Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. In the past decades, the important role of causal knowledge has been discovered in many areas of cognitive (...) psychology. Despite the ubiquity of causal reasoning, textbooks of cognitive psychology have neglected this growing field. The goal of The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning is to fill this gap. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields. 1. Causal Reasoning: An Introduction Michael R. Waldmann Part I: Theories of Causal Cognition 2. Associative Accounts of Causal Cognition Mike E. Le Pelley, Oren Griffiths, and Tom Beesley 3. Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information Onto Causal Beliefs José C. Perales, Andrés Catena, Antonio Cándido, and Antonio Maldonado 4. The Inferential Reasoning Theory of Causal Learning: Toward a Multi- Process Propositional Account Yannick Boddez, Jan De Houwer, and Tom Beckers 5. Causal Invariance as an Essential Constraint for Creating a Causal Representation of the World: Generalizing the Invariance of Causal Power Patricia W. Cheng and Hongjing Lu 6. The Acquisition and Use of Causal Structure Knowledge Benjamin Margolin Rottman 7. Formalizing Prior Knowledge in Causal Induction Thomas L. Griffiths 8. Causal Mechanisms Samuel G. B. Johnson and Woo-kyoung Ahn 9. Force Dynamics and Causation Phillip Wolff and Robert Thorstad 10. Mental Models and Causation P. N. Johnson- Laird and Sangeet S. Khemlani 11. Pseudocontingencies Klaus Fiedler and Florian Kutzner 12. Singular Causation David Danks 13. Cognitive Neuroscience of Causal Reasoning Joachim T. Operskalski and Aron K. Barbey Part II: Basic Cognitive Functions 14. Visual Impressions of Causality Peter White 15. Goal-Directed Actions Bernhard Hommel 16. Planning and Control Magda Osman 17. Reinforcement Learning and Causal Models Samuel J. Gershman 18. Causation and the Probability of Causal Conditionals David E. Over 19. Causal Models and Conditional Reasoning Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater 20. Concepts as Causal Models: Categorization Bob Rehder 21. Concepts as Causal Models: Induction Bob Rehder 22. Causal Explanation Tania Lombrozo and Nadya Vasilyeva 23. Diagnostic Reasoning Björn Meder and Ralf Mayrhofer 24. Inferring Causal Relations by Analogy Keith J. Holyoak and Hee-Seung Lee 25. Causal Argument Ulrike Hahn, Roland Bluhm, and Frank Zenker 26. Causality in Decision- Making York Hagmayer and Philip M. Fernbach Part III: Domains of Causal Reasoning 27. Intuitive Theories Tobias Gerstenberg and Joshua B. Tenenbaum 28. Space, Time, and Causality Marc J. Buehner 29. Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning David A. Lagnado and Tobias Gerstenberg 30. The Role of Causal Knowledge in Reasoning About Mental Disorders Woo-kyoung Ahn, Nancy S. Kim, and Matthew S. Lebowitz 31. Causality and Causal Reasoning in Natural Language Torgrim Solstad and Oliver Bott 32. Social Attribution and Explanation Denis Hilton Part IV: Development, Phylogeny, and Culture 33. The Development of Causal Reasoning Paul Muentener and Elizabeth Bonawitz 34. Causal Reasoning in Non-Human Animals Christian Schloegl and Julia Fischer 35. Causal Cognition and Culture Andrea Bender, Sieghard Beller, and Douglas L. Medin. (shrink)

We make character trait attributions to predict and explain others’ behaviour. How should we understand character trait attribution in context across the domains of philosophy, folk psychology, developmental psychology, and evolutionary psychology? For example, how does trait attribution relate to our ability to attribute mental states to others, to ‘mindread’? This thesis uses philosophical methods and empirical data to argue for character trait attribution as a practice dependent upon our ability to mindread, which develops as a product of natural selection (...) acting on culture instead of genes. This analysis carves out trait attribution’s distinct place within an emerging complex and mature scholarship on pluralistic social cognition. (shrink)

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and ...

In recent years, the human ability to reasoning about mental states of others in order to explain and predict their behavior has come to be a highly active area of research. Researchers from a wide range of fields { from biology and psychology through linguistics to game theory and logic{ contribute new ideas and results. This interdisciplinary workshop, collocated with the Thirteenth International Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK XIII), aims to shed light on models of social (...) reasoning that take into account realistic resource bounds. People reason about other people's mental states in order to understand and predict the others' behavior. This capability to reason about others' knowledge, beliefs and intentions is often referred to as theory of mind. Idealized rational agents are capable of recursion in their social reasoning, and can reason about phenomena like common knowledge. Such idealized social reasoning has been modeled by modal logics such as epistemic logic and BDI (belief, desire, intention) logics and by epistemic game theory. However, in real-world situations, many people seem to lose track of such recursive social reasoning after only a few levels. The workshop provides a forum for researchers that attempt to analyze, understand and model how resource-bounded agents reason about other minds. (shrink)

