This paper builds on the insights of Jerome Bruner by underlining the central importance of narratives explaining actions in terms of reasons, arguing that by giving due attention to the central roles that they play in our everyday understanding of others provides a better way of explicating the nature and source of that activity than does simulation theory, theory-theory or some union of the two. However, although I promote Bruner's basic claims about the roles narratives play in this everyday enterprise, (...) I take issue with his characterization of the nature of narrative itself. In so doing, important questions are brought to the fore about what makes our understanding of narratives possible. In line with the idea that we ought to tell a developmental story that looks to the social arena for the source of narratives about reasons, I promote the idea that what is minimally required for becoming conversant in such everyday narratives need not be anything as sophisticated as a theory of mind or a capacity for simulation. The paper concludes using evidence concerning autism as a test case to help support this conclusion. (shrink)

Our lives are commonly involved with fictionality, an activity that adults share with children. After providing a brief reconstruction of the most important cognitive theories on pretence, we will argue that pretence has to do with metarepresentations, albeit in a rather weakened sense. In our view, pretending entails being aware that a certain representation does not fit in the very same representational model as another representation. This is a minimal metarepresentationalism, for normally metarepresentationalism on pretense claims that pretending is or (...) entails representing a representation qua representation, i.e. as conceptualised as a representation, in its very content. In the final section we will try to draw some consequences of our view as to the debate in cognitive science on mindreading. Given this minimal metarepresentationalism, the two main positions on mindreading, the ‘theory theory’ and the ‘simulation theory’, turn out to be closer than one would have originally supposed. (shrink)

There are several different questions associated with the study of folk psychology: what is the nature of our commonsense concepts of mental states?, how do we attribute mental states, to ourselves and to other people?, and how do we acquire our concepts and skills at mental-state attribution?Three general approaches to these questions are examined and assessed: theory theory, simulation theory, and rationality theory. A preliminary problem is to define each of these approaches. Alternative definitions are explored, centering on which questions (...) each approach tries to answer and how it answers them. For example, simulation theorists substantially agree on the answer to question but not on the answer to question. The paper then turns to some serious problems facing both rationality theory and theory theory.Rationality theory is faulted for its inadequate treatment of question and for its implausible answers to question. Theory theory is faulted for the problems it encounters in explaining first-person attribution, and for its treatment of attributed reasoning about change. Turning to simulation theory, the paper argues against Gordon’s “ascent routine” account of first-person attribution and in favor of an inner detection account. Finally, the paper addresses the question of the contents of our mental-state concepts. How do these concepts incorporate both behavioral features and inner features? A dual-representation hypothesis is advanced, and linked speculatively to mirror neurons. (shrink)

Going beyond the biological and physiological limitations imposed on us by the human body is something which the human race has strived to do throughout its history. There is something about our human nature that compels us to strive for improvement and enhancement in our physical and mental performance, and to stretch ever further the boundaries of human accomplishment. Nowhere can a stronger desire for enhanced performance be found than in the realm of competitive sport and, it is certainly arguable (...) that, there are very few sports that can rival the competitiveness, endurance and physical exertion involved in the sport of boxing. Transhumanism is borne of this desire for continuous improvement and the refusal to resign ourselves to the restrictions placed on us by our natural biological constitution and environment, enhancing human capabilities and capacities by way of new and emergent technologies. With regard to sport, transhumanism could provide us with the ability to train longer, run, swim or cycle faster, jump higher, throw further and, in the case of boxing, punch harder. However, it is not restricted or confined to the enhancement of our physical powers, but could equally-well serve to improve our psychological capacities and alter the way in which we perceive and experience the world. In this way transhumanism could be employed to change the content of experience. (shrink)