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How is mindreading really like reading?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2019
Abstract
I suggest an alternative basis for Heyes’ analogy between cultural learning of mindreading and text reading. Unlike text reading, mindreading does not entail decoding of observable stimuli. Like text reading, mindreading requires relevant inferences. Identification of relevant inferences is a deeply challenging problem, and the most important contribution of cultural learning to mindreading may be an apprenticeship in thinking like a mindreader.
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References
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How is mindreading really like reading? An important pillar of Heyes’ (Reference Heyes2018) argument is that mindreading mediates cultural learning and that mindreading is itself culturally learned. She makes this case by drawing an analogy between mindreading and text reading. Understanding where this analogy fails and where it succeeds casts light on how culture contributes to mindreading.
Mindreading is unlike reading because mindreading does not essentially involve decoding
First, Heyes argues that, just as print reading depends on decoding word sounds from written symbols, mindreading depends on decoding mental states from signs such as facial expressions, body movements, and utterances. This analogy fails, however, because mindreading readily occurs without such signs to decode: I can reason about the mental states of people who are absent, dead, or imaginary.
Second, whereas reading involves parsing grammatical relations among words, nothing analogous is true for mindreading. Despite the claims of “theory theories” (e.g., Davies & Stone Reference Davies and Stone1995), the field has made little progress beyond “common sense platitudes” (e.g., Lewis Reference Lewis1970) when articulating rules or principles governing the relations among mental states or between mental states and behaviour. Approaches that formalise aspects of mindreading as Bayesian inverse inferences (e.g., Jara-Ettinger et al. Reference Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Schulz and Tenenbaum2016) are promising for scenarios that artificially limit the set of possible mental states that could be ascribed, but are unlikely to be extensible to more realistic scenarios (Stuhlmüller & Goodman Reference Stuhlmüller and Goodman2014). There are good grounds for thinking “theory theories” have made limited progress because the rules or principles governing relations among mental states are uncodifiable (e.g., Davidson Reference Davidson1990).
It might have been compelling to think that cultural learning helped children acquire the “code” for mindreading, just as it helps them acquire the code for reading. However, this is of limited explanatory value because mindreading does not consist in the decoding of signs, nor even a codifiable set of principles.
Mindreading is like reading because it depends upon effortful inferences that go beyond the given information
Heyes may be right to argue that mindreading concepts are culturally learned. But whether they are learned or innate, it is clear that acquiring mindreading concepts is just the first step towards being a skilled mindreader. As there is no code for mindreading, how can we conceptualise skilled mindreading? Reading – and discourse processing more generally – provides a valuable model (Apperly Reference Apperly2010).
Although decoding is essential to reading, there is much more to skilled reading than decoding print into words. Comprehension of written or oral material involves the construction of a “situation model” with inferences that go far beyond the words themselves. These inferences rely upon comprehenders’ processing capacity and motivation (McKoon & Ratcliff Reference McKoon and Ratcliff1998; Sanford & Garrod Reference Sanford and Garrod1998; Zwaan & Radvansky Reference Zwaan and Radvansky1998), and critically depend on identifying relevant background information. Identification of relevant information is a classic problem in cognitive science (e.g., Fodor Reference Fodor2000), and although solutions may not be agreed upon, it is widely agreed that deep experience in the topic at hand will be critical.
Mapping this analogy to mindreading, what we should expect is that much of the challenge of mindreading will lie with making inferences that go beyond the information available from observable signs or prior knowledge about the target. Such inferences will involve effort and motivation (e.g., Apperly Reference Apperly2012), are only partially constrained by principles (there is no code, remember), and will draw upon a potentially unbounded variety of background knowledge about the target and the context (Apperly Reference Apperly2010). Identifying relevant information in these circumstances is surely challenging, and will require deep experience with the social world and the ways in which people think and act within it. Rather than the cultural transmission of mindreading codes or abstract mindreading concepts, the most important cultural contribution to mindreading is likely to be a long social apprenticeship in how to think like a mindreader (Nelson Reference Nelson1996).