How the Body Shapes the Mind is an interdisciplinary work that addresses philosophical questions by appealing to evidence found in experimental psychology, neuroscience, studies of pathologies, and developmental psychology. There is a growing consensus across these disciplines that the contribution of embodiment to cognition is inescapable. Because this insight has been developed across a variety of disciplines, however, there is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioural expressions (...) in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Shaun Gallagher's book aims to contribute to the formulation of that common vocabulary and to develop a conceptual framework that will avoid both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Gallagher pursues two basic sets of questions. The first set consists of questions about the phenomenal aspects of the structure of experience, and specifically the relatively regular and constant features that we find in the content of our experience. If throughout conscious experience there is a constant reference to one's own body, even if this is a recessive or marginal awareness, then that reference constitutes a structural feature of the phenomenal field of consciousness, part of a framework that is likely to determine or influence all other aspects of experience. The second set of questions concerns aspects of the structure of experience that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before we know it. They do not normally enter into the content of experience in an explicit way, and are often inaccessible to reflective consciousness. To what extent, and in what ways, are consciousness and cognitive processes, which include experiences related to perception, memory, imagination, belief, judgement, and so forth, shaped or structured by the fact that they are embodied in this way? (shrink)

I aim to develop an alternative theoretical model for the direct cognition of the elementary states of others called the theory of interaction (henceforth TI), also known as the “second person” approach. The model I propose emerges from a critical reformulation of the displaced perception model proposed by FRED DRETSKE (1995) for the introspective knowledge of our own mental states. Moreover, against Dretske, I argue that no meta-representation (second-order representation of a first-order representation as a representation) is involved in the (...) process, but only concepts, rudimentary enough, of others’ emotions: contentment and discontentment. Strictly speaking, all the empirical data and findings in developmental psychology only support the hypothesis that children in the pre-linguistic phase understand perceptual facial expressions of contentment and discontentment. My proposal consists of the following thesis: The direct perception of others' elementary mental states is not a perception in the usual sense of the word according to which we just perceive things, but rather a “perception of facts.” But how to understand that? It is nothing more than an epistemological process that is automatic and reliable at the same time. It is reliable in the epistemological-externalist sense of not involving any inference, reflection, theorizing or epistemic justification: a baby’s perception of her mom’s facial expression of discontentment (in the usual sense of “per- ception”) does not constitute a reason supporting the belief that mommy is discontent. The very word “belief” should not be understood in the usual sense but rather in the sense of a natural inclination for truth. But at the same time, it is automatic because the belief is a result or output of a process entirely subliminal and computational in nature. Thus, for instance, a child perceives that her mom is discontent (fact-awareness) by perceiving consciously (“perception” in the usual sense) a facial expression of discontentment (sensorial input) but recognizes that her mother is discontent as a result (output) of an entirely subliminal process. (shrink)

Notes on Contributors • Preface • Christopher Peacocke, Introduction: The Issues and their Further Development I OBJECTIVE THOUGHT • John Campbell, Objects and Objectivity Commentaries • Bill Brewer, Thoughts about Objects, Places and Times • John O'Keefe, Cognitive Maps, Time and Causality II OBJECTIVITY AND THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS • Susan Hurley, Unity and Objectivity Commentaries • Anthony Marcel, What is Relevant to the Unity of Consciousness? • Michael Lockwood, Issues of Unity and Objectivity III UNDERSTANDING THE MENTAL:THEORY OR SIMULATION (...) • MARTIN DAVIES, The Mental Simulation Debate Commentaries • Jane Heal, Simulation vs. Theory Theory: What is at Issue? • Josef Perner, The Necessity and Impossibility of Simulation. (shrink)

In this paper, we take Darwall’s analytical project of the second-person standpoint as the starting point for a naturalistic project about our moral psychology. In his project, Darwall contends that our moral notions constitutively imply the perspective of second-personal interaction, i.e. the interaction of two mutually recognized agents who make and acknowledge claims on one another. This allows him to explain the distinctive purported authority of morality. Yet a naturalized interpretation of it has potential as an account of our moral (...) psychology. We propose a naturalistic interpretation of Darwall’s work to address some of the main issues about our moral psychology. First, we explain why moral norms motivate us; namely, because of these second-personal relations. We provide a naturalized version of this solution. Second, we articulate how intersubjective interactions take place effectively; grounding duties to particular other subjects, and being related to distinctive moral emotions. Third, we address the question of the limits of the moral community, proposing that it comprises all agents capable of second-personal interactions. Finally, we explain the emergence of community norms through intersubjective interaction. Since all group members can adopt alternatively the second-personal stance to each other, demands are sanctioned and recognized in a triangulation process which explains the emergence of group norms. (shrink)

The human ability to represent, conceptualize, and reason about mind and behavior is one of the greatest achievements of human evolution and is made possible by a “folk theory of mind” — a sophisticated conceptual framework that relates different mental states to each other and connects them to behavior. This chapter examines the nature and elements of this framework and its central functions for social cognition. As a conceptual framework, the folk theory of mind operates prior to any particular conscious (...) or unconscious cognition and provides the “framing” or interpretation of that cognition. Central to this framing is the concept of intentionality, which distinguishes intentional action (caused by the agent’s intention and decision) from unintentional behavior (caused by internal or external events without the intervention of the agent’s decision). A second important distinction separates publicly observable from publicly unobservable (i.e., mental) events. Together, the two distinctions define the kinds of events in social interaction that people attend to, wonder about, and try to explain. A special focus of this chapter is the powerful tool of behavior explanation, which relies on the folk theory of mind but is also intimately tied to social demands and to the perceiver’s social goals. A full understanding of social cognition must consider the folk theory of mind as the conceptual underpinning of all (conscious and unconscious) perception and thinking about the social world. (shrink)

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that our everyday or "folk" understanding of mental states constitutes a theory of mind. That theory is widely called "folk psychology" (sometimes "commonsense" psychology). The terms in which folk psychology is couched are the familiar ones of "belief" and "desire", "hunger", "pain" and so forth. According to many theorists, folk psychology plays a central role in our capacity to predict and explain the behavior of ourselves and others. However, the nature and status of folk (...) psychology remains controversial. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge of the existence of various (...) mental states that Descartes took for granted. (shrink)

