambiguities have been resolved, can fully encode a proposition. The thesis of the propositionality of thoughts has it that thoughts are propositional. An implication of the joint endorsement of these two theses is that thoughts are ineffable. The aim of this paper is to argue that this is not the case: there are effable (...) thoughts, and we can even safely say that, generally, thoughts are effable. In order to defend this insight, I first counter the thesis of the propositionality of thought by bringing some counterexamples to it, which amount to cases of non-fully propositional thought. I then argue that, if thoughts can be and often are non-fully propositional, they can be expressed by sentences that fail to fully express a proposition. I also show that the propositional thoughts that we can entertain are after all effable (in a suitable, relevant sense) and resist some alleged examples of insurmountable ineffability. (shrink)

In chapter 17 of his book, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory , Ian Hacking makes the disquieting claim that “perhaps we should best think of past human actions as being to a certain extent indeterminate.” 1 Against what may appear like the self-evident conception of the past as fixed and unalterable, Hacking suggests that when it comes to human conduct and experience, there are reasons to adopt a more flexible view. This (...) suggestion has caused lively debate, in the journal History of the Human Sciences and elsewhere. 2 Central to this debate is the question of what it means to use a recently invented vocabulary to redescribe past human affairs. In particular, it is asked: How do the linguistic, cultural and social differences between past and present matter to the possibility of such a redescription's being true? We who do research in the humanities and social sciences often make retroactive redescriptions of precisely this sort. Hence, the debate is clearly of some general importance for how to conceive the goals and methods of our inquiries. My overall aim in this paper is to clarify what we may learn from the clash between Hacking and his critics. (shrink)

The Pozna view is about the logical structure of theories, about what such theories claim and how rationally to judge and improve them. In the context of this volume it is relevant to explore what the Pozna view and the African ideas about knowledge have to say about one another.

Explains how each word carries an energy that increases or decreases our energy level and how our choice of words creates our reality. Offers tables for converting the negative to the positive and shows which words to use to change our lives for the better. Shares healing words in mantras, guided relaxation, and chants as well as a writing technique that brings emotional healing.

This is a short response piece to Jeremy Schwartz's "Saying 'Thank You' and Meaning It", published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2020, 98, pp. 718-731. -/- Schwartz argues against the received view that 'Thank You! is for expressing gratitude, claiming instead that it is for expressing one's judgment that gratitude is appropriate or fitting. I argue against the judgment view while defending the received one. -/- I mainly consider the objection that the judgment view is implausible since it makes (...) ‘Thank you!’ semantically indistinguishable from the declarative sentence ‘Gratitude is appropriate to you’ and show that Schwartz’s attempt to sidestep it relies on misunderstanding Kaplan's view of what it is for a sentence to be an expressive vs. a declarative. (shrink)

In asserting something I incur certain kinds of liabilities, including a responsibility for the truth of the content I express. If I say ‘After leaving the EU, the UK will take back control of c. £350 million per week’, or I tell you that ‘The number 14 bus stops at the British Museum’, I become liable for the truth of these claims. As my audience, you could hold me unreliable or devious if it turns out that what I said (...) is false. Yet this socio-linguistic practice – of acquiring and ascribing ‘linguistic liability’ – is complicated, especially given philosophical distinctions between the various different kinds of contents people can express (am I liable, for instance, for the claim that the number 14 bus stops at the British Museum today or only usually?). This paper explores the different kinds of contents speakers might be taken to express, arguing that our practices around linguistic liability (including in legal disputes) reveal a crucial role for a notion of context-independent, literal meaning attaching to words and sentences. These practices thus vindicate what philosophers tend to term ‘minimal semantic content’. (shrink)

Gerard Manley Hopkins once said, “What you look hard at seems to look hard at you.” This phrase not only encapsulates the central emphasis of Hopkins’s poetry but also suggests a proper relationship between philosophy and art. The aesthetic experience of artworks can provide pivotal experiences for metaphysical interpretations, and I attempt to show that Hopkins’s poetry gives such a foundational and informative experience for philosophical investigations. Hopkins develops his poetic expressions based on what he calls the ability (...) of language to inscape and ingress profound experiences of reality. The metaphysics of Duns Scotus in which the particular embodies or transubstantiates the universal underlies these ideas and inspires Hopkins to write poetry. My point is not to say that a philosopher can offer the true meaning of Hopkins’s poetry and that, once we get the philosophical meaning, we can dismiss the poems. Rather, Hopkins’s poetry presents the kind of experiences that a philosopher can use to make meaningful metaphysical interpretations of the world. (shrink)

