Appearing first as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1899.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Kuopio, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Kuopio, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

Theory of mind (ToM) describes the ability to represent internal mental states. We propose that using ToM in practice depends upon the interplay of social, cultural and cognitive factors. The argument is divided into two parts. First, we studied whether people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may have deficits, which impair acquisition of the cultural knowledge necessary to use ToM in practice. The acquisition of shared beliefs, such as social norms, might indirectly rely on metarepresentational capacities. Moreover, a piecemeal processing style - Weak Central Coherence (WCC) - might translate into difficulties in the acquisition of scripts of routine events, which are normally represented as holistic, hierarchically organised knowledge structures. In four experiments we show, first, that WCC may be specific, but not universal to individuals with ASD and that WCC and ToM deficits frequently overlap. Of the ASD group with different levels of ToM abilities, only those with ToM deficits had greater impairments in drawing inferences from social norms than matched control groups. Script abnormalities ranged from a profound lack of event knowledge to more subtle qualitative peculiarities. Especially ASD with WCC and ToM deficits showed a tendency to treat optional and very specific event acts that could occur as should be occurring. The second part of the argument investigated whether power relations affect ToM usage in ordinary adults. A method to track and categorise ToM in ordinary talk was developed to study adults' accounts of real-life experiences in multi-cultural settings. Key findings were that the quality and quantity of ToM talk differed when people accounted for experiences of situated powerlessness (that is, experiences of being discriminated against) compared to when they considered episodes in which power relations were equal. Preliminary data from an experimental study suggests that adults were more inaccurate in inferring the mental states of less powerful as opposed to equally powerful others. We conclude by suggesting that an integrated social, cultural and cognitive framework of ToM in practice may contribute to our understanding of the social phenotype of ASD as well as it provides a new perspective on social phenomena such as intergroup relations.

It was then that I decided to investigate how contemporary forms of metaphysical imaging have evolved formally and stylistically. I began to question how such approaches might be informed by current philosophical thought, given that many contemporary theorists have adopted a sceptical view towards metaphysical discourse. This point of contention presented me with the initial challenge of finding an artist whose exploration of metaphysical content is supported by topical philosophical thought. I intended this inquiry to serve as a basis from which to develop my own approach to imaging metaphysical content and to situate it within the context of contemporary thought.

If I am aware of my own mental states by introspection (a) How can I know that other people have minds? and (b) How can I know what their mental states are? These are two of the questions with which I will be concerned in this dissertation. I discuss five different attempts to deal with them. (i) The claim that we can know that other people have minds by an argument from analogy. I show a number of serious flaws in Russell's and other versions of this argument. (ii) Malcolm's thesis that the criteria by which we apply mental terms to others are just different from the criteria one applies in one's own case. I argue that Halcolm's accounts of both first- and third-person criteria are not adequate. (iii) I consider Strawson claim that 'persons' is a primitive concept and that behavioural criteria are "logically adequate" for determining the correctness of statements about the mental states of others. I argue that both of his key concepts are underanalysed. (iv) A quite different attempt to answer our questions (a) and (b) is given by the empirical realist who argues that knowledge claims about other minds are best understood as hypotheses in a wider psycho-physical theory. I show that the major fault in Putnam's version of empirical realism is that he overlooks the subjective character of (iii) our mental states. (v) Finally I consider the claim, due to Nagel, that a conception of mental states is possible which incorporates both subjective and objective aspects of the phenonemon. I speculate that with a great deal of development this approach might hold the answer to our questions.

Over the past 25 years, there has been tremendous interest in the development of children’s ability to reason about others’ mental states, or “theory of mind”. Much research has explored children's understanding of situational cues that lead to knowledge, but only recently has research begun to assess children's understanding of person-specific differences in knowledge. A number of studies (Birch, Vauthier & Bloom, 2008; Jaswal & Neely, 2006; Koenig, Clément & Harris, 2004) have recently demonstrated that at least by age 3 children pay attention to others' history of accuracy and use it as a cue when deciding from whom to learn. However, the nature and scope of children's interpretations of other's prior accuracy remains unclear. Experiment 1 assessed whether 4- and 5-year-olds interpret prior accuracy as indicative of knowledge, as opposed to two other accounts that do not involve epistemic attributions. This experiment revealed that preschool children can revise their tendency to prefer to learn from a previously accurate informant over an inaccurate one when presented with evidence regarding each informant's current knowledge state. Experiment 2 investigated how broadly a person's history of accuracy influences children's subsequent inferences, and showed that 5-year-olds (but not 4-year-olds) use information about an individual's past accuracy to predict her knowledge in other related domains as well as her propensity for prosocial or antisocial behaviour. Overall, children's performance in these experiments suggests that both 4- and 5-year-olds interpret others' history of accuracy as indicative of knowledge; however, 4-year-olds make a more restricted attribution of knowledge while 5-year-olds make a more stable, trait-like attribution. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research on theory of mind and more broadly on children's social and cognitive development. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This essay is primarily an examination of a view, propounded by Richard Rorty at the beginning of the last decade, about the nature and existence of minds and mental states. The view is a species of eliminative materialism, and one which is of historical importance in the development of this general position. I argue that it is false. I also attempt to draw some positive conclusions in the philosophy of mind from a criticism of some of its underlying assumptions. Rorty's fundamental idea is that the belief in the existence of minds and mental states is a primitive scientific theory, which in all likelihood is soon to be overthrown by the superior theory of neurophysiology. It will then be rational, he claims to deny the existence of minds and mental states. Essential to Rorty's argument for this view is the notion that mental states have a property which the neural states of the replacing theory lack, namely of being the proper subjects of certain in corrigible reports, and which prevents the identification of the two. I undermine this argument by showing that ( i ) incorrigibility is not the mark of the mental and ( ii ) even if it were, it could not ground the categorical gulf which Rorty sees between mental and physical. I turn then to the major presupposition of the view, that mental states are theoretical entities posited in the causal explanation of behaviour, to see if this characterisation of the mental is an hypothesis adequate to account for the various phenomena of mental discourse. After examining reason-explanation, causal explanation in terms of mental states, the reporting role of mental ascriptions and the non-constative uses of mental language, I find that it is not. In particular, Rorty's view cannot account for the limited extent to which certain mental reports are incorrigible, nor for the validity of justificatory and non-constative uses of mental language. I argue that the existence of mental states is guaranteed by this validity, and therefore that the issue of their elimination goes beyond considerations of theoretical superiority to the very fabric of human interaction, moral and otherwise. I emerge with the view that ordinary language and neurophysiology are compatible ways of describing people and their behaviour, and that far from being the murky posits of some proto-scientific folk-psychology, mental states are known to exist. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Israel Krakowski. / Ph.D.