To imagine is to form a mental representation that does not aim at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are. One can use imagination to represent possibilities other than the actual, to represent times other than the present, and to represent perspectives other than one’s own. Unlike perceiving and believing, imagining something does not require one to consider that something to be the case. Unlike desiring or anticipating, imagining something does not require one to wish or expect that something (...) to be the case. // -/- Imagination is involved in a wide variety of human activities, and has been explored from a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Philosophers of mind have examined imagination’s role in mindreading and in pretense. Philosophical aestheticians have examined imagination’s role in creating and in engaging with different types of artworks. Epistemologists have examined imagination’s role in theoretical thought experiments and in practical decision-making. Philosophers of language have examined imagination’s role in irony and metaphor. // -/- Because of the breadth of the topic, this entry focuses exclusively on contemporary discussions of imagination in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Alec Hyslop defends a (modified) version of the traditional analogical inference to other minds and rejects alternatives, but only after subjecting each of...

This research is concerned with the innate predispositions underlying human intentional communication. Human communication is currently defined as a circular and overt attempt to modify a partner's mental states. This requires each party involved to posse ss the ability to represent and understand the other's mental states, a capability which is commonly referred to as mindreading, or theory of mind (ToM). The relevant experimental literature agrees that no such capability is to be found in the human speci es at least (...) during the first year of life, and possibly later. This paper aims at advancing a solution to this theoretical problem. We propose to consider sharedness as the basis for intentional communication in the infant and to view it as a primitive, i nnate component of her cognitive architecture. Communication can then build upon the mental grounds that the infant takes as shared with her caregivers. We view this capability as a theory of mind in a weak sense.›. (shrink)

1. Introduction. The problems of other minds ; Body, mind and other minds ; The analogical theory ; The critical theory ; Functionalism and mental states as theoretical entities ; A brief outline of things to come -- 2. Functionalism and the nature of mental representations. Functionalism and cognitive psychology ; Folk psychology and the representational theory of mind -- 3. Theory theory and simulation theory. A very short introduction to the world of theory theory and simulation theory ; A (...) look at simulation theory ; A look at theory theory -- 4. Intentionality and the theory theory. The generic theory theory ; Cognitive and primordial intentionality ; Theory theorists and primordial intentionality ; Fodor's computational theory of primordial intentionality -- 5. The body schema. Historical notes on the notion of body schema ; An outline of a notion of body schema -- 6. On the notion of primordial intentionality. Concrete and abstracts movements ; Why primordial intentionality is not reducible to cognitive intentionality ; The intentionality of primordial intentionality -- 7. The irreducibility of primordial intentionality. The first argument against homuncular functionalism ; The second argument against homuncular functionalism -- 8. Transferring the body schema. Husserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity ; Towards a primordial intentionality of intersubjectivity ; Some implications and a comparison to Husserl -- 9. Theory theory and simulation theory revisited. Attribution of primordial intentionality as cognitive simulation ; If homuncular functionalism were true ... ; Primordial intentionality and belief-desire psychology ; The theory of body schematic transfer and the simulation theory -- 10. Body schematic transfer and the conceptual problem of other minds. Strawson on the problem of other minds ; Disarming Strawson's objections ; Solving the conceptual problem -- 11. Concluding remarks -- Summary in Swedish -- References. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access to (...) dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze. (shrink)

This thesis presents a communicative account of personhood that argues for the inseparability of the metaphysical and the practical concepts of a person. It connects these two concepts by coupling the question “what is a person” with the question "how does one become a person". It argues that participation in social interactions that are characterized by mutual recognition and giving-and-taking reasons implied by the practical concept of a person is in fact an ecological and developmental condition for an entity to (...) possess the kind of characteristics and capacities such as reflexive self-consciousness addressed by the metaphysical concept. The chief theoretical contribution of the dissertation research lies, accordingly, in demonstrating that an adequate metaphysical concept of a person has to make reference to the kind of social processes that are necessary for the emergence and development of the distinguishing attributes of persons among other moving, perceiving, desiring and cognizing agents. Methodologically, it undertakes an original philosophical analysis that is enriched by an interdisciplinary investigation of several notions and insights from semiotics, comparative and developmental psychology, cognitive science and anthropology. The main argument of the thesis is that one becomes a person through internally recreating a social, communicative process; namely, that of dialogical transformation of habits. We find the paradigmatic case of this social process in mutual persuasion. The internalization of this process in the form of an inner dialogue cultivates a social self that is in ongoing communication with the embodied, organismic self of uncritically habituated attitudes, convictions and desires. This inner dialogue can be conceived as a temporally extended process of self-persuasion, which is characterized by an ongoing strive for attaining higher degrees of self-control; that is, for achieving a more coherent alignment between our habits and the kind of person we would like to be. It starts with self-interpretation and self-evaluation, and culminates in the formation of higher-order desires that facilitate habit-change and novel habit formation in accordance with certain social, moral, aesthetical or intellectual categories and norms one comes to endorse. For this reason, self-induced, deliberate habit-change is also a process of appropriation or self-appropriation, through which we strive to cultivate habits of feeling, thinking, acting that we can deem more truly ours. The thesis demonstrates that the capacity for engaging in this kind of self-persuasion consists chiefly in the capacities for metasemiosis, perspective-taking, and for cultivating habits of reflexivity. It explicates how all these capacities have a social origin and ultimately a social function by showing that they all presuppose certain higher-order communicative patterns that arose through an evolutionary and cultural history, and develop through the internal reconstruction of these patterns as cognitive-semiotic processes. The thesis concludes that becoming a kind of being who can engage in self-persuasion, thus a person, consists ultimately in internalizing the patterns of communicative social interactions in the form of an ongoing auto-communication. (shrink)

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

The mechanism by which humans perceive others differs greatly from how humans perceive inanimate objects. Unlike inanimate objects, humans have the distinct property of being “like me” in the eyes of the observer. This allows us to use the same systems that process knowledge about self-performed actions, self-conceived thoughts, and self-experienced emotions to understand actions, thoughts, and emotions in others. The authors propose that internal simulation mechanisms, such as the mirror neuron system, are necessary for normal development of recognition, imitation, (...) theory of mind, empathy, and language. Additionally, the authors suggest that dysfunctional simulation mechanisms may underlie the social and communicative deficits seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. (shrink)

1. Introduction For philosophers, the current phase of the debate with which this volume is concerned can be taken to have begun in 1986, when Jane Heal and Robert Gordon published their seminal papers (Heal, 1986; Gordon, 1986; though see also, for example, Stich, 1981; Dennett, 1981). They raised a dissenting voice against what was becoming a philosophical orthodoxy: that our everyday, or folk, understanding of the mind should be thought of as theoretical. In opposition to this picture, Gordon and (...) Heal argued that we are not theorists but simulators. For psychologists, the debate had begun somewhat earlier when Heider (1958) produced his work on lay psychology; and in more recent times the psychological debate had continued in developmental psychology and in work on animal cognition. (shrink)

Mindreading is the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. According to the simulation theory (ST), mindreading is based on the ability the mind has of replicating others' mental states and processes. Mirror neurons (MNs) are a class of neurons that fire both when an agent performs a goal-directed action and when she observes the same type of action performed by another individual. Since MNs appear to form a replicative mechanism in which a portion of the observer's brain replicates (...) the agent's brain, MNs have been considered evidence in favor of ST. Jacob (2008), however, has maintained that the recent discovery of so-called logically related MNs refutes the hypothesis that MNs form a replicative mechanism. In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what is claimed by Jacob, one can accept the existence of logically related MNs and, at the same time, still maintain that the activity of MNs is replicative. It follows that MNs still support ST. (shrink)

Sripada and Konrath use Structural Equation Modeling techniques to provide empirical evidence for the claim that implicit and automatic inferences about people’s dispositions, and not normative judgments, are the driving cause behind the pattern of folk judgments of intentional action in Knobe’s chairman case. However, I will argue that their evidence is not as strong as they claim due to the potential of methodological and statistical problems with the way they tested their model. After correcting for these problems, I show (...) that even after accounting for the role of dispositional inferences, normative judgments are still playing a significant role in folk judgments of intentional action. (shrink)

Theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others, is crucial for human social interaction and has been argued to fully develop around the age of 4. However, recent research suggests that children can perform rudimentary, preverbal ToM inferences at an earlier age, indicating a discrepancy between this early, implicit ToM and a later mastery of explicit ToM tasks. Already in the second year of life children show competence in grasping what an agent knows and does (...) not know in preverbal communication, whereas explicit performance on ToM tasks can only be observed around the age of 4. One possible explanation is that children require an additional representational resource in order to be able to associate their preverbal understanding with explicit terms that can be used to denote it in standard ToM tasks. The purpose of this thesis is to extend research on ToM in the third year of life by investigating one possible representational resource, namely mental state language. Mental state language is considered crucial for ToM development as it is the first explicit means by which children can verbalize mental states and it plays an important role for both precursors and subsequent mastery of explicit ToM tasks. However, how exactly mental state language production reflects children's awareness and comprehension of mental states remains understudied. Harris, Yang, and Cui have argued that children use mental state terms early on and possess basic representations of their own knowledge and ignorance. Since both mental state terms and basic representations appear to be present at the same time, one might assume that children already possess associations between them. However, experimental tasks that investigate mental state verbs like `know' and `think' are only able to find competence to differentiate between them around the age of 5. Thus, the extent to which the appropriate use of mental state terms in conversation reflects comprehension of the denoted mental states remains unclear. Given that mental state language develops around the second and third year of life, one may gain insight into the role it plays for a transition from implicit to explicit competence by investigating abilities which, according to our current understanding, develop around the same time and show both preverbal and verbal aspects. Perspective-taking and implicit false-belief understanding are such abilities. Children show early preverbal perspective-taking competence at the age of 24 months, but only develop verbal perspective-taking competence around the age of 3. Previous work has identified a relationship between mental state language and verbal perspective-taking at the age of 30 months, but no study has investigated this relationship in connection to preverbal perspective-taking. Also in the area of falsebelief understanding studies have mostly investigated the relationship between mental state language and explicit false-belief tasks, but no study has examined how mental state language may relate to an implicit false-belief task. Finally, mental state language has been found to correlate with a number of different competencies, among them inhibitory control and general language, but no study has systematically investigated which of these competencies serve as precursors that predict children's later mental state language production. Determining precursors is relevant for understanding crucial aspects of mental state language development and how it might relate to children's preverbal representations of mental states. The aims of the present thesis were thus to investigate the relationship between children's mental state language production and their comprehension of mental state terms and mental states, to determine the role that mental state language production may play in preverbal and verbal perspective-taking and implicit false-belief understanding and finally, to identify the basic linguistic and cognitive skills that contribute to the development of mental state language. These aims were pursued through 2 studies. In study 1, children were assessed at two time-points. Once they were tested at the age of 24 months with measures of general language, cognitive and motoric development and inhibition skills. An additional time they were tested at 27 months in order to assess children's mental state language production, their preverbal and verbal perspective-taking skills, meta-cognitive awareness of ignorance, implicit false-belief understanding and finally a task that measured their ability to infer a speaker's need for information from a statement about knowing or not knowing the location of an item and a speaker's desire for an object from statements about wanting or not wanting a particular object. The aim was to determine the concurrent relationship of children's mental state language production and their ability to comprehend and use these terms on experimental tasks, to identify the concurrent relationship between mental state language and preverbal and verbal perspective-taking and implicit false-belief understanding and finally to determine which developmental skills at the age of 24 months are significant predictors of children's later mental state language production. Study 1 showed that 27-month-olds were already able to produce mental state terms and showed a basic understanding of their own knowledge and ignorance, but failed to show comprehension of epistemic mental state terms in experimental tasks. Thus, despite their early competence in producing epistemic mental state terms, children's comprehension of these terms appeared to be limited. The results of the first study also identified that mental state language production was related to children's own verbal level-1 visual perspective-taking, in particular to usage of the verb `know/don't know' in several naturalistic contexts, independent of general language. There was also continuity from children's preverbal understanding of perspectives to their ability to report their own perspective in a verbal task. However, there was no relationship between preverbal understanding of perspectives and mental state language production according to a parental questionnaire, suggesting that early preverbal understanding of perspectives is not related to the mere production of mental state terms unless children already produce these terms in appropriate contexts. In relation to implicit false-belief understanding, children's performance suggested that they followed a simple strategy of looking at the last object location instead of demonstrating false-belief understanding. Finally, study 1 also identified sentence production, inhibition and fine motor skills at 24 months as significant predictors of children's later production of mental state language at 27 months. In study 2, children's ability to infer a speaker's need for information was investigated further by administering a pragmatic inference task from study 1 to 2-, 3- and 5-year-olds and determining at which age children showed competence. Study 2 showed that despite being able to draw the right pragmatic inferences for the mental state verb `want' at the age of 2, only at the age of 5 children were able to draw the right pragmatic inferences for the mental state verb `know/don't know'. The overall results of this thesis implied that the crucial aspect of mental state language is not mere production of the verbs, but children's experience with a variety of contexts in which mental state verbs can be used, corresponding with a socioconstructivist approach to cognitive development. The number of naturalistic contexts related to children's metarepresentations of their own ignorance, to their ability of inferring a speaker's desire and their ability to verbalize their own perspective, thus suggesting that the conversational input children receive is one of the main ways in which mental representations become explicit. Furthermore, the theoretical view that children's preverbal competence may be better explained by a production rule approach instead of early conceptual understanding is discussed. (shrink)

Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for sociality, human inter-subjectivity (...) develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

Mental fictionalism holds that folk psychology should be regarded as a kind of fiction. The present version gives a Lewisian prefix semantics for mentalistic discourse, where roughly, a mentalistic sentence “p” is true iff “p” is deducible from the folk psychological fiction. An eliminativist version of the view can seem self-refuting, but this charge is neutralized. Yet a different kind of “self-effacing” emerges: Mental fictionalism appears to be a mere “parasite” on a future science of cognition, without contributing anything substantial. (...) The paper then rebuts the objection, illustrating that prefix semantics resolves a lingering problem for eliminativism from Boghossian. The problem is that eliminativists seem unable to adopt realism about neuroscience, for such realism implies that neuroscientific statements *represent* reality accurately. However, a deflationary version of prefix semantics allows the eliminativist to draw an ontologically relevant distinction (roughly) between truths that have a story-telling prefix and those that do not. (Deflationism means there is no implication that the unprefixed sentences robustly represent reality.) The overarching lesson is that eliminativists need to approach to ontology carefully so to avoid self-refutation; however, prefix semantical mental fictionalism provides the resources for them to do so. (shrink)

For the last 25 years discussions and debates about commonsense psychology (or “folk psychology,” as it is often called) have been center stage in the philosophy of mind. There have been heated disagreements both about what folk psychology is and about how it is related to the scientific understanding of the mind/brain that is emerging in psychology and the neurosciences. In this chapter we will begin by explaining why folk psychology plays such an important role in the philosophy of mind. (...) Doing that will require a quick look at a bit of the history of philosophical discussions about the mind. We’ll then turn our attention to the lively contemporary discussions aimed at clarifying the philosophical role that folk psychology is expected to play and at using findings in the cognitive sciences to get a clearer understanding of the exact nature of folk psychology. (shrink)

When we think about what others believe and want, we are usually affected by what we know about their attitudes. If I’m aware that another person believes something, I have an opportunity to agree or disagree with it. If I think that another person wants something, I can endorse or disapprove of her desire. The importance of such reactions to attributed beliefs and desires has thus far been overlooked in philosophy of mind where the focus has been on explanatory and (...) predictive roles of attitude attribution. The primary goal of this thesis is to fill this lacuna and to articulate the indispensability of such reactions – agreement/disagreement and endorsement/disapproval – for social cognition. In the process of doing it I also show how these initial reactions ground certain further possible responses in intersubjective communication: manipulation, negotiation or adoption of attributed attitudes. The second aim of this thesis is to explicate what is it about belief and desire attributions that makes the responses I’ve described possible. Because one can agree or disagree both with beliefs and assertions and endorse or disapprove both desires and requests, I argue that we should understand belief attributions in terms of assertions and desire attributions in terms of requests. When we think what someone believes and wants, we treat her as a conversation partner because her attitudes call for the same responses as speech acts do, even if she hasn’t made any explicit assertion or request herself. In short, beliefs and desires have communicative significance. Given such significance, we can also see what one needs to take into consideration when attributing these attitudes to another. My answer in the thesis is that belief and desire attributions have to be grounded in facts about the behaviour and well-being of attributees and that these facts also constitute the nature of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Cooperation admits of degrees. When factory workers stage a slowdown, they do not cease to cooperate with management in the production of goods altogether, but they are not fully cooperative either. Full cooperation implies that participants in a joint action are committed to rendering appropriate contributions as needed toward their joint end so as to bring it about, consistently with the type of action and the generally agreed upon constraints within which they work, as efficiently as they can, where their (...) contributions are sensitive to information (where available) about how others are contributing in the sense that they adjust as needed their contributions in light of information about how others are contributing to ensure effective pursuit of their joint end, where this includes rendering aid to other participants if needed, insofar as they are able. Full cooperation entails those cooperating are engaged in a joint intentional action. Some prominent studies of joint intentional action focus exclusively on cases of full cooperation (notably that of Michael Bratman (2014)). But not all joint intentional action is fully cooperative. One example is the work slowdown. Another example is provided by competitive games like chess and football, or sports like boxing and wrestling, where participants are clearly not intending to contribute to the pursuit of all of the goals of the others engaged in the activity, even when those goals are internal to the type of activity in question, but instead intend actively to frustrate some of them. In this paper, I provide a taxonomy of forms of non-cooperative behavior within the context of behavior that is still to some degree cooperative, and I argue that the minimal conditions of joint intentional action define minimal cooperative behavior, that is, that minimally joint intentional action is per se minimally cooperative behavior. I define in precise terms what that comes to, and how it is possible in cases in which it seems that one or more participants are in one or more ways acting so as to frustrate the contributions of other participants to their joint action. (shrink)

Background: Interdisciplinarity is one of the current trends in the scientific world today, that began with the uneasiness about the loss of the unity of science. This trend also opens possibilities for explaining complex phenomena more comprehensively and creating more advanced applications and implementations of scientific theories. One of the biggest challenges to conducting interdisciplinary research is theoretical integration, how can we combine theories from various disciplines such that the combination is fruitful? Method: This dissertation attempts to answer this challenge (...) by analyzing the intertheoretical connections of some theories from various disciplines for some real interdisciplinary research. The structuralist metatheory of science is applied as the basic theory to model the intertheoretical connections formally. This research begins with modeling the scientific theories in question before modeling the intertheoretical connections and some modifications needed. This research focuses on some researches in cognitive science that involve psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. The first research is the research conducted by van Veen et al., who research the activity of neurons in a brain's field called dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex during a phase of dissonance between cognitions. This research serves as a context for the analysis of intertheoretical reduction between the Festinger theory of cognitive dissonance and the Hawkins-Kandel computational neuroscientific theory. The other research is the consonance model of simulation built by Shultz and Lepper, which implements the Hopfield network to build a simulation of the cognitive dissonance. The third research is the connectionist model of simulation built by van Overwalle and Jordens, which implements the two-layers feed-forward perceptron and the delta rule as its learning rule to build a simulation of forced compliance dissonance. Result: Through this research, the author concludes that the structuralist metatheory of science can be applied for modeling and analyzing intertheoretical connections in the same discipline and between disciplines in real scientific research. The structuralist metatheory of science enables us to model and analyze the structure of the theories and their intertheoretical connections with great detail and brings very fruitful results. This research delivers some results not only for the structuralist theory science itself but also for the philosophy of science in general and interdisciplinary researches, especially cognitive science. First, by analyzing the models, a revision of the definition of intertheoretical specialization, and specialization of the concept of theory-holon according to the structuralist theory of science, called the V-pattern and strategy for combining scientific theories, are proposed. These V-pattern and strategy can serve as a tool for combining scientific theories. Second, unlike other approaches on intertheoretical reduction such as the GNS model, the structuralist metatheory of science does not intend to formulate a generalized model of reduction nor focus only on intertheoretical reduction. It provides us powerful tools for modeling various intertheoretical relations, including intertheoretical reduction, case by case. Although the intertheoretical reduction in the structuralist model is more epistemological than ontological, the structuralist models show how the reduction has empirical claims and intended applications by applying the r* function that maps the T-theoretical level to T-non-theoretical level. Third, related to the notion of the unity of science, this dissertation still sees that the unity of science is still a plausible and essential agenda for the philosophy of science and the scientific world in general. This dissertation's idea of the unity of science proposed does not assume essentialism, reductionism, and epistemological monism. This dissertation sees that the unity of science is closely related to scientific practice. Fourth, for interdisciplinary research, primarily cognitive science, this dissertation proposes an approach to model and analyze intertheoretical connections for any scientific research or any philosophical school in philosophy of science related to the idea of intertheoretical relation. This dissertation is the first example of such modeling and analysis. (shrink)

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

In this entry I will offer a systematic novel taxonomy of our imaginative abilities coherent with standard treatments in cognitive science, philosophy of mind and aesthetics. In particular, I will distinguish between the non-propositional imagination and the propositional imagination, which include several further sub-varieties such as the objectual imagination, imagery, experiential imagination, supposition, make-believe and more.