Evaluating readiness for discharge from the intensive care unit (ICU) is a critical aspect of patient care. Whereas evidence-based criteria for ICU admission have been established, practical criteria for discharge from the ICU are lacking. Often discharge guidelines simply state that a patient no longer meets ICU admission criteria. Such discharge criteria can be interpreted differently by different healthcare providers, leaving a clinical void where misunderstandings of patients’ readiness can conflict with perceptions of what readiness means for patients, families, (...) and healthcare providers. In considering ICU discharge readiness, the use and application of ethical principles may be helpful in mitigating such conflicts and achieving desired patient outcomes. Ethical principles propose different ways of understanding what readiness might mean and how clinicians might weigh these principles in their decision-making process. This article examines the concept of discharge readiness through the lens of the most widely cited ethical principles (autonomy [respect for persons], nonmaleficence/beneficence, and justice) and provides a discussion of their application in the critical care environment. Ongoing bioethics discourse and empirical research are needed to identify factors that help determine discharge readiness within critical care environments that will ultimately promote safe and effective ICU discharges for patients and their families. (shrink)

There are many different ways to talk about the world. Some ways of talking are more expressive than others—that is, they enable us to say more things about the world. But what exactly does this mean? When is one language able to express more about the world than another? In my dissertation, I systematically investigate different ways of answering this question and develop a formal theory of expressive power, translation, and notational variance. In doing so, I show how (...) these investigations help to clarify the role that expressive power plays within debates in metaphysics, logic, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

In fifteen witty essays, fifteen philosophers answer the questions of what writer, director, actor, comedian, musician, and deep thinker Woody Allen is trying to say and why anyone should care. Original.

What does a person really want when he asks for an apology? Why do people so often find it difficult to give an apology? Repentance is relevant to personal identity because the unrepentant soul has his own theory of personal identity. The unrepentant person believes he is his preference, and that he is entitled to the behavior that flows from those preferences. This fact can explain why people are so often reluctant to admit wrongdoing, why people place so much (...) importance upon receiving an apology and other behaviors that would be otherwise inexplicable. The unrepentant person uses something akin to a naive economic theory of human behavior. The naive version of homo economicus, or economic man, can never truly be sorry for anything, and as a result, will be almost impossible to live with. A person who identifies himself too closely with his preferences will bring misery to himself and those around him. (shrink)

The first collection of Gendlin's groundbreaking essays in philosophical psychology, Saying What We Mean casts familiar areas of human experience, such as language and feeling, in a radically different light. Instead of the familiar emphasis on the conceptually explicit in an era of scientism, Gendlin shows that the implicit also comprises a structure available for recognition and analysis. In the tradition of American pragmatism, Gendlin forges a new path that synthesizes contemporary evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology, and philosophical (...) linguistics. (shrink)

Cappelen and Lepore (2005) argue that "[s]peakers need not believe everything they sincerely say." I argue that their latest (2006a) defence of this claim proposes a problematic principle that does not yield their surprising conclusion.

In the Movie Tootsie, The character played by Dustin Hoffman is disguised as a woman and is speaking to a beautiful young actress played by Jessica Lange. During a session of late-night girl talk, Lange's character says, "You know what I wish? That a guy could be honest enough to walk up to me and say, 'I could lay a big line on you, but the simple truth is I find you very interesting, and I'd really like to make (...) love to you.' Wouldn't that be a relief?". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Philosophy Can't Say About Literature:Stanley Cavell and EndgameBenjamin H. OgdenIn "Ending the Waiting Game," the philosopher of ordinary language Stanley Cavell attempts to say what Samuel Beckett's Endgame means by explaining what the characters in the play mean by what they say. Cavell attempts to do the very thing that the work says cannot be done, or mocks as foolish and misguided, or (...) resists giving clues to how it could ever be done: he tries to say just "how Beckett's objects mean at all, the original source of their conviction."1 This is not simply a reading tactic that Cavell thinks is well-suited to the difficult task of making sense of a difficult play. It is a demonstration of the theory of language (ordinary language philosophy) that Cavell defends and applies in his collection of essays Must We Mean What We Say?, of which "Ending the Waiting Game" is a chapter. Cavell's literary criticism is in the service of his philosophy. His work of criticism is in search of something that it must find (that is, something that it claims to have found even when it may not have); what it must find is a work of literature that demonstrates the utility and validity of ordinary language philosophy.If we are to take issue with Cavell for too strenuously transposing philosophy onto literature, then we must also know something of the philosophy he draws upon. Ordinary language philosophy traces its origins to Wittgenstein, and was popularized by J. L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle at Oxford in the 1940's. It is a branch of analytic philosophy that foregoes any attempt to create an "ideal philosophical language" of the sort Wittgenstein developed in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Instead of seeing the abstractions and ambiguities of ordinary usage as something to be supplanted by a more logically rigorous system, ordinary language philosophers argue that debates over the meaning [End Page 126] of abstract terms come about precisely because words are removed from their ordinary context. For Cavell, the whole idea of an "ideal language" is absurd because, as anyone who has ever tried to learn a foreign language knows, every language has its own unique set of usages and idioms and unspoken rules. In order to speak a language properly, then, one cannot just know the dictionary or formal definitions of words (its "ideal" generative grammar), but must understand the "natural environment" in which phrases and words are logical or appropriate. Often these contexts (which determine the rules for "what we should say when" [p. 20]) invest words with meanings that you won't find in any dictionary, and cannot be catalogued in a grammatical or syntactical system.So, if one asks, "Did you dress that way voluntarily?" (p. 9), the word "voluntarily" takes on a meaning that is not included among its dictionary definitions (according to Cavell). Clearly, in asking whether you dress voluntarily one is not asking whether you have free-will to dress as you please, but is calling attention to the funny way you dress. In this case, successful communication is only possible if the one who is being questioned understands from context and the ordinary use of language precisely what is being asked. If he answers, "Of course I dressed voluntarily, I believe in free will," he will have misspoken, been incorrect. Clearly, he doesn't understand what the question must mean because the statement "MUST MEAN that my clothes are peculiar" (p. 9). For it to mean anything else would be a mistake and a misuse of language by the speaker, or a misunderstanding of language by the listener. To learn a language (which for Cavell means to become like a native speaker) is to learn the nature of the contingency between the explicit meaning of an expression and the occasion on which an expression is appropriate, and to be aware of what you must mean when you speak (what you cannot help but mean or imply by the language you use).What this means is that for Cavell reading literature becomes a process of readers "naturalizing ourselves to a new form of life, a new... (shrink)

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth‐grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., 5 + 4 + 9 + 5 = _) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ or 6 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems (...) of the form 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students' encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank‐final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank‐final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding. (shrink)

The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative (...) theory of the semantics of belief-ascribing sentences that clearly avoids the three problems that trouble Richard’s theory, and advocate it as the best available strategy for resolving the apparent inconsistency between the doctrine of opacity, referentialism, and the principle of semantic innocence. (shrink)

The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative (...) theory of the semantics of belief-ascribing sentences that clearly avoids the three problems that trouble Richard’s theory, and advocate it as the best available strategy for resolving the apparent inconsistency between the doctrine of opacity, referentialism, and the principle of semantic innocence. (shrink)

Few would dispute that Nietzsche writes differently than most philosophers, especially when judged by the standards of contemporary philosophical writing. There is plenty of dispute, however, about why Nietzsche has chosen to present his thinking in the ways that he does. When one turns to much recent Nietzsche scholarship, it would appear that the literary quality of his writing is often treated as something that is merely accidental rather than integral to his philosophical project. Here one finds a working assumption (...) that it is possible to paraphrase Nietzsche’s unconventional style of writing into more conventional forms of philosophical prose without losing sight of the philosophical goals that he is trying to achieve. This paper argues that this working assumption underappreciates the fact that Nietzsche’s chosen style of writing is intended to perform a variety of functions within his philosophy. One underappreciated function of Nietzsche’s writing, I will argue, aims to promote a radical disruption and revaluation of his readers’ basic habitual attitudes towards their experience of their own lives. Such therapeutic and transformative experiences, I conclude, are not only basic to Nietzsche’s philosophical project but are also intimately connected to the literary quality of his writing and cannot easily survive philosophical paraphrase. (shrink)

[First Paragraph] Unlike so many other distinctions in philosophy, H P Grice's distinction between what is said and what is implicated has an immediate appeal: undergraduate students readily grasp that one who says 'someone shot my parents' has merely implicated rather than said that he was not the shooter [2]. It seems to capture things that we all really pay attention to in everyday conversation'this is why there are so many people whose entire sense of humour consists of (...) deliberately ignoring implicatures. ('Can you pass the salt?' 'Yes.') Unsurprisingly, it was quickly picked up and put to a wide variety of uses in not only in philosophy but also in linguistics and psychology. What is surprising, however, is that upon close inspection Grice's conception of implicature turns out to be very different from those at work in the literature which has grown out of his original discussion. This would not be much of a criticism of this literature were it not for the fact that discussions of implicature explicitly claim to be using Grice's notion, not some other one inspired by him (generally going so far as to quote one of Grice's characterisations of implicature). This still would not be terribly interesting if the notion Grice was actually carving out had little theoretical or practical utility. But I will argue here that Grice's own notion of implicature, one quite different from the ones most of us have come to work with, is in fact far more interesting and subtle than that which has been attributed to him. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the conflict between thought and speech that is inherent in lying. This is the conflict of saying what you think is false. The chapter shows how stubbornly saying what you think is false resists analysis. In traditional analyses of lying, saying what you think is false is analyzed in terms of saying something and believing that it is false. But standard cases of unconscious or divided belief challenge these analyses. Classic (...) puzzles about belief from Gottlob Frege and Saul Kripke show that suggested amendments involving assent instead of belief do not fare better. I argue that attempts to save these analyses by appeal to guises or Fregean modes of presentation will also run into trouble. I then consider alternative approaches to untruthfulness that focus on (a) expectations for one’s act of saying/asserting and (b) the intentions involved in one’s act of saying/asserting. Here I introduce two new kinds of case, which I call “truth serum” and “liar serum” cases. Consideration of these cases reveals structural problems with intention- and expectation-based approaches as well. Taken together, the string of cases presented suggests that saying what you think is false, or being untruthful, is no less difficult and interesting a subject for analysis than lying itself. Tackling the question of what it is to say what you think is false illuminates ways in which the study of lying is intertwined with fundamental issues in the nature of intentional action. (shrink)

Do you think the quotation in my title is reasonable or unreasonable? I find it unreasonable, but I know that many will not. Two people can react to the same idea, opinion, or data in opposite ways, and the reasons for this are often ideological. Ideology always has a political origin — in this case perhaps reflecting turf wars, career promotion, self-legitimation, the privileged status of science in post-industrial societies, and the need to say the right things in order to (...) get research funding. The very concept of ‘hard science’ is ideological, implying that one part of our experience is ‘objective’ (meaning that it confers authority on scientists) and the other part is ‘subjective’(meaning that the opinions of non-scientists are of little worth).What we call ‘objective’ is of course a mental model built on the basis of experiences which we call ‘subjective’. There are many possible ways of carving up experience, but none that leads to a useful or non-political distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’. (shrink)

Die Arbeit liefert im Rahmen eines kognitiv-konstruktivistischen Ansatzes eine theoretische Grundlage für die systematische Integration von Metaphern in den Fremdsprachenunterricht. Es wird dargestellt, wie Menschen ihre Umwelt und ihr auf diese Umwelt gerichtetes Denken und Handeln kognitiv erfassen und auf der Basis dieses Wissens Vorstellungen von Welt entwickeln, die sich in Sprache niederschlagen. Die Rolle kognitiver mapping-Prozesse für die Konstruktion von Wissen und Bedeutung, d.h. für Lernprozesse im Allgemeinen, wird erläutert, und es wird demonstriert, wie sich das Ergebnis solcher Prozesse (...) häufig in Form metaphorischer Ausdrücke in Sprache widerspiegelt. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie sich die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse für den Fremdsprachenerwerb nutzen lassen. (shrink)

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth‐grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., 5 + 4 + 9 + 5 = _) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ or 6 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems (...) of the form 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students' encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank‐final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank‐final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding. (shrink)

This article draws on the philosophical work on dialogic rationality offered by Charles Taylor as well as qualitative studies of dialogues between politically opposed college students to argue that these conversations succeed as tools of democracy precisely because they fail as interventions. That is, the democratic strength of such dialogue is the way in which it is unreliable as a means of producing particular outcomes. Students whose political views eventually shifted partly in response to dialogue understood this not as a (...) process of changing their commitments, but rather of finding a better expression for the commitments they already held. But the interviews show, too, just how rare it is for such shifts to occur at all, at least for these students in a period of political polarization and mutual distrust. The interviews suggest as well that the appeal to already shared ground is not the whole story of what prompts people to change their minds in these kinds of conversations. Rather the asking of direct but respectful questions was a crucial ingredient. Finally, dialogue did not independently cause the most profound changes in political views. Instead, it was the direction of students' lives that over time shifted their outlook. Their dialogue experience then gained meaning in retrospect, as the beginning of a process of self-questioning that was brought to fruition only later, as a first time that they had heard alternative possibilities for how value commitments can be expressed through politics. (shrink)

Theory of Mind is the ability to predict and understand the mental state of another. While ToM is theorized to play a role in language, we examined whether such a mentalizing ability plays an important role in establishing shared understanding in conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in a Lego model building task in which adirectorinstructed abuilderon how to create duplicate models from a prototype that only the director could see. We manipulated whether the director could see or could not see (...) the builder’s workspace. As predicted, the Mind in the Eyes test predicted accuracy when the workspace was hidden. A high mentalizing ability was an advantage when instructing, resulting in fewer errors, but may be a disadvantage when following instructions. This research indicates that ToM plays a key role in communicating information effectively in conversation. (shrink)