Social Cognition:

The Topic

Introduces, in barest outline, the domain of social cognition and the questions frequently asked about social cognition.

Radical Interpretation*

A fundamental project in theorising about social cognition is to provide an account radical interpretation*, that is, an account of how you could in principle infer facts about actions and mental states from non-mental evidence.

The Intentional Stance

The ‘Intentional Stance’ (also ‘Intentional Strategy’) is Dennett’s name for a procedure for ascribing desires, beliefs and other mental states to an individual without assuming any prior knowledge of what distinguishes her mind from others’ minds.

Social Cognition vs Radical Interpretation*

How would an account of the radical interpretation* (which is about how discoveries about minds are in principle possible) further our understanding of actual social cognition?

Objections to the Intentional Stance

Does the Intentional Stance actually describe how it would be possible, even in principle, to infer facts about minds and actions from evidence that can be described without knowing anything about the particular actions, beliefs, desires and other mental states of any individual?

The Topic Re-introduced

Provides an alternative, enhanced introduction to the topic of social cognition.

Perceiving Expressions of Emotion: A Challenge

How could we come to know that another is angry about an insult or happy about an outcome? Some philosophers have considered the possibility that knowledge of others' anger or joy is sometimes perceptual (e.g. Smith, 2010, 2015; McNeill, 2012a,b). A first challenge that arises in attempting to understand whether this possibility obtains is to identify evidence in favour of it, or at least to explain what evidence could bear on the hypothesis.

Do We Really Need Evidence?

Can questions about whether humans can perceptually experience anothers’ emotions or other mental states be determined without considering experimental observations?

Categorical Perception & Emotion

Humans (and perhaps others) have categorical perception of expressions of emotion. What is the evidence for this claim, and how might the claim bear on the hypothesis that humans perceptually experience others’ mental states?

Aviezer’s Puzzle about Categorical Perception

The same facial configuration can express intense joy or intense anguish depending on the posture of the body it is attached to, and, relatedly, humans cannot accurately determine emotions from spontaneously occurring (as opposed to acted out) facial configurations (Motley et al, 1988; Aviezer et al, 2008, 2012). This leads to a puzzle. If facial configurations are not diagnostic of emotion, why are they categorised by perceptual processes?

Aviezer’s Puzzle about Categorical Perception

The same facial configuration can express intense joy or intense anguish depending on the posture of the body it is attached to, and, relatedly, humans cannot accurately determine emotions from spontaneously occurring (as opposed to acted out) facial configurations (Motley et al, 1988; Aviezer et al, 2008, 2012). This leads to a puzzle. If facial configurations are not diagnostic of emotion, why are they categorised by perceptual processes?

Categorical Perception of Speech

Humans have categorical perception of speech. But what are the objects of categorical perception of speech? According to one view, they are not sounds but actions, specifically phonetic gestures. The case of speech provides a model for thinking about expressions of emotion.

The Objects of Categorical Perception

What are the perceptual processes associated with categorical perception of expressions of emotion supposed to categorise? Reflection on categorical perception of speech suggests the possibility that the expressions of emotion humans categorically perceive are actions whose goals are to express certain emotions.

How could the objects of categorical perception be actions?

How could the objects of categorical perception be actions directed to the goals of expressing particular emotions? Some of the evidence for this view involves discoveries about links between processes involved in experiencing one’s own emotions and detecting others’.

Mindreading Intro

Mindreading is the process of tracking another’s mental states. Here we will focus on perhaps the most intensively researched case of mindreading, tracking others’ beliefs.

Some Evidence

Many animals including scrub jays (Clayton, Dally and Emery 2007), ravens (Bugnyar, Reber and Buckner 2016), goats (Kaminski, Call and Tomasello 2006), dogs (Kaminski et al. 2009), ringtailed lemurs (Sandel, MacLean and Hare 2011), monkeys (Burkart and Heschl 2007; Hattori, Kuroshima and Fujita 2009) and chimpanzees (Melis, Call and Tomasello 2006; Karg et al. 2015) reliably vary their actions in ways that are appropriate given facts about another’s mental states.

Tracking vs Representing Mental States

Mindreading is the process of tracking another’s mental states. Tracking mental states can, but does not always, involve representing mental states.

The Question, version 0.1

What could underpin nonhumans’ abilities to track others’ mental states?

The Behaviour Reading Demon

The behaviour reading demon (a counterpart of Laplace’s demon) has unlimited cognitive capacities, perfect knowledge of history and can conceptualise behaviours in any way imaginable. Although blind to mental states, it can predict others’ future behaviours at least as well as any mindreader.

Nonhuman Mindreading: The Logical Problem

According to Lurz' ‘logical problem’ for detecting mindereading in nonhuman animals, ‘since mental state attribution in [nonhuman] animals will (if extant) be based on observable features of other agents’ behaviors and environment ... every mindreading hypothesis has ... a complementary behavior-reading hypothesis’ (2011, p. 26). Is this actually a logical problem or one that can be circumvented experimentally?

Three Responses to the Logical Problem

Contrast three responses to the logical problem.

A Different Approach

The Standard Question about nonhuman mindreading is, Do any nonhumans ever represent mental states? There is an alternative question we can ask. What models of minds and actions, and of behaviours, and what kinds of processes, underpin mental state tracking in different animals?

Minimal Theory of Mind

The construction of a minimal theory of mind provides the basis for a hypothesis about how nonhumans (and humans) could in principle track others’ minds and actions.

Signature Limits (Part I)

How could we tell which model of minds and actions underpins nonhuman mindreading? Signature limits enable us to generate predictions from conjectures about a particular model.

The Teleological Stance

The Teleological Stance (Gergeley and Csibra , 1995) provides a computational theory of pure goal ascription. Pure goal ascription is the process of identifying goals to which anothers’ actions are directed independently of any knowledge, or beliefs about, the intentions or other mental states of an agent.

Radical Interpretation Reprise

The construction of Minimal Theory of Mind provides us with a fragment of a theory of radical interpretation.

Automatic and Non-automatic Mindreading

Some but not all mindreading in adult humans is automatic.

Three Questions about Belief-Tracking

Research on belief-tracking, both in humans and nonhumans, raises three questions. We are not yet in a position to answer any of these. (E.g. appeal to minimal theory of mind will not help.)

A Dual-Process Theory of Mindreading

According to a dual-process theory of mindreading, two (or more) mindreading processes are distinct in this sense: the conditions which influence whether they occur, and which outputs they generate, do not completely overlap.

Ingredients for a Theory of Behaviour Reading

‘A better conception of ‘not mindreading’ would be more disparate and less dependent on common sense than the current conception of behaviour reading’ (Heyes, 2015, p. 322).

Radical Interpretation Reprise

The construction of Minimal Theory of Mind provides us with a fragment of a theory of radical interpretation.

Reciprocity

An interpreter’s target is often also an interpreter and may sometimes reciprocate by taking the interpreter as a target for interpretation. How if at all could such reciprocity facilitate interpretation?

Interacting Interpreters

Could interacting interpreters be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers?

Your goal is my goal

If an interpreter is able to interact with her targets, if she is not limited to merely observing them, how might this enable her to exploit a route to knowledge of the goals of their actions? The answer hinges on interactions involving collective goals.

Sharing a Smile

Sharing smiles and otherwise collectively expressing emotions makes available knowledge about others’ mental states that is not available on the basis of perception alone.

Davidson’s Theory of Radical Interpretation

What is Davidson’s account of radical interpretation?

Objections to Davidson’s Theory of Radical Interpretation

There are some compelling objections to Davidson’s account of radical interpretation which motivate searching for ways to improve it.