Mindreading in the animal kingdom

Abstract

This chapter discusses some important framework questions about how exactly the mindreading hypothesis is to be stated. It distinguishes three importantly different versions of the mindreading hypothesis. The first (minimal mindreading) occurs when creature's behavior covaries with the psychological states of other participants in social exchanges. The second (substantive mindreading) involves attributions of mental states. The substantive mindreading is further divided into propositional attitude mindreading and perceptual mindreading. The chapter presents reasons for thinking that the role of propositional attitude psychology in human social life is very much overstated and shows that this very much weakens the analogical case for identifying propositional attitude mindreading in non-linguistic creatures. It provides a revised version of an argument that the author proposed. If this argument is sound, it shows that perceptual mindreading is the only form of substantive mindreading that can exist in the animal kingdom.

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