Philosophy of Social Cognition

Springer Verlag (2022)
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Abstract

This introductory textbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the main issues in contemporary philosophy of social cognition. It explains and critically discusses each of the key philosophical answers to the captivating question of how we understand the mental life of other sentient creatures. Key Features: · Clearly and fully describes the major theoretical approaches to the understanding of other people’s minds. · Suggests the major advantages and limitations of each approach, indicating how they differ as well as the ideas they have in common. · Tests each philosophical theory against the best available empirical data from psychology, neuroscience and psychopathology. · Includes suggestions for additional reading and practice study questions at the end of each chapter. Philosophy of Social Cognition is essential reading for all undergraduate and graduate students taking introductory courses on social cognition. It is also ideal for courses on cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and sociological theory.

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2023

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9783031144905   9783031144912   3031144902

DOI

10.1007/978-3-031-14491-2
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Chapters

Empathy-Theories

Alvin Goldman considers simulation-theory as a successor of Theodor Lipps’ theory of empathy but does not consider the alternative phenomenological conceptions of empathy proposed by Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein in critical evaluation of Lipps’ account. In this chapter, we contrast th... see more

Theory-Theories

The theory-theory is introduced as the first answer to the question how mind reading works: We attribute beliefs, desires, emotions and other mental states to someone based on having a “theory of mind”, that is, a body of knowledge which we acquire by experience. It is not innate. Cognitive developm... see more

Conclusion and New Challenges

We started our discussion with several considerations about the wide range of phenomena that go under the heading of social cognition. We have looked at approaches to how mindreading works, the attribution of mental states for the purpose of explaining and predicting behaviour of others. In this reg... see more

Enactivist Theories

For a long time, the theory-theory, modularity-theory and simulation-theory have dominated the debate on social cognition.. In this chapter, we look at new conceptions of cognition and alternative suggestions about how we understand other people’s mindsunder the heading of “enactivism”. Shaun Gallag... see more

Introduction

One day, the young wizard Harry Potter is required to see his teacher, Professor Severus Snape, who announces that he is going to teach him in the magical art of occlumency, the capacity to shield one’s own mind from the magical access and manipulation from the outside. Harry’s devious opponent in J... see more

Modularity-Theories

In this chapter, the nativist alternative to theory-theory is introduced and discussed. So-called modularity-theories appeal to innate domain-specific mechanisms, sometimes called modules, to explain cognitive development in certain specific domains. These modules contrast with domain-general learni... see more

The Puzzle of False-Belief Understanding

Proponents of theory-theory support their hypothesis of a radical theory change in the cognitive development of young children by appealing to empirical data allegedly demonstrating that children start to understand that other people can have false beliefs at around the age of four years. In the cha... see more

Simulation-Theories

Towards the end of the 1980s, theory-theory and modularity-theory were accompanied by a rival approach, the simulation-theory, put forward by philosophers Robert Gordon (1986), Jane Heal (1986) and Alvin Goldman (1989) and by developmental psychologist Paul Harris (1992). They reject the idea of a r... see more

Predictive Processing Theories

So far, we have introduced and discussed three prominent approaches to mindreading – theory-theory, modularity-theory, and simulation-theory – put forward as competing descriptions of the representational and computational processes on what Marr (1982) called the algorithmic level of description. As... see more

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Tobias Schlicht
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

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