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Folk Psychology as Mental Simulation
The simulation (or, "mental simulation") theory maintains that human
beings are able to use the resources of their own minds to simulate the
psychological causes of the behavior of others, typically by making
decisions within a "pretend" context. The theory is usually, though not
always, taken to present a serious challenge to the assumption that a
theory underlies everyday human competence in predicting and
explaining behavior, including the capacity to ascribe mental states to
others. Unlike earlier controversies concerning the role of empathetic
understanding and historical reenactment in the human sciences, the
current debate between the simulation theory and the "theory" theory
appeals to empirical findings, particularly experimental results
concerning children's development of psychological competence. These
are detailed in what follows.
Like the term ‘theory,’ ‘simulation’ has come
to be used broadly and in a variety of ways. Simulation is sometimes
equated with role-taking, or "putting oneself in the other's place."
However, it is often taken to include mere "projection," or reliance on
a shared world of facts and emotive and motivational charges, without
adjustments in imagination; e.g., where there is no need to
put oneself in the other's place, as one is, in all relevant
respects, already there. (Gordon calls this the default mode of
simulation.) Sometimes it is taken to include as well automatic
responses such as the subliminal mimicry of facial expressions and
bodily movements. Stephen Stich and Shaun Nichols, whose critical
papers have clarified the issues and helped refine the theory, urge
that the term be dropped in favor of a finer-grained terminology.
Simulation is often conceived in cognitive-scientific terms: one's
own behavior control system is employed as a manipulable model of other
such systems. The system is first taken off-line, so that the output is
not actual behavior but only predictions or anticipations of behavior,
and inputs and system parameters are accordingly not limited to those
that would regulate one's own behavior. Many proponents hold that,
because one human behavior control system is being used to model
others, general information about such systems is unnecessary. The
simulation is thus said to be process-driven rather than theory-driven
(Goldman).
The simulation theory is often thought to require that, to
anticipate or to explain another's behavior, one has to make decisions
in the role of the other--something we are not frequently aware of
doing. However, decision-making, insofar as it results in a decision to
perform a definite action, would always yield a definite prediction.
Something short of decision-making would better account for our actual
capacity to anticipate behavior, limited as it is. For people commonly
allow a range of indeterminacy in their expectations of what others
will do: some actions are seen as unsurprising given the person and the
situation, and others as very surprising. Even if one does not make a
decision in the role of the other, one can, by making adjustments in
imagination, make some possible actions appear attractive (and thus
unsurprising) and others unattractive (and thus surprising).
Alvin Goldman and the psychologist Paul Harris conceive simulation
differently from Robert Gordon and Jane Heal, the philosophers who,
working independently, introduced the theory in 1986. According to
Goldman and (less clearly) Harris, to ascribe mental states to others
by simulation, one must already be able to ascribe mental states to
oneself by introspection, and thus must already possess the relevant
mental state concepts. Gordon holds a contrary view suggested by both
Kant and Quine: Only those who can simulate can understand an
ascription of, e.g., belief--that to S it is the case that p.
While no simulation theorist claims that all our everyday explanations
and predictions of the actions of other people are based on
role-taking, Heal in particular has been a moderating influence,
arguing for a hybrid simulation-and-theory account that reserves
simulation primarily for items with rationally linked content, such as
beliefs, desires, and actions.
The introspectionist account of simulation may suggest that
simulation is just an application of the argument from analogy.
According to one version of this argument,
I am conscious in myself of a series of facts connected by
an uniform sequence, of which the beginning is modifications of my
body, the middle is feelings, the end is outward demeanour. In the case
of other human beings I have the evidence of my senses for the first
and last links of the series, but not for the intermediate link....by
supposing the link to be of the same nature as in the case of which I
have experience,...I bring other human beings, as phenomena, under the
same generalizations which I know by experience to be the true theory
of my own existence. -- J.S. Mill, An Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy. 6th edition. London, 1869.
Likewise, the "one system modeling another"account may suggest that
simulation is a device for discerning what goes on "inside" another,
based on an assumption of the internal similarity of the simulating
system and the target system. However, where one explains or predicts
another's behavior in terms of a shared, jointly known world, there is
no question of internal resemblance between simulator and target, only
one of what it is about the world that moves the other to
action. What is presumed is not similarity but access, not that the
other believes as one does but that the other has access to (what one
presumes to be) the world.
