The Person Model Theory and the Question of Situatedness of Social Understanding

2018 ◽  
pp. 468-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Newen
Keyword(s):  
Model Theory ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Interaction Theory ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Clear Cases ◽  
Person Model ◽  
Intense Debate

Humans are hyper-social beings, highly dependent on others and on successfully interacting with them. Which theory can adequately describe our ability to understand others? In the literature we have an intense debate among proponents of theory-theory, simulation theory, and interaction theory. I argue first that none of these accounts is adequate but that we need to go in the direction of what I call the “person model theory.” The second important question is which types of embodiment (or further aspects of 4E) are systematically relevant for social understanding according to the person model theory? I argue that there are clear cases of embodiment of social understanding, while extendedness and/or enactment seem to be only clearly implemented in early infancy. Furthermore, 4E features of being embodied, enacted, extended, or embedded can only be ascribed to an implementation, a token of a specific type which makes the 4E features intensely context-dependent.

Intersubjectivity and Psychopathology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Embodied Interaction ◽  
Online Interaction ◽  
Interaction Theory ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Second Person

This chapter provides a review of theory of mind (ToM) approaches to explaining certain dysfunctions of intersubjectivity in pathologies such as autism and schizophrenia. ToM approaches such as theory theory and simulation theory focus on mindreading but fail to explain important aspects of online intersubjective interaction. A phenomenological approach (interaction theory), focusing on embodied interaction, offers an alternative account of intersubjective processes and specific dysfunctions in pathology. Further research is needed on second-person, online interaction to develop this approach as a viable explanation of intersubjective problems in psychopathology.

Comment: Basic Empathy and Complex Empathy

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Short Commentary

In my short commentary, I dwell on the distinction between basic and complex empathy, and suggest that a basic perception-based form of empathy might point to the existence of a type of social understanding that is more direct and more fundamental than the types of social cognition normally addressed by simulation theory and theory theory.

Social Cognition: A Literary Perspective

Paragraph ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Chesters
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Francois Rabelais ◽  
Interaction Theory ◽  
Scientific Debate

The set of procedures called variously mindreading, mentalizing, or social cognition — broadly put, the process by which we know others — is one that literature can dramatize in peculiarly intense ways. This essay describes three accounts of these procedures in current cognitive scientific debate — Theory Theory, Simulation Theory, and Interaction Theory. It is argued that each account alone struggles to capture the strange blend of immediacy and opacity that confronts me when I seek to grasp the minds of others. Through close readings of two literary passages (one by François Rabelais, the other by Victor Hugo), it is further argued that literature can by contrast do exactly this. To read ‘cognitively’ is thus both to reveal and to enlist literature's power to think about thinking.

Einfühlen und Verstehen

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 220-243
Author(s):  
Verena Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Many

How do we understand other minds? The current debate uses the iridescent term “empathy” to explain our quite different mindreading capacities. Since no alternatives seemed to be available the discussion has been mostly in a deadlock between “simulation theory” and “theory theory”. Only recently the relevance of phenomenological findings on the issue has been brought forward. In this paper Husserl’s two concepts of “Einfühlung”, as developed in the second volume of his Ideas, are set against the background of the latest discussion. Husserl’s explanation of empathy in terms of analogical experience highlights the transcendental role of empathy in the context of constitution. At the same time it may solve some of the many riddles left by the recent debate.

Universal belief-desire psychology? A dilemma for theory theory and simulation theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 744-764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek W. Strijbos ◽  
Leon C. de Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Theory Theory

Simulation theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Davis ◽  
Tony Stone
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Psychological Practice ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Mental Resources

Mental simulation is the simulation, replication or re-enactment, usually in imagination, of the thinking, decision-making, emotional responses or other aspects of the mental life of another person. According to simulation theory, mental simulation in imagination plays a key role in our everyday psychological understanding of other people. The same mental resources that are used in our own thinking, decision-making or emotional responses are redeployed in imagination to provide an understanding of the thoughts, decisions or emotions of another. Simulation theory stands opposed to the ’ theory theory’ of folk psychology. According to the theory theory, everyday psychological understanding depends on deployment of an empirical theory or body of information about psychological matters, such as how people normally think, make decisions or respond emotionally. Simulation theory does not altogether deny that third-personal psychological knowledge is implicated in our folk psychological practice, prediction, interpretation and explanation. But it maintains that, over a range of cases, the first-personal methodology of mental simulation allows us to avoid the need for detailed antecedent knowledge about how psychological processes typically operate.

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