Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

I review recent evidence that very young, pre-verbal infants attribute belief-like states when anticipating the behavior of others. This evidence is drawn from infant performance on non-verbal false belief tasks. I argue that, contrary to typical interpretations, such evidence does not show that infants attribute belief-like states. Rather, it shows that infants apply an enhanced version of what Gergely ( 2011 ) calls the “teleological stance” to brief bouts of behavior. This requires them to parse behavioral sequences into goals and (...) rationally/informationally-constrained means of achieving them; however, it does not require the attribution of unobservable mental states, like beliefs, that are causally responsible for behavior. (shrink)

Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through cultural rather than biological evolution. Although these accounts describe the role of culture in the ontogenetic development of mindreading, they neglect the question of the cultural origins of mindreading in human prehistory. We discuss four possible models of this, distinguished by the role they posit for culture: (1) the standard evolutionary psychology model (Carruthers), (2) the individualist empiricist (...) model (Wellman, Gopnik), (3) the cultural empiricist model (Heyes), and (4) the radical socio-cultural constructivist model, which we favor. We motivate model (4) by arguing that many forms of mental state ascription do not serve the function of simply describing inner states causally responsible for the behavior of a cognitive agent; rather, they relate the agent to her environment by characterizing her practical commitments. Making these practical commitments explicit has an important regulatory function in that it supports action coordination and alignment on joint goals. We propose a model of how the ascription of mental states may have evolved as a linguistic device to perform exactly this function of making agents’ practical commitments explicit. (shrink)

Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through cultural rather than biological evolution. Although these accounts describe the role of culture in the ontogenetic development of mindreading, they neglect the question of the cultural origins of mindreading in human prehistory. We discuss four possible models of this, distinguished by the role they posit for culture: the standard evolutionary psychology model, the individualist empiricist model, the cultural (...) empiricist model, and the radical socio-cultural constructivist model, which we favor. We motivate model by arguing that many forms of mental state ascription do not serve the function of simply describing inner states causally responsible for the behavior of a cognitive agent; rather, they relate the agent to her environment by characterizing her practical commitments. Making these practical commitments explicit has an important regulatory function in that it supports action coordination and alignment on joint goals. We propose a model of how the ascription of mental states may have evolved as a linguistic device to perform exactly this function of making agents’ practical commitments explicit. (shrink)

I argue that proponents of embodied social cognition (ESC) can usefully supplement their views if they enlist the help of an unlikely ally: Daniel Dennett. On Dennett’s view, human social cognition involves adopting the intentional stance (IS), i.e., assuming that an interpretive target’s behavior is an optimally rational attempt to fulfill some desire relative to her beliefs. Characterized this way, proponents of ESC would reject any alliance with Dennett. However, for Dennett, to attribute mental states from the intentional stance is (...) not to attribute concrete, unobservable mental causes of behavior. Once this is appreciated, the kinship between IS—understood as a model of our quotidian interpretive practices—and ESC is apparent: both assume that quotidian interpretation involves tracking abstract, observable, behavioral patterns, not attributing unobservable, concrete, mental causes, i.e., both assume social cognition is possible without metapsychology. I argue that this affinity constitutes an opportunity: proponents of ESC can use IS as a characterization of the subpersonal basis for social cognition. In the process, I make my interpretation of IS more precise and relate it to current empirical literature in developmental psychology. (shrink)

I criticize Herbert Simon 's argument for the claim that complex natural systems must constitute decomposable, mereological or functional hierarchies. The argument depends on certain assumptions about the requirements for the successful evolution of complex systems, most importantly, the existence of stable, intermediate stages in evolution. Simon offers an abstract model of any process that succeeds in meeting these requirements. This model necessarily involves construction through a decomposable hierarchy, and thus suggests that any complex, natural, i.e., evolved, system is constituted (...) by a decomposable hierarchy. I argue that Stuart Kauffman's recent models of genetic regulatory networks succeed in specifying processes that could meet Simon 's requirements for evolvability without requiring construction through a decomposable hierarchy. Since Kauffman's models are at least as plausible as Simon 's model, Simon 's argument that complex natural systems must constitute decomposable, mereological or functional hierarchies does not succeed. (shrink)

I briefly review the three basic strategies for naturalizing intentionality discussed by Haugeland 4:383–427, 1990, and Hutto and Satne, recounting their deficits. Then, I focus on Dennett’s version of what Haugeland calls the “second-base … neo-behaviorist” strategy. After briefly explaining Dennett’s proposal, I defend it against four common objections: circularity, relativity, under-specified rationality, and failure to track robustly natural facts. I conclude by recounting the advantages of Dennettian neo-behaviorism over the neo-Cartesian and neo-pragmatist alternatives, as well as Hutto and Satne’s (...) proposal that intentionality comes in two distinct kinds. (shrink)

The evolution of human language, and the kind of thought the communication of which requires it, raises considerable explanatory challenges. These systems of representation constitute a radical discontinuity in the natural world. Even species closely related to our own appear incapable of either thought or talk with the recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality that characterize human talk and the thought it expresses. W. Tecumseh Fitch’s proposal (2004, in press) that human language is descended from a sexually selected, prosodic (...) proto-language that approximated its syntactic complexity, and later acquired semantics thanks to kin selection for its use as a means of pedagogical transmission, has the promise of meeting these explanatory challenges. However, Fitch’s theory raises two problems of its own: (1) according to Boyd and Richerson (1996, Proc. Br. Acad. 88: 77–93), circumstances in which pedagogy is adaptive are inevitably rare in nature, and (2) it is unlikely that our non-discursive precursors had generally systematic, task-domain neutral thoughts to communicate to their offspring. I propose solutions to these problems. Pedagogy would be favored in a population where complex rituals dominated diverse aspects of life. Prosodic proto-language could emerge as the medium of pedagogic transmission. As this medium was used to teach a greater variety of tasks, it would become increasingly general and domain neutral. The presence and importance of such a system of communication in hominid populations could then drive, via Baldwinian mechanisms, the evolution of a kind of ‘thinking for speaking’ (Slobin 1991, Pragmatics 1: 7–25) characterized by recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality. (shrink)

Most theories of semantic competence in natural language implicitly assume the Language of Thought Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, all human cognition consists in the deployment of a language of thought. This language of thought is supposed to be independent of natural language, yet at the same time, it is supposed to be semantically isomorphic with natural language. Given this assumption, it is easy to answer basic questions regarding semantic competence in natural language. What are semantic properties of natural language, (...) and how did they originate? Natural language inherits the semantic properties of the language of thought it is used to express. What does semantic competence consist in? It consists in knowing how to translate items in one's language of thought into a public medium. ;The starting point of this dissertation is the rejection, by some prominent paradigms in cognitive science, of the view that human cognition consists in the deployment of a language of thought that is, at the same time, independent of natural language, yet semantically isomorphic with it. The dissertation constitutes a fledgling attempt to explore an alternative approach to explaining semantic competence in natural language, an approach that is compatible with this rejection of the Language of Thought Hypothesis. ;Rather than conceive of natural language as a tool for expressing items in a pre-existing, semantically isomorphic, language of thought, I urge that language be conceived of as a norm-governed social practice. On this view, the semantic properties of natural language are determined by the inferential norms governing linguistic performances. In order to explain the origin of its semantic properties, one must explain the origin of the inferential norms that govern language. In order to explain what semantic competence consists in, one must explain how individuals learn to abide by these inferential norms. The bulk of the dissertation is devoted to showing that neither of these explanatory projects requires endorsing the Language of Thought Hypothesis. I do this by sketching the form that such explanations might take, and showing that they are consistent with much current research in ethology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

I argue for two claims. First I argue against the consensus view that accurate behavioral prediction based on accurate representation of cognitive states, i.e. mind reading , is the sustaining function of propositional attitude ascription. This practice cannot have been selected in evolution and cannot persist, in virtue of its predictive utility, because there are principled reasons why it is inadequate as a tool for behavioral prediction. Second I give reasons that favor an alternative account of the sustaining function of (...) propositional attitude ascription. I argue that it serves a mind-shaping function. Roughly, propositional attitude ascription enables human beings to set up regulative ideals that function to mold behavior so as to make it easier to coordinate with. (shrink)

I defend an alternative to the two traditional accounts of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognition as primary versus social cognition as primary. These accounts have complementary explanatory vices and virtues. They also share a natural assumption: that interpretation in terms of mental states is “spectatorial”, aiming exclusively for an objective description of the mental facts about self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental (...) states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person-level metacognitive concepts are socio-cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non-conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices. (shrink)