Three main areas of empirical investigation have been thought
especially relevant to the debate:
- False belief. Taking into account
another's ignorance or false belief when predicting or explaining their
behavior requires imaginative modifications of one's own beliefs,
according to the simulation theory. Thus the theory offers an
explanation of the results of numerous experiments showing that younger
children fail to take such factors into account. It would also explain
the correlation, in autism, of failure to take into account ignorance
or false belief and failure to engage in spontaneous pretend-play,
particularly role play. Although these results can also be explained by
certain versions of theory theory (and were so interpreted by the
experimenters themselves), the simulation theory offers a new
interpretation.
- Priority of self- or other-ascription. A
second area of developmental research asks whether children ascribe
mental states to themselves before they ascribe them to others.
Versions of the simulation theory committed to the view that we
recognize our own mental states as such and make analogical inferences
to others' mental states seem to require an affirmative answer to this
question; other versions of the theory seem to require a negative
answer. Some experiments suggest a negative answer, but debate
continues on this question.
- Cognitive impenetrability. Stich and
Nichols suppose simulation to be "cognitively impenetrable" in that it
operates independently of any general knowledge the simulator may have
about human psychology. Yet they point to results suggesting that when
subjects lack certain psychological information, they sometimes make
incorrect predictions, and therefore must not be simulating. Because of
problems of methodology and interpretation, as noted by a number of
philosophers and psychologists, the cogency of this line of criticism
is unclear.
The numerous other empirical questions of possible relevance to the
debate include the following:
Does brain imaging reveal that systems and processes
employed in decision-making are reemployed in the explanation and
prediction of others' behavior?
Does narrative (including film narrative) create emotional and
motivational effects by the same processes that create them in
real-life situations?
Some philosophers think the simulation theory may shed light on
issues in traditional philosophy of mind and language concerning
intentionality, referential opacity, broad and narrow content, the
nature of mental causation, Twin Earth problems, the problem of other
minds, and the peculiarities of self-knowledge. Several philosophers
have applied the theory to aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy of the
social sciences. Success or failure of these efforts to answer
philosophical problems may be considered empirical tests of the theory,
in a suitably broad sense of "empirical."
Principal Sources:
- Goldman, A., 1989, "Interpretation Psychologized." Mind and
Language 4, 161-185; reprinted in Davies, M. and Stone T., eds.,
1995, Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
- Gordon, Robert M., 1986, "Folk Psychology as Simulation", Mind
and Language 1, 158-171; reprinted in Davies, M. and Stone T.,
eds., 1995, Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers.
- Harris, P., 1989, Children and Emotion, Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
- Heal, J., 1986, "Replication and Functionalism", in Language,
Mind, and Logic, J. Butterfield (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press; reprinted in Davies, M. and Stone T., eds., 1995,
Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Collections:
- Carruthers, P. & Smith, P., eds., 1996, Theories of
Theories of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Davies, M. and Stone T., eds., 1995, Folk Psychology: The
Theory of Mind Debate. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. (The
introductory chapter offers an excellent overview and analysis of the
initial debate.)
- Davies, M. and Stone T., eds., 1995, Mental Simulation:
Evaluations and Applications. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Further Readings
- Goldman, A., 1993, ‘The Psychology of Folk Psychology,’
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16: 15-28.
- Gordon, R. M., and J. Barker, 1994, ‘Autism and the "theory
of mind" debate.’ In Philosophical Psychopathology: A Book of
Readings, G. Graham and L. Stephens, eds. MIT Press, pp.
163-181.
- Gordon, R.M., 1995, ‘Sympathy, Simulation, and the Impartial
Spectator,’ Ethics 105:727-742. Reprinted in Mind
and Morals: Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science, L. May, M.
Friedman, & A. Clark, eds. MIT Press, 1996.
- Harris, P., 1989, Children and Emotion. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
- Peacocke, C., ed., 1994, Objectivity, Simulation, and the Unity
of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Perner, J., 1991, Understanding the Representational Mind.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Wellman, H. M., 1990, The Child's Theory of Mind.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
folk psychology: as a theory |
materialism: eliminative
Acknowledgment
A large portion of this entry is excerpted, with permission, from
"Simulation vs Theory Theory", MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive
Science (MIT Press, 1999
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy