When talking about decisionmaking for children with a life-threatening condition, the death of children with brain tumors deserves special attention. The last days of the lives of these children can be particularly harsh for bystanders, and raise questions about the suffering of these children themselves. In the Netherlands, these children are part of the group for whom a wide range of end-of-life decisions are discussed, and questions raised. What does the end-of-life for these children look like, and what motivates physicians (...) and parents to make decisions that may affect the life and death of these children? This article highlights the story of the parents of the sisters Roos and Noor. When both their daughters were diagnosed with a hereditary brain tumor, they had to make similar decisions twice. Their story sheds light on the suffering of children in the terminal phase, and how this suffering may motivate parents and physicians to make decisions that influence the end of life of these children’s lives.We argue that complete knowledge about suffering in the terminal phase of children with brain tumors is impossible. However, by collecting experiences like those of Roos and Noor, we can move toward an experienced-based understanding and better guide parents and physicians through these hardest of decisions. (shrink)

We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and context–independent representations of means and goals. We analyse these ways of (...) co–operating in game–theoretic terms and submit that the co–operative strategy of games that involve shared representations of future goals may provide new equilibrium solutions. (shrink)

The question of the relation between the collective and the individual has had a long but patchy history within both philosophy and psychology. In this chapter we consider some arguments that could be adopted for the primacy of the we, and examine their conceptual and empirical implications. We argue that the we needs to be seen as a developing and dynamic identity, not as something that exists fully fledged from the start. The concept of we thus needs more nuanced and (...) differentiated treatment than currently exists, distinguishing it from the idea of a ‘common ground’ and discerning multiple senses of ‘we-ness’. At an empirical level, beginning from the shared history of human evolution and prenatal existence, a simple sense of pre-reflective we-ness, we argue, emerges from second-person I-you engagement in earliest infancy. Developmentally, experientially and conceptually, engagement remains fundamental to the we throughout its many forms, characterized by reciprocal interaction and conditioned by the normative aspects of mutual addressing. (shrink)

The introduction of new energy technologies may lead to public resistance and contestation. It is often argued that this phenomenon is caused by an inadequate inclusion of relevant public values in the design of technology. In this paper we examine the applicability of the value sensitive design approach. While VSD was primarily introduced for incorporating values in technological design, our focus in this paper is expanded towards the design of the institutions surrounding these technologies, as well as the design of (...) stakeholder participation. One important methodological challenge of VSD is to identify the relevant values related to new technological developments. In this paper, we argue that the public debate can form a rich source from which to retrieve the values at stake. To demonstrate this, we have examined the arguments used in the public debate regarding the exploration and exploitation of shale gas in the Netherlands. We identified two important sets of the underlying values, namely substantive and procedural values. This paper concludes with two key findings. Firstly, contrary to what is often suggested in the literature, both proponents and opponents seem to endorse the same values. Secondly, contestation seems to arise in the precise operationalization of these values among the different stakeholders. In other words, contestation in the Dutch shale gas debate does not arise from inter-value conflict but rather from intra-value conflicts. This multi-interpretability should be incorporated in VSD processes. (shrink)

Intentional communication is perceptually based and about attentional objects. Three attention mechanisms are distinguished: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. Attention-focusing directs the subject towards attentional objects. Attention-focusing is goal-governed (controlled by stimulus) or goal-intended (under the control of the subject). Attentional objects are perceptually categorised functional entities that emerge in the interaction between subjects and environment. Joint attention allows for focusing on the same attentional object simultaneously (mutual object-focused attention), provided that the subjects have focused on each other beforehand (subject-subject (...) attention). It results in intentional communication if the subjects attend to each other as subjects (i) capable of attending, and (ii) attending in a goal-intended way. Intentional communication is fundamentally imperative and adapted to action. (shrink)

We explain metacognition as a management of cognitive resources that does not necessitate algorithmic strategies or metarepresentation. When pragmatic, world-directed actions cannot reduce the distance to the goal, agents engage in epistemic action directed at cognition. Such actions often are physical and involve other people, and so are open to observation. Taking a dynamic systems approach to development, we suggest that implicit and perceptual metacognition emerges from dyadic reciprocal interaction. Early intersubjectivity allows infants to internalize and construct rudimentary strategies for (...) monitoring and control of their own and others’ cognitions by emotion and attention. The functions of initiating, maintaining, and achieving turns make proto-conversation a productive platform for developing metacognition. It enables caregiver and infant to create shared routines for epistemic actions that permit training of metacognitive skills. The adult is of double epistemic use to the infant – as a teacher that comments on and corrects the infant’s efforts, and as the infant’s cognitive resource in its own right. (shrink)

Abstract: To evaluate the explanation of change blindness in terms of misrepresentation and determine its role for Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory of consciousness, we present an alternative account of change blindness that affords an independent outlook and provides a viable alternative. First we describe Rosenthal’s actualism and the notion of misrepresentation, then introduce change blindness and the explanation of it by misrepresentation. Rosenthal asserts that, in change blindness, the first-order state tracks the post-change stimulus, but the higher-order state misrepresents it. (...) We propose the alternative that both post-change and pre-change content can be tracked by the first-order state, and that in change blindness the higher-order thought represents the pre-change state, resulting in a good-enough representation: true but not veridical. We compare the two explanations with respect to available data and analyse the principal theoretical claims. Discussing the rationale of the alternative account, we conclude that there is good reason to conceive of the mind as satisficing, geared towards reliability instead of truth-tracking, and guided by representations that are good enough as opposed to complete or corresponding to the facts. We end with some methodological remarks concerning the risk of cognitive biases in interdisciplinary research that brings together empirical and philosophical claims. (shrink)

Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.

It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience equally result from the dynamic (...) interplay between agent and context, allowing for artist and viewer to relate to the artist's work in similar ways. (shrink)

The notion of nonconceptual content in Dienes & Perner's theory is examined. A subject may be in a state with nonconceptual content without having the concepts that would be used to describe the state. Nonconceptual content does not seem to be a clear-cut case of either implicit or explicit knowledge. It underlies a kind of practical knowledge, which is not reducible to procedural knowledge, but is accessible to the subject and under voluntary control.

By describing the aim of triangulation as locating the objects of thoughts and utterances, Davidson has given in the double role of accounting for both the individuation of content and the sense in which content necessarily is public. The focus of this article is on how triangulation may contribute to the individuation of content. I maintain that triangulation, interpreted in terms of joint attention, may serve to break into the intentional circle of meaning and belief, yet without forcing us to (...) renounce the claims concerning the interdependence of meaning and belief