Publisher's Synopsis
With little or no formal teaching, human beings develop the capacity to deploy psychological concepts in predicting and explaining the actions and mental states of other members of the species. What is the basis of this capacity? Many philosophers and psychologists argue that this everyday ability reflects the fact that normal adult human beings possess a primitive psychological theory - a "folk psychology". Recently, however, this "theory theory" has come under attack from the "simulation alternative". This alternative view says that human beings are able to predict and explain each others' actions by using the resources of their own minds to simulate the psychological aetiology of the actions of others.;This third volume in the "Readings in Mind and Language" series offers comprehensive coverage of the mental simulation debate from 1986 until the present. The 13 essays in this volume are accompanied by an extensive introductory essay. A companion volume, "Mental Simluation", contains 12 further essays. Taken together, the two volumes offer a philosophical and psychological theory which promises to yield insight into the nature of people's mental lives.
