Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (Philosophy of Mind)

In «Simulating Minds», his ninth and latest book, Alvin Goldman provides a comprehensive survey of the principal theories devised to explain the mind's ability to ascribe mental states to other minds as well as to itself. Minds --human and to all appearances those of other intelligent fellow creatures-- possess the capability not only of having mental states (things such as notions, emotions and sensations) but of conceiving that other individuals or organisms are equally capable of having their own mental states. This more complex, second-order activity is referred to in psychology as mentalizing or mindreading. Mindreading seems to be essential for the development and functioning of complex social organization. The question arises as to how the brain accomplishes mindreading. Goldman discusses several variants of the three main competing views that purport to explain the neurocognitive processes thought to underlie mindreading: theorizing, rationalizing, and simulating. The theorizing approach posits that people employ naïve (folk psychology) theories to guide them in assessing what others think or mentally experience. People then impute mental states to others based on those naïve theories. The rationalizing approach states that people assume others are as rational as they themselves are and thus infer the other person's mental contents by an exercise of rational deduction. The simulation approach holds that people try to replicate (emulate) the target's mental states in their own mind based on perceived behavioral cues and their own prior experiences. Specifically, the mind reader deploys his or her emotive and cognitive apparatus to simulate the target's perceived (or perhaps, imagined) situation and thus intuitively feel what the target should (or would) be experiencing. "Thus," asserts Goldman, "mindreading is an extended form of empathy." Goldman then provides a very clear articulation of the theoretical construct of simulation followed by discussions of simulation theory's principal rivals: rationality theory, child-scientist theory, and modularity theory. He then conducts in-depth analyses of the hybrid simulation model he favors (one that admits a role for theorizing, although secondary to the default simulation approach). He supports his position with a wide range of evidence, including well-replicated findings from the neuroscience literature. The book closes with an examination of the relationship between simulational propensities and the distinctively social traits which characterize human experience. This book provides an excellent account of simulation theory as well as the competing perspectives. It should be of major interest to researchers in philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology. Lay readers with a strong interest in cognitive science should also find the book a worthwhile read given the clarity and accessibility of the exposition. ## Abstract How people assign mental states to others and how they represent or conceptualize such states in the first place are topics of interest to philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Three competing answers to the question of how people impute mental states to others have been offered: by rationalizing, by theorizing, or by simulating. Simulation theory says that mindreaders produce mental states in their own minds that resemble, or aim to resemble, those of their targets; these states are then imputed to, or projected onto, the targets. In low-level mindreading, such as reading emotions from faces, simulation is mediated by automatic mirror systems. More controlled processes of simulation, here called “enactment imagination”, are used in high-level mindreading. Just as visual and motor imagery are attempts to replicate acts of seeing and doing, mindreading is characteristically an attempt to replicate the mental processes of a target, followed by projection of the imagination-generated state onto the target. Projection errors are symptomatic of simulation, because one’s own genuine states readily intrude into the simulational process. A nuanced form of introspection is introduced to explain self-attribution and also to address the question of how mental concepts are represented. A distinctive cognitive code involving introspective representations figures prominently in our concepts of mental states. The book concludes with an overview of the pervasive effects on social life of simulation, imitation, and empathy, and charts their possible roles in moral experience and the fictive arts. People are "minded" creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we are "meta-minded" creatures: we ascribe mental states to ourselves and to others. How do we manage this without instruction in formal psychology? Alvin Goldman explores this question with the tools of philosophy, developmental and social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. His specific approach is the simulation theory, which elaborates the intuitive idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental "shoes." An early developer of this approach, Goldman shows how to render it philosophically respectable and how recent empirical results in psychology and neuroscience support the hypothesis that the mind literally creates (or attempts to create) surrogates of other people's mental states in the process of mindreading. Goldman unveils a refined, hybrid version of simulationism that posits two distinct levels of simulative processing: low-level and high-level. From the discovery of mirror neurons to the study of imagery and imagination, the author finds that the mind engages in intensive "replicative" activity. Reading an emotion in someone's face activates the same emotion in the observer. Looking at someone else being touched activates tactile empathy in the observer's brain. Includes information on autism, child-scientist theory, egocentric bias, emotion, empathy, enactment imagination, face-based emotion recognition, false belief tasks, first-person mindreading, folk psychological laws, imagination, mimicry, mirroring, modularity theory, projection, introspection, , etc People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create (or attempt to create) surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis. Ch. 1. Philosophical And Scientific Perspectives On Mentalizing -- Ch. 2. Conceptualizing Simulation Theory -- Ch. 3. The Rationality Theory -- Ch. 4. The Child Scientist Theory -- Ch. 5. The Modularity Theory -- Ch. 6. Simulation In Low-level Mindreading -- Ch. 7. High-level Simulational Mindreading -- Ch. 8. Ontogeny, Autism, Empathy, And Evolution -- Ch. 9. Self-attribution -- Ch. 10. Concepts Of Mental States -- Ch. 11. The Fabric Of Social Life : Mimicry, Fantasy, Fiction, And Morality -- References -- Author Index -- Subject Index. Alvin I. Goldman. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 305-339) And Indexes. In this study, Goldman argues that simulation is intensively used in mindreading tasks, from recognizing emotion in faces to assigning conceptual contents to thoughts. Psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy are applied to questions of third- and first- person mindreading, as well as mental concepts, moral psychology and other topics in social cognition. We have thoughts, feelings and emotions, and we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? This book explores these questions