Attribution theory has played a major role in social-psychological research. Unfortunately, the term attribution is ambiguous. According to one meaning, forming an attribution is making a dispositional (trait) inference from behavior; according to another meaning, forming an attribution is giving an explanation (especially of behavior). The focus of this paper is on the latter phenomenon of behavior explanations. In particular, I discuss a new theory of explanation that provides an alternative to classic attribution theory as it dominates the textbooks and (...) handbooks—which is typically as a version of Kelley’s (1967) model of attribution as covariation detection. I begin with a brief critique of this theory and, out of this critique, develop a list of requirements that an improved theory has to meet. I then introduce the new theory, report empirical data in its support, and apply it to a number of psychological phenomena. I finally conclude with an assessment of how much progress we have made in understanding behavior explanations and what has yet to be learned. (shrink)

This article aims to show how mind, matter and meaning might be united in one theory using certain concepts of information, building on ideas of empathy and intentionality. The concept of intentionality in philosophy of mind (“aboutness”), which is “the ineliminable mark of the mental” according to Brentano, can be viewed as the relationship between model and object, and empathy can be viewed as a form of mental modelling, so that the inclination to attribute mentality can be identified with the (...) inclination to empathise with the relevant entity. Physical information, a concept quite well established within the discipline of physics, is basically a reconceptualization of material form. Daniel Dennett's concept of the intentional stance allows the development of a concept of “intentional information,” a broad term that encompasses mental content and semantic information generally, as encoded within physical information/material form. (shrink)

The interaction theory of social cognition contends that intersubjective interaction is characterized by both immersion and irreducibility. This motivates a question about autonomy and self-agency: If I am always caught up in processes of interaction, and interaction always goes beyond me and my ultimate control, is there any room for self-agency? I outline an answer to this question that points to the importance of communicative and narrative practices.

My goal is to try to understand the intentionality of consciousness from a naturalistic perspective. My basic methodological assumption is that embodied agents, through their sensory-motor, affective, and cognitive activities directed at objects, engage in intentional relations with these objects. Furthermore, I assume that intentional relations can be viewed from a first- and a third-person perspective. What is called primary consciousness is the first-person perspective of the agent engaged in a current intentional relation. While primary consciousness posits an implicit.

The human ability to represent, conceptualize, and reason about mind and behavior is one of the greatest achievements of human evolution and is made possible by a “folk theory of mind” — a sophisticated conceptual framework that relates different mental states to each other and connects them to behavior. This chapter examines the nature and elements of this framework and its central functions for social cognition. As a conceptual framework, the folk theory of mind operates prior to any particular conscious (...) or unconscious cognition and provides the “framing” or interpretation of that cognition. Central to this framing is the concept of intentionality, which distinguishes intentional action (caused by the agent’s intention and decision) from unintentional behavior (caused by internal or external events without the intervention of the agent’s decision). A second important distinction separates publicly observable from publicly unobservable (i.e., mental) events. Together, the two distinctions define the kinds of events in social interaction that people attend to, wonder about, and try to explain. A special focus of this chapter is the powerful tool of behavior explanation, which relies on the folk theory of mind but is also intimately tied to social demands and to the perceiver’s social goals. A full understanding of social cognition must consider the folk theory of mind as the conceptual underpinning of all (conscious and unconscious) perception and thinking about the social world. (shrink)

Nesta entrada irei apresentar uma nova taxonomia sistemática das nossas capacidades imaginativas, coerente com os tratamentos convencionais em ciência cognitiva, filosofia da mente e estética. Em particular, irei distinguir entre a imaginação não-proposicional e a imaginação proposicional, o que inclui ainda outras subvariedades, como a imaginação objectual, a imagética, a imaginação experiencial, a suposição, o faz-de-conta e outras.

This chapter outlines a new argument for the view that language has a cognitive role. I suggest that humans exhibit two distinct kinds of belief state, one passively formed, the other actively formed. I argue that actively formed beliefs (_virtual beliefs_, as I call them) can be identified with _premising policies_, and that forming them typically involves certain linguistic operations. I conclude that natural language has at least a limited cognitive role in the formation and manipulation of virtual beliefs.

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)

This dissertation explores philosophical issues in autism and defends a new version of the enactive approach to autism and social cognition. The discussion in this dissertation centres around the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, addressing this question in ways that raise broader philosophical issues. Within the philosophy of mind, these include the problem of other minds, the nature of emotions, and narratives and their role in understanding the self. Beyond cognition, such issues are intertwined with questions in (...) metaphysics, philosophy of science, sociopolitical and moral philosophy, and disability studies. In responding to the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, I argue that autistic social interaction problems result from the sensorimotor differences between autistics and non-autistics. This contrasts with the response to this question given by widely-endorsed views that emphasize instead the cognitive deficits that autistic people have. Such cognitivist views, such as the theory theory and simulation theory, are the focus of my first two critical chapters. I go on to offer a critique of two approaches that go beyond the focus on mindreading in appealing to sensorimotor problems as lying at the heart of the problem. These views, interaction theory and the original enactive approach, are the focus of the next two chapters. I then turn to defend a novel form of the enactive approach in the last part of the dissertation by emphasizing the role of emotions as the capacity for us to make sense of the world and to construct the sense of self from narratives. My new approach shifts the explanatory focus from perception and motion to emotion. This maintains the advantage of the original enactive approach, while avoiding its behaviouristically limited descriptions. My account thus expands the theory’s capacity to describe and explain internal states important to self-understanding and self-expression. This allows one to approach autistic social difficulties by attending to the first-person perspective, cohering with my reliance on first-person autistic narratives as a major source of evidence that supplements traditional scientific research on autism. (shrink)

