The lack of consensus on how to characterize humans’ capacity for belief reasoning has been brought into sharp focus by recent research. Children fail critical tests of belief reasoning before 3 to 4 years (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001; Wimmer & Perner, 1983), yet infants apparently pass false belief tasks at 13 or 15 months (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Surian, Caldi, & Sperber, 2007). Non-human animals also fail critical tests of belief reasoning but can show very complex social behaviour (e.g., (...) Call & Tomasello, 2005). Fluent social interaction in adult humans implies efficient processing of beliefs, yet direct tests suggest that belief reasoning is cognitively demanding, even for adults (e.g., Apperly, Samson & Humphreys, 2005). We interpret these findings by drawing an analogy with the domain of number cognition, where similarly contrasting results have been observed. We propose that the success of infants and non-human animals on some belief reasoning tasks may be best explained by a cognitively efficient but inflexible capacity for tracking belief-like states. In humans this capacity persists in parallel with later-developing, more flexible but more cognitively demanding theory of mind abilities. (shrink)

Are there distinct roles for intention and motor representation in explaining the purposiveness of action? Standard accounts of action assign a role to intention but are silent on motor representation. The temptation is to suppose that nothing need be said here because motor representation is either only an enabling condition for purposive action or else merely a variety of intention. This paper provides reasons for resisting that temptation. Some motor representations, like intentions, coordinate actions in virtue of representing outcomes; but, (...) unlike intentions, motor representations cannot feature as premises or conclusions in practical reasoning. This implies that motor representation has a distinctive role in explaining the purposiveness of action. It also gives rise to a problem: were the roles of intention and motor representation entirely independent, this would impair effective action. It is therefore necessary to explain how intentions interlock with motor representations. The solution, we argue, is to recognise that the contents of intentions can be partially determined by the contents of motor representations. Understanding this content-determining relation enables better understanding how intentions relate to actions. (shrink)

Given the premise that joint action plays some role in explaining how humans come to understand minds, what could joint action be? Not what a leading account, Michael Bratman's, says it is. For on that account engaging in joint action involves sharing intentions and sharing intentions requires much of the understanding of minds whose development is supposed to be explained by appeal to joint action. This paper therefore offers an account of a different kind of joint action, an account compatible (...) with the premise about development. The new account is no replacement for the leading account; rather the accounts characterise two kinds of joint action. Where the kind of joint characterised by the leading account involves shared intentions, the new account characterises a kind of joint action involving shared goals. (shrink)

Could interacting mindreaders be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers? This paper argues that they could. Mindreading is sometimes reciprocal: the mindreader’s target reciprocates by taking the mindreader as a target for mindreading. The paper explains how such reciprocity can significantly narrow the range of possible interpretations of behaviour where mindreaders are, or appear to be, in a position to interact. A consequence is that revisions and extensions (...) are needed to standard theories of the evidential basis of mindreading. The view also has consequences for understanding how abilities to interact combined with comparatively simple forms of mindreading may explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated forms of social cognition. (shrink)

Can humans see causal interactions? Evidence on the visual perception of causal interactions, from Michotte to contemporary work, is best interpreted as showing that we can see some causal interactions in the same sense as that in which we can hear speech. Causal perception, like speech perception, is a form of categorical perception.

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

Modules are widely held to play a central role in explaining mental development and in accounts of the mind generally. But there is much disagreement about what modules are, which shows that we do not adequately understand modularity. This paper outlines a Fodoresque approach to understanding one type of modularity. It suggests that we can distinguish modular from nonmodular cognition by reference to the kinds of process involved, and that modular cognition differs from nonmodular forms of cognition in being a (...) special kind of computational process. The paper concludes by considering implications for the role of modules in explaining mental development. (shrink)

Anticipatory looking on mindreading tasks can indicate our expectation of an agent's action. The challenge is that social situations are often more complex, involving instances where we need to track an agent's false belief to successfully identify the outcome to which an action is directed. If motor processes can guide how action goals are understood, it is conceivable— where that kind of goal ascription occurs in false-belief tasks— for motor representations to account for someone's belief-like state. Testing adults (N = (...) 42) in a real-time interactive helping scenario, we discovered that participants' early mediolateral motor activity (leftwards– rightwards leaning on balance board) foreshadowed the agent's belief-based action preparation. These results suggest fast belief-tracking can modulate motor representations generated in the course of one's interaction with an agent. While adults' leaning, and anticipatory looking, revealed the contribution of fast false-belief tracking, participants did not correct the agent's mistake in their final helping action. These discoveries suggest that adults may not necessarily use another's belief during overt social interaction or find reflecting on another's belief as being normatively relevant to one's own choice of action. Our interactive task design offers a promising way to investigate how motor and mindreading processes may be variously integrated. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever walked, cooked or crafted with a friend is in a position to know that acting jointly is not just acting side-by-side. But what distinguishes acting jointly from acting in parallel yet merely individually? Four decades of philosophical research have yielded broad consensus on a strategy for answering this question. This strategy is \emph{mechanistically committed}; that is, it hinges on invoking states of the agents who are acting jointly (often dubbed ‘shared’, ‘we-’ or ‘collective’ intentions). Despite the (...) consensus, enduring disagreement remains. The disagreement may be a consequence of the strategy; at least this is plausible enough to motivate considering the prospects for an alternative. Our aim is therefore to draw attention to a coherent alternative that is present in the literature but often overlooked. This alternative is \emph{mechanistically neutral}: it avoids invoking states of agents. Implementing the alternative, we introduce the notion of a collective goal and a characterisation of acting jointly which meets criteria standardly used in evaluating other accounts and may have some advantages over those accounts. (shrink)

It is consistent with the evidence in The Origin of Concepts to conjecture that infants' causal representations, like their numerical representations, are not continuous with adults', so that bootstrapping is needed in both cases.

Shared Emotions, Joint Attention and Joint Action, Centre for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Denmark, 26 October 2010.

Since Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. In this chapter we consider restrictions posed to interdisciplinary exchange between ecology and economics that result from a particular kind of commitment to the ideal of disciplinary purity, that is, that each discipline is defined by an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims. We argue that, when it comes to the objects of study in (...) ecology and economics, ideas of disciplinary purity have been underwritten by the artificial-natural distinction. We then problematize this distinction, and thus disciplinary purity, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, the distinction is no longer tenable. Empirically, recent interdisciplinary research has shown the epistemological and policy-oriented benefits of dealing with models which explicitly link anthropogenic (i.e., “artificial”) and non-anthropogenic factors (i.e., “natural”). We conclude that, in the current age of the Anthropocene, it is to be expected that without interdisciplinary exchange, ecology and economics may relinquish global relevance because the distinct and separate systems to which each “pure” science was originally made to apply will only diminish over time. (shrink)

Editorial: Joint Action: What Is Shared? Content Type Journal Article Pages 137-146 DOI 10.1007/s13164-011-0062-3 Authors Stephen A. Butterfill, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Natalie Sebanz, Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, & Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 2 Journal Issue Volume 2, Number 2.

The authors examined cue competition effects in young children using the blicket detector paradigm, in which objects are placed either singly or in pairs on a novel machine and children must judge which objects have the causal power to make the machine work. Cue competition effects were found in a 5- to 6-year-old group but not in a 4-year-old group. Equivalent levels of forward and backward blocking were found in the former group. Children's counterfactual judgments were subsequently examined by asking (...) whether or not the machine would have gone off in the absence of I of 2 objects that had been placed on it as a pair. Cue competition effects were demonstrated only in 5- to 6-year-olds using this mode of assessing causal reasoning. (shrink)

People walk, build, paint and otherwise act together with a purpose in myriad ways. What is the relation between the actions people perform in acting together with a purpose and the outcome, or outcomes, to which their actions are directed? We argue that fully characterising this relation will require appeal not only to intention, knowledge and other familiar philosophical paraphernalia but also to another kind of representation involved in preparing and executing actions, namely motor representation. If we are right, motor (...) representation plays a central role in the story of acting together. (shrink)

Reflection on testimony provides novel arguments for anti-individualism. What is anti-individualism? Sanford Goldberg's book defends three main claims under this heading: first, facts about the contents of beliefs do not supervene on individualistic facts about the believers ; second, an individual's epistemic entitlement to accept a piece of testimony depends on facts about her peers ; third, processes by which some humans acquire knowledge from testimony includes activities performed for them by others . Each of these three claims is argued (...) for separately from premises about the ways in which humans, adult and child, succeed in gaining knowledge by testimony. The three arguments provide the structure for Anti-Individualism.Goldberg's argument for the first claim – that the contents of beliefs do not supervene on individualistic facts about the believers – begins from uncontroversial facts about testimony. Gaining knowledge by testimony depends on knowing the meanings of some utterances, and it is possible to know the meaning of a person's utterance while knowing little that would distinguish this person from anyone else . The best explanation of how this is possible involves postulating linguistic norms which entail facts about the linguistic meanings of utterances . Now in some cases of testimony, a hearer acquires a belief whose content is the linguistic meaning of a speaker's utterance, where the linguistic meaning of this utterance is determined by linguistic norms . But linguistic norms might have been different from what they are even while the person's and her audience's non-relational properties remained unaltered . And in such a case, the hearer would have acquired a belief with a different content . Therefore, ‘Psychological facts such as believing that p do not supervene on the individualistic facts regarding the subject’ …. (shrink)

Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to distinct, (...) incongruent proximal goals. Instead they can be represented in relation to a single proximal goal – especially if the movements are, or appear to be, mechanically linked to a more distal joint action goal. To test this, we implemented a paradigm in which participants produced finger movements that were either congruent or incongruent with those of a virtual partner, and either with or without a joint action goal (the joint flipping of a switch, which turned on two light bulbs). Our findings provide partial support for the hypothesis that visuomotor interference effects can be reduced when two physically incongruent actions are represented as mechanically interdependent contributions to a joint action goal. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a discussion of the significance of studies of aspects of tool use in understanding causal cognition. It argues that tool use studies reveal the most basic type or causal understanding being put to use, in a way that studies that focus on learning statistical relationships between cause and effect or studies of perceptual causation do not. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Psychological research into children’s sensitivity to testimony has primarily focused on their ability to judge the likely reliability of speakers. However, verbal testimony is only one means by which children learn from others. We review recent research exploring children’s early social referencing and imitation, as well as their sensitivity to speakers’ knowledge, beliefs, and biases, to argue that children treat information and informants with reasonable scepticism. As children’s understanding of mental states develops, they become ever more able to critically evaluate (...) whether to believe new information. (shrink)

Our motor system can generate representations which carry information about the goals of another agent's actions. However, it is not known whether motor representations play a deeper role in social understanding, and, in particular, whether they enable tracking others' beliefs. Here we show that, for adult observers, reliably manifesting an ability to track another's false belief critically depends on representing the agent's potential actions motorically. One signature of motor representations is that they can be disrupted by constraints on an observed (...) agent's action capacities. We therefore used a `mummification' technique to manipulate whether the agent in a visual ball-detection task was free to act or whether he was visibly constrained from acting. Adults' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs only when the agent was free to act on the ball and not when the agent was visibly constrained from acting. Furthermore, it was the agent's constrained action capabilities, rather than any perceptual novelty, that determined whether adult observers' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs. These findings signal that our motor system may underpin more of social cognition than previously imagined, and, in particular, that motor representations may underpin automatic false-belief tracking. (shrink)

The most comprehensive collection of essays on Descartes' scientific writings ever published, this volume offers a detailed reassessment of Descartes' scientific work and its bearing on his philosophy. The 35 essays, written by some of the world's leading scholars, cover topics as diverse as optics, cosmology and medicine, and will be of vital interest to all historians of philosophy or science.

This paper analyzes the determinants of corporate reputation within a sample of large UK companies drawn from a diverse range of industries. We pay particular attention to the role that philanthropic expenditures and policies may play in shaping the perceptions of companies among their stakeholders. Our findings highlight that companies which make higher levels of philanthropic expenditures have better reputations and that this effect varies significantly across industries. Given that reputational indices tend to reflect the financial performance of organizations above (...) other factors (Fryxell, G. E. and J. Wang: 1994, Journal of Management 20, 1–14) and that elements of the literature emphasise that discretionary aspects of social responsibility, including corporate donations, may not be in the financial interests of organizations (e.g. Friedman, M.: 1970, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, New York Times Magazine, September 13), this is a significant finding. It suggests that philanthropic expenditures may play a significant role in stakeholder management and may, in particular, lead to stakeholders holding more positive impressions of philanthropic corporations. (shrink)

This paper addresses the topic of this special symposium issue: how to enhance the impact of cross-sector partnerships. The paper takes stock of two related discussions: the discourse in cross-sector partnership research on how to assess impact and the discourse in impact assessment research on how to deal with more complex organizations and projects. We argue that there is growing need and recognition for cross-fertilization between the two areas. Cross-sector partnerships are reaching a paradigmatic status in society, but both research (...) and practice need more thorough evidence of their impacts and of the conditions under which these impacts can be enhanced. This paper develops a framework that should enable a constructive interchange between the two research areas, while also framing existing research into more precise categories that can lead to knowledge accumulation. We address the preconditions for such a framework and discuss how the constituent parts of this framework interact. We distinguish four different pathways or impact loops that refer to four distinct orders of impact. The paper concludes by applying these insights to the four papers included in this special issue. (shrink)

This paper analyses the relationships between corporate community involvement activities, the organizational structures within which they are managed, the firm's industry and evolving stakeholder attitudes and preferences in a sample of 148 U.K. based firms who have demonstrated a clear desire to be socially responsible. The research highlights significant associations between the allocation of responsibility for community involvement within the firm, its industry and the extent of its community involvement activities. Consistent with the view that managerial structures may play a (...) significant role in the implementation of community initiatives, the results identify significant variations in community involvement policies across alternative organizational forms. However, important similarities in corporate community policies across alternative structures are also shown to exist suggesting that corporate community involvement activities may be influenced by the preferences of societal stakeholders. (shrink)

_The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences _collects newly commissioned essays that examine fundamental issues in the social sciences.

This chapter focuses on alternative logics. It discusses a hierarchy of logical reform. It presents case studies that illustrate particular aspects of the logical revisionism discussed in the chapter. The first case study is of intuitionistic logic. The second case study turns to quantum logic, a system proposed on empirical grounds as a resolution of the antinomies of quantum mechanics. The third case study is concerned with systems of relevance logic, which have been the subject of an especially detailed reform (...) program. Finally, the fourth case study is paraconsistent logic, perhaps the most controversial of serious proposals. (shrink)