Social Minds

Theory & Psychology, 2016

According to direct perception theory (DPT) people understand each other’s minds by way of perceiving each other’s behavioral engagements in the world. I argue that DPT admits of two interpretations. One interpretation is found in Searle’s social ontology. The other interpretation departs from an enactivist account of social cognition. Both can make sense of what it is to perceive other minds, but in two different ways. The first claims that people can directly perceive states of mind shared in a community. In contrast, the second interpretation allows for direct perception of particular individuals’ states of mind in the context of participation in social practices. The two interpretations are argued to be compatible. People can perceive communal states of mind in another’s responsiveness to action possibilities in social environments, not only the particular other’s states of mind.

Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, 2020

At the very moment a person wonders about: "What is the other thinking about?", with this remark, he/she becomes, implicitly, implicated in the field of social cognition. It is axiomatic for people to be concerned and curious about the mental states of others for various reasons: (i) defending and controlling the self-image with regard to others' judgments, or (ii) controlling and manipulating the others, driven by selfish interests and Machiavellian intelligence. In a nutshell, this article deals with the topic of "mind-reading" from an integrative and pluralistic perspective in that we opted for a tripartite levels of analysis: (1) the first level is concerned with behavior-reading which is identified, according to the embedded cognition, as an external manifestation of mind-reading which depends on the visible function of the human body in its environment, (2) the second one is concerned with mind-reading as a cognitive faculty which requires two appropria...

In this paper I will analyze some ontic, epistemological and semiotic aspects of the knowledge of other minds. The main thesis states that as we can know our own mind through meta-mental processes, so we can know states, processes and contents of other minds by using different noetic tools, perceptive and non-perceptive. In the first three sections, the ontic supposition, the similarity by analogy and the conceptual and ontic attesta¬tions of other minds will be examined. I will claim that the ontic supposi-tion is the ground and the starting step of any mental process devoted to knowing other minds. First of all, a subject S1 must ascertain and state that a subject S2 possesses a mind; this statement is an ontic supposition for¬mulated with meta-mental processes and inferences, according to which a subject S1 supposes that a subject S2 owns a mind. This supposition is tied up with the similarity by analogy so S1 can claim that subject S2 possesses a mind analogous to the one he possesses. The second step is formed by conceptual and ontic attestations grounded on a shared concept of mind. Knowledge of other minds will be analyzed from epistemic and epistemo¬logical perspectives using the notions of reliability and adequacy of the knowledge of other minds. Section 4 is devoted to an in-depth analysis of knowing other minds within the inter-mental dialogue. It will be claimed that knowing other minds is a complex process which has a biological foundation and uses different ways and tools to know states, processes and contents of other minds. The analysis is grounded, on one side, upon the notions of mean¬ings sharing and, on the other, upon the following three assertions: a) in order to establish a relationship two minds must share some mental char¬acters; b) each mind is constitutively ready to establish reciprocal rela¬tionships with other minds; and c) the reciprocal relationships amongst minds are at the same time local and non-local processes. Reading other minds is essentially a hermeneutic process concerning the expressions of a subject. Finally, inferential processes, generalizations and eidetic applica¬tions will be analyzed, and the notions of mental resonance and telenoesis will be taken into consideration.

In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of social cognition do not consider the central question of social cognition to be the problem of access to other minds. These perceptual accounts draw heavily on phenomenological philosophy and propose that others' mental states are “directly” given in the perception of the others' expressive behavior. Furthermore, these accounts contend that phenomenological insights into the nature of social perception lead to the dissolution of the access problem. We argue, on the contrary, that the access problem is a genuine problem that must be addressed by any account of social cognition, perceptual or non-perceptual, because we cannot cast the access problem as a false problem without violating certain fundamental intuitions about other minds. We elaborate the fundamental intuitions as three constraints on any theory of social perception: the Immediacy constraint; the Transcendence constraint; and the Accessibility constraint. We conclude with an outline of an account of perceiving other minds that meets the three constraints.

The Problem of Other (Group) Minds (Response to Schwitzgebel), 2017

In recent papers, Eric Schwitzgebel (Philosophical Studies, 172, 1697-1721, 2015, Philosophia, 44, 877-883, 2016) argues that if physicalism is true, then the United States is probably conscious. My primary aim here is to demonstrate that the source of Schwitzgebel's conditional argument is the BProblem of Other Minds,^ which is a general problem; wherefore, Schwitzgebel's conclusion should be revised and applied not only to physicalism, but to most contemporary theories of the mind. I analyze the difference between Schwitzgebel's argument and other arguments against functionalism, arguing that the difference between them is rooted in referring to the causal role of the whole system, rather than referring to the casual role of the system's parts. This key difference between functionalism and behaviorism explains why the source of Schwitzgebel's argument stems from the problem of other minds.

Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010

Philosophical Psychology, 2014

In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of social cognition do not consider the central question of social cognition to be the problem of access to other minds. These perceptual accounts draw heavily on phenomenological philosophy and propose that others' mental states are "directly" given in the perception of the others' expressive behavior. Furthermore, these accounts contend that phenomenological insights into the nature of social perception lead to the dissolution of the access problem. We argue, on the contrary, that the access problem is a genuine problem that must be addressed by any account of social cognition, perceptual or nonperceptual, because we cannot cast the access problem as a false problem without violating certain fundamental intuitions about other minds. We elaborate the fundamental intuitions as three constraints on any theory of social perception: the Immediacy constraint; the Transcendence constraint; and the Accessibility constraint. We conclude with an outline of an account of perceiving other minds that meets the three constraints.