In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of “folk psychology,” the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. According to Gordon, we attribute mental states to others not by representing those states or by applying the generalizations of theory, but by imagining ourselves in the position of a target to be interpreted and exploiting our own decision-making skills to make assertions which we then attribute to others as ‘beliefs’. I describe a leading objections to Gordon’s theory—the problem of (...) adjustment—and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer this objection. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon’s position still runs into a new problem concerning the epistemological presuppositions of belief-attribution. This suggests a new account of folk psychological explanation that draws on children’s basic folk epistemological knowledge. Identifying this new alternative helps undermine the simplicity of a theory based on simulation-based explanation. (shrink)

(First paragraph.) Different views on the relation between phenomenal reality, the world as we consciously experience it, and noumenal reality, the world as it is independent from an experiencing subject, have different implications for a collection of interrelated issues of meaning and reality including aspects of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology. Exploring some of these implications, this paper compares and brings together analytic, continental, and Buddhist approaches, focusing on relevant aspects of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Jacques (...) Derrida, Dharmakīrti, and Dōgen. Prima facie, these philosophers have little in common, and indeed the differences are vast. Even in case of the two Western thinkers there is a fundamental difference between Davidson’s anti-dualist identification of phenomenal, experienced reality with the noumenal, real, external world on the one hand, and the bracketing or elimination of noumenal reality at the base of Derrida’s thought on the other, which lead to radically different ideas with regards to (the possibility and nature of) objectivity and our linguistic access to the real/external/noumenal world. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories of triangulation and différance respectively, and these similarities can be exploited to bridge some of the differences and attempt a constructive engagement. (shrink)

If dispositions are conceived as properties of systems that refer to possible causal relations, dispositions can be used in singular causal explanations. By means of these dispositional explanations, we can explain behavior B of a system x by (i) referring to a situation of type S that triggered B, given that x has a disposition D to do B in S, or (ii) by referring to a disposition D of x to do B in S, given that x is in (...) a situation of type S. Dispositional explanations are adequate and indispensable explanations: they can explain behavior B without explicitly referring to the underlying causal basis in x that constitutes a disposition to do B. Radical Behaviorist explanations are a sort of dispositional explanations, but the dispositional model is not restricted to these explanations. The dispositional model is compatible with, or can be applied to, several research programs. (shrink)

Stich begins his paper "What is a Theory of Mental Representation?" (1992) by noting that while there is a dizzying range of theories of mental representation in today's philosophical market place, there is very little self-conscious reflection about what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. This is quite remarkable, he thinks, because if we bother to engage in such reflection, some very surprising conclusions begin to emerge. The most surprising conclusion of all, according to Stich, is that (...) most of the philosophers in this field are undertaking work that is quite futile: It is my contention that most of the players in this very crowded field have no coherent project that could possibly be pursued successfully with the methods they are using. (p.244) Stich readily admits that this is a startling conclusion; so startling, he thinks, that some may even take it as an indication that he has simply "failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to" (p.244). But it is a conclusion that he is willing to stand by, and he sets about it defending it in the body of his paper. Stich, I think, is right about this—I do take his conclusion to indicate that he has failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to. And he has failed to do this largely because he has failed to distinguish between the theory of mind that is implicit in our folk psychology and the mental mechanism that is responsible for our capacity to make folk psychological judgements. When this conflation is undone, so too is the reasoning that takes Stich to his startling conclusion. This is not to say that the conclusion itself is clearly false; it is merely to say that Stich has failed to show that it is true. In what follows I will defend this analysis of Stich's self-conscious reflections on what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. I will begin with a very brief exposition of Stich's survey of the logical terrain in this part of the philosophical landscape and the line of reasoning that subsequently delivers up the aforementioned conclusion. I will then go on to argue that the latter line of reasoning is fundamentally misdirected because of an error in the former survey. (shrink)

It is widely assumed in the developmental literature that certain classes of modal expression appear later in language acquisition than others; specifically, epistemic interpretations lag behind non-epistemic interpretations. An explanation for these findings is proposed in terms of the child’s developing theory of mind, i.e. the ability to attribute to oneself and others mental representations, and to reason inferentially about them. It is hypothesized that epistemic modality crucially implicates theory-of-mind abilities and is therefore expected to depend on prior developments in (...) the child's ability to handle representations of mental representations. In support of this hypothesis, it is shown that autistic individuals have difficulty with epistemics. (shrink)

Going beyond the biological and physiological limitations imposed on us by the human body is something which the human race has strived to do throughout its history. There is something about our human nature that compels us to strive for improvement and enhancement in our physical and mental performance, and to stretch ever further the boundaries of human accomplishment. Nowhere can a stronger desire for enhanced performance be found than in the realm of competitive sport and, it is certainly arguable (...) that, there are very few sports that can rival the competitiveness, endurance and physical exertion involved in the sport of boxing. Transhumanism is borne of this desire for continuous improvement and the refusal to resign ourselves to the restrictions placed on us by our natural biological constitution and environment, enhancing human capabilities and capacities by way of new and emergent technologies. With regard to sport, transhumanism could provide us with the ability to train longer, run, swim or cycle faster, jump higher, throw further and, in the case of boxing, punch harder. However, it is not restricted or confined to the enhancement of our physical powers, but could equally-well serve to improve our psychological capacities and alter the way in which we perceive and experience the world. In this way transhumanism could be employed to change the content of experience. (shrink)