The Model-Model of the Theory-Theory

Abstract

“Theory of Mind” (ToM) is widely held to be ubiquitous in our navigation of the social world. Recently this standard view has been contested by phenomenologists and enactivists. Proponents of the ubiquity of ToM, however, accept and effectively neutralize the intuitions behind their arguments by arguing that ToM is mostly sub-personal. This paper proposes a similar move on behalf of the phenomenologists and enactivists: it offers a novel explanation of the intuition that ToM is ubiquitous that is compatible with the rejection of this ubiquity. According to this explanation, we use ToM-talk primarily to model and thereby reconstruct non-mentalizing social-cognitive processes in order to explain our assessment of the behaviour of others. The intuition that ToM is ubiquitous is the result of mistaking the model for the real thing. This explanation is argued to be more complete than the “ToM-ist” explanation of the intuition that ToM is not ubiquitous.

Notes

1. Throughout this paper I will remain neutral on the question what such a cognitive achievement looks like in detail. The usual understanding of ToM is in terms of rules or laws, but according to Maibom's (2003) account ToM consists of psychological models we employ while assuming background hypotheses. Nothing in this papers hinges on this.

2. Ratcliffe, for instance, appears to reject ToM entirely as a philosophers’ myth. Hutto, on the other hand, rejects only the theoretical nature of the capacities required for daily interaction. But his substitute for ToM, the practice of providing “folk-psychological narratives”, is not at all claimed to be a rare social phenomenon.

3. Having said this, though, I should also stress that an important version of ST does not meet these criteria (Gordon, 1986, 1996). This version is often explicitly not targeted by the phenomenologist/enactivist critics (Hutto, 2008a, pp. 138–39) and takes itself to be congenial to the phenomenologist/enactivist position (Gordon, 2008).

4. Hutto (2009a; 2009b) is an exception. See Section IV.

5. The intentional stance theory is ToM-ist in the sense that Dennett writes as if he considers the ascription of beliefs and desires ubiquitous. But although he sometimes seems to defend a theoretical reading of what it is to adopt the intentional stance (e.g., 1987, Ch. 4), at other occasions he rejects such a reading (e.g., Dennett, 1991b).

6. Thus it is incorrect to say that ToM is entirely a philosophers’ myth (cf. Ratcliffe, 2007).

7. What is left out of this account is the notion that our socio-culturally shared ToM vocabulary also shapes and regulates the development of the mental states children ascribe to themselves and others as well as the kinds of social behaviour that give rise to the ascription of propositional attitudes. Such “mind-shaping” (Zawidsky, 2008) would provide an explanation, not so much of the ubiquity of ToM, but of ToM-interpretable social behaviour. The notion of mind-shaping is compatible with the model-model of ToM.

8. This example may seem not so well chosen: interpreting a scene as a bank robbery is a complex business that involves knowledge and reasoning; much more so than e.g., seeing a smile on a face. However, the example is meant to illustrate the conscious use of ToM in the case of the second scenario in contrast with the first situation. It is not intended as proof that in the first scenario no theory is used.

9. See also Slors (2009) on the precarious difference between a theoretical and a narrative characterization.

10. Thanks to Stephen Butterfill, Leon de Bruin, Bas Donders, Dan Hutto, Fleur Jongepier, Brendan Larvor, Elliot Sober, Derek Strijbos and two anonymous referees for this journal for very helpful comments and criticism.