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What is mindreading?
Author(s) -
Spaulding Shan
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.526
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1939-5086
pISSN - 1939-5078
DOI - 10.1002/wcs.1523
Subject(s) - psychology , situational ethics , theory of mind , epistemology , diversity (politics) , context (archaeology) , philosophy of mind , social psychology , cognitive science , sociology , cognition , metaphysics , philosophy , paleontology , neuroscience , anthropology , biology
Theory of mind, also known as mindreading, refers to our ability to attribute mental states to agents in order to make sense of and interact with other agents. Recently, theorists in this literature have advanced a broad conception of mindreading. In particular, psychologists and philosophers have examined how we attribute knowledge, intention, mentalistically loaded stereotypes, and personality traits to others. Moreover, the diversity of our goals in a social interaction—precision, efficiency, self/in‐group protection—generates diversity in the mindreading processes we employ. Finally, the products of mindreading are varied, as well. We produce different sorts of mindreading explanations depending on our epistemic goals and the situational context. In this article, I piece together these different strands of research to present a broad conception of mindreading that is complex, messy, and interesting. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Knowledge and Belief Philosophy > Psychological Capacities