We address recent interpretations of infant performance on spontaneous false belief tasks. According to most views, these experiments show that human infants attribute mental states from a very young age. Focusing on one of the most clearly worked out, minimalist versions of this idea, Butterfill and Apperly's "minimal theory of mind" framework, we defend an alternative characterization: the minimal theory of rational agency. On this view, rather than conceiving of social situations in terms of states of an enduring mental substance (...) animating agents, infant interpreters parse observed bouts of behavior and their contexts into goals, rational means to those goals, and available information. In other words, the social ontology of infant interpreters consists in goal-directed, informed bouts of behavior, by non-enduring agents, rather than agents animated by states of enduring, unobservable minds. We discuss a number of experiments that support this interpretation of infant socio-cognitive competence. (shrink)

H. sapiens stands out from other primates along many social dimensions; however, none seems as prominent and important as the capacity of our species for cumulative cultural evolution or, as Tomasello calls it, “the ratchet.” Although other primate species show evidence of cultural variation, there is little evidence of cumulative cultural evolution, i.e., the gradual accumulation, modification, and refinement of traditions and skills over historical time, in any primate species other than our own. This is clearly an extremely significant component (...) of the human phenotype, responsible for our unparalleled cultural, social, political, and technological achievements. However, it remains extremely controversial what sorts of cognitive capacities are necessary to trigger cumulative cultural evolution and whether any currently proposed candidates are really distinctive of humans. Furthermore, the ratchet raises a bootstrapping problem: before complex skills and technologies are present and necessary for biological success, there appear to be few advantages to high-fidelity social learning; however, without such high-fidelity social learning, it is unclear how traditions capable of generating complex skills and technologies could arise in the first place. In this chapter, we survey relevant empirical research in comparative and developmental psychology, integrating it with a novel theoretical analysis of the bootstrapping problem to defend a hypothesis about the minimal cognitive preconditions on the ratchet. (shrink)

This paper presents a naturalist skill-based alternative to traditional function-based naturalist theories of mental health and disorder. According to the novel skill view outlined here, mental health is a skilled action of individuals, rather than a question of the functioning of mental mechanisms. Mental disorder is the failure or breakdown of this skill. This skill view of mental health is motivated by focusing on the process of mental healing. This paper argues that, when we start with a focus on how (...) and why individuals heal from mental disorders, we gain a better understanding of what mental health is: the exercise of self-regulatory metacognitive skill. (shrink)

I argue that adaptive, self-directed misbeliefs are likely more prevalent and important than McKay & Dennett (M&D) claim. Humans often falsely interpret their own behavior in terms of culturally afforded categories. Despite their falsity, such self-interpretations are often adaptive because of our disposition to behave consistently with them. This makes us easier to interpret by similarly enculturated interactants.

I pose the following dilemma for Millikan's teleological theory of mental content. There is only one way that her theory can avoid Gauker's [(1995) Review of Millikan's White queen psychology and other essays for Alice, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 305-309] charge that it relies on an unexplained notion of mapping or isomorphism between mental state and world. Mental content must be explained in terms of the mapping relation that is required for mental state producing and consuming mechanisms to perform their biologically (...) proper functions, i.e. producing mental states that are consumed in systematically adaptive practical inferences. However, this proposal leads to unacceptably counterintuitive ascriptions of content to mythological beliefs and related desires: such beliefs and desires must "map onto" environmental states that make them adaptive, not onto the mythological states of affairs that (would) make them true or fulfilled. I conclude by discussing the merits and drawbacks of a potential solution to this problem: the view that the contents of mythological beliefs and desires are determined by the non-mythological concepts out of which they are constructed, rather than by the environmental states that make them adaptive. The affinities of this proposal with Pascal Boyer's recent theory of mythological concepts [(2001) Religion explained, New York: Basic Books] are also discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the (...) study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We claim that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals towards the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences. (shrink)

Research on natural and artificial brains is proceeding at a rapid pace. However, the understanding of the essence of consciousness has changed slightly over the millennia, and only the last decade has brought some progress to the area. Scientific ideas emerged that the soul could be a product of the material body and that calculating machines could imitate brain processes. However, the authors of this book reject the previously common dualism—the view that the material and spiritual-psychic processes are separate and (...) require a completely different substance as their foundation. -/- Reductive Model of the Conscious Mind is a forward-thinking book wherein the authors identify processes that are the essence of conscious thinking and place them in the imagined, simplified structure of cells able to memorize and transmit information in the form of impulses, which they call neurons. The purpose of the study is to explain the essence of consciousness to the degree of development of natural sciences, because only the latter can find a way to embed the concept of the conscious mind in material brains. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 works to convince readers that the emergence of consciousness does not require detailed knowledge of the structure and morphology of the brain, with the exception of some specific properties of the neural network structure that the authors attempt to point out. Part 2 proves that the biological structure of many natural brains fulfills the necessary conditions for consciousness and intelligent thinking. Similarly, Part 3 shows the ways in which artificial creatures imitating natural brains can meet these conditions, which gives great hopes for building artificially intelligent beings endowed with consciousness. Covering topics that include cognitive architecture, the embodied mind, and machine learning, this book is ideal for cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, psychologists, researchers, academicians, and advanced-level students. The book can also help to focus the research of linguists, neurologists, and biophysicists on the biophysical basis of postulated information processing into knowledge structures. (shrink)

: La democracia es una expresión de la subjetividad de la sociedad y por tanto merece reconocimiento. Hoy en día, sin embargo, la democracia está amenazada con una separación de los valores universales y aliada con el relativismo moral. El resultado de este proceso es la reducción de la democracia a meros procedimientos. Esto puede llevar a la tiranía de la mayoría democrática. Los procedimientos democráticos requieren valores fundamentales que son la base del consenso social, el acuerdo y la cooperación (...) para el bien común. El Cristianismo es una fuente importante de estos valores. Los valores universales están también arraigados en el Evangelio y los Cristianos que participan activamente en los procesos democráticos desempeñan un papel crucial en su transmisión. (shrink)

An interview with Wiesław Chrzanowski, a member of the Home Army’s “Gustaw” unit. Chrzanowski recounts the political situation in Europe at the time and the Soviet Union’s and Allies’ stance towards the Warsaw Uprising. He is also critical towards the uprising’s commanders, who launched it without adequate preparation.

As with any historical study, including that of knowledge and ideas, the progress of the semiology of the theater is subject to periodicity. The aim of any division into periods is to obtain a global view, even at the price of simplifications, but it can also bring out the hidden aspects of the phenomena under study.The semiology or semiotics of the theater, that is, the application of the idea of sign to the art of the spectacle, has a long past, (...) in which several stages may be distinguished, and first of all those that I would call the presemiology and the protosemiology of the theater. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present some of the findings (which were reported on more extensively in earlier work) regarding the visibility of gender issues in the literature on selected information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a view to make predictions about potential ethical issues that the application of these ICTs may bring about in the future. On the basis of the analysis of around 100 published sources, which dealt with various aspects of selected ICTs, conclusions have been (...) drawn regarding gender issues and concerns that the applications of these ICTs may cause. The authors' analysis is theoretically informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) which assumes that texts, both written and spoken, as well as other forms of symbolic representations, are indicative of social practices. Of particular methodological relevance was the survey of methods of text and discourse analysis presented in Titscher et al and especially the application of keyword search as a way to measure the prominence of each investigated method. This approach to literature surveying proved very useful in selecting analytic material: only those published sources on the selected four ICTs have been included in the survey, for which the analysis of keywords, abstracts and indexes of terms indicated authors' interest in gender issues. Findings - First, ICTs such as affective computing, ambient intelligence, and artificial intelligence, have been found to have the potential of positively affecting gender power relations and thus positively affecting gender balance in the areas of labour market related to ICT across EU countries and worldwide. Second, more research on the relationship between gender and ICT design, application and representation is needed, so as to enhance a better understanding of ethical issues resulting from unequal participation of women and men in all aspects of ICT production and implementation, which in itself is an ethical dilemma with which both the ICT business and legislators have to grapple. The paper offers insight into the relationship between the level of attention devoted to particular ICTs by ICT researchers, as evidenced in the reviewed literature, and the likelihood of the application of a particular ICT in the future, which is looked at and assessed from a gender perspective. (shrink)