In this article, we propose a pluralistic approach to the explanation of social understanding that integrates literature from social psychology with the theory of mind debate. Social understanding in everyday life is achieved in various ways. As a rule of thumb we propose that individuals make use of whatever procedure is cognitively least demanding to them in a given context. Aside from theory and simulation, associations of behaviors with familiar agents play a crucial role in social understanding. This role has (...) been neglected so far. We illustrate the roles of fluency and associations in social understanding in false belief tasks. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the role of intention and joint attention in joint actions. Depending on the shared intentions the agents have, we distinguish between joint path-goal actions and joint final-goal actions. We propose an instrumental account of basic joint action analogous to a concept of basic action and argue that intentional joint attention is a basic joint action. Furthermore, we discuss the functional role of intentional joint attention for successful cooperation in complex joint actions. Anika Fiebich is PhD (...) student in Philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Shaun Gallagher is Lilian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, USA. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to determine to what extent contemporary cross-cultural and developmental research can shed light on the role that narrative practices might play in the development of folk psychology. In particular, I focus on the role of narrative practices in the development of false belief understanding, which has been regarded as a milestone in the development of folk psychology. Second, I aim to discuss possible cognitive procedures that may underlie successful performance in false belief tasks. Methodologically, I (...) distinguish between two kinds of narrative practices: ‘mentalistic narrative practice’, and ‘behavioral-contextual narrative practice’ behavior of another person in a specific socio-situational context). Whereas the former is more prevalent in Western cultures than in Eastern cultures, the latter is predominantly used by members of Eastern cultures. Mentalistic narrative practices correlate with cultural divergences in the development of false belief understanding throughout ontogeny but do not seem to play the key role. The analysis shows that conceptual change and the acquisition of mental state terms is essential for passing the false belief task, and that theory is likely to be the cognitive mechanism involved here such as proposed by Theory Theory. However, Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis trumps over Theory Theory to account for the varieties and ambiguities people typically meet when understanding each other in everyday life. (shrink)

In this article I defend pluralist theory against various objections. First, I argue that although traditional theories may also account for multiple ways to achieve social understanding, they still put some emphasis on one particular epistemic strategy. Pluralist theory, in contrast, rejects the so-called ‘default assumption’ that there is any primary or default method in social understanding. Second, I illustrate that pluralist theory needs to be distinguished from integration theory. On one hand, integration theory faces the difficulty of trying to (...) combine traditional theories of social understanding that have contradictory background assumptions. On the other hand, pluralist theory goes beyond integrating traditional theories by accounting for a variety of factors that may play a role in social understanding but have been neglected in such theories, including stereotype activation, social and personal relationships, contextual features, individual moods, perceptions, and so on. Third, I argue that if the default assumption is rejected, pluralist theorists need to provide another positive account of why particular cognitive processes are more likely to come into play in a specific instance of social understanding than others in order to provide a genuine alternative to traditional theories. I discuss three versions of pluralist theory that meet this challenge by pointing to normativity, fluency, and interaction. (shrink)

This volume examines minimality in cooperation and shared agency from various angles. It features essays written by top scholars in the philosophy of mind and action. Taken together, the essays provide a genuine contribution to the contemporary joint action debate. The main accounts in this debate present sufficient rather than necessary or minimal criteria for there to be cooperation. Much discussion in the debate deals with robust rather than more attenuate and simple cases of cooperation or shared agency. Focusing on (...) such minimal cases, however, may help to explain how cooperation comes into existence and how minimal cooperation interrelates with more complex cases of cooperation. The contributors discuss minimality in cooperation by focusing on particular aspects. For example, they consider how social roles might deliver minimal cooperation constraints or what the minimal contextual criteria are for cooperation to emerge. Readers will find the answers to these and other questions: What is minimally cooperative behavior? By what steps could full members of a society organized by conventions, norms and institutions be constructed from creatures with minimal social skills and cognitive abilities? What do we experience of actions when we act together with a purpose? (shrink)

For decades, philosophers and psychologists have assumed that children understand other people’s behavior on the basis of Belief Reasoning (BR) at latest by age 5 when they pass the false belief task. Furthermore, children’s use of BR in the true belief task has been regarded as being ontogenetically prior. Recent findings from developmental studies challenge this view and indicate that 4- to 5-year-old children make use of a reasoning strategy, which is cognitively less demanding than BR and called perceptual access (...) reasoning (PAR), in true belief tasks. I appeal to research on fluency to explain these findings. On my account, 4- to 5- year-old children understand other people’s behavior by means of BR if they experience cognitive strain (such as in false belief tasks) but they revert to simpler heuristics PAR when such an experience is missing (such as in true belief tasks). (shrink)

In this article, I argue for cooperation as a three-dimensional phenomenon lying on the continua of a cognitive, a behavioural, and an affective axis. Traditional accounts of joint action argue for cooperation as involving a shared intention. Developmental research has shown that such cooperation requires rather sophisticated social cognitive skills such as having a robust theory of mind - that is acquired not until age 4 to 5 in human ontogeny. However, also younger children are able to cooperate in various (...) ways. Moreover, the coordinated behaviours of the agents can be more or less complex. Finally, phenomenological considerations and findings from social psychology illustrate that affective states and agent-specificities may play a central role in cooperative activities. I end with discussing the implications of my analysis that speak in favour of a pluralist account of social cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate social cognition and its relation to interaction in autism from the perspective of a pluralist account of social understanding by considering behavioral as well as neuroscientific findings. Traditionally, researchers have focused on mental state reasoning in autism, which is uncontroversially impaired. A pluralist account of social cognition aims to explore the varieties of social understanding that are acquired throughout ontogeny and may play a role in everyday life. The analysis shows that children with autism are (...) well able to understand other people’s behavior by considering social rules and norms, scripts, and stereotypes. Moreover, some individuals with autism succeed in understanding other people’s behavior in terms of mental states by employing explicit behavioral rules as a compensatory strategy. The paper ends with a discussion of the social cognitive functions in autism and their relation to the motivation of individuals with autism to engage in social interaction. (shrink)

Unfortunately there is a typo in section 2.3.1, paragraph 7 “Referring to recent findings from verbal versions of the true belief task that suggest that 4- to 5-year-old children pass such tasks not via belief reasoning but simpler heuristics that draw on perceptual access, Fiebich argues that 4- to 5-year-olds are still engaged in cognitively demanding belief reasoning when passing verbal versions of the false belief task.”.