Global ETD Search

1	Mindreading, Language and Simulation DeChant, Ryan C 01 August 2010 (has links) Mindreading is the capacity to attribute psychological states to others and to use those attributions to explain, predict, and understand others’ behaviors. In the past thirty years, mindreading has become the topic of substantial interdisciplinary research and theorizing, with philosophers, psychologists and, more recently, neuroscientists, all contributing to the debate about the nature of the neuropsychological mechanisms that constitute the capacity for mindreading. In this thesis I push this debate forward by using recent results from developmental psychology as the basis for critiques of two prominent views of mindreading. First, I argue that the developmental studies provide evidence of infant mindreading and therefore expose a flaw in José Bermúdez’s view that certain forms of mindreading require language possession. Second, I argue that the evidence of infant mindreading can also be used to undermine Alvin Goldman’s version of Simulation Theory. Mindreading Theory of mind Social cognition Propositional attitudes False-belief tasks Non-verbal false-belief tasks Violation-of-expectation paradigm Concept possession Non-linguistic cognition Second-order cognitive dynamics Access consciousness Metarepresentation Simulation theory Executive function Inhibitory control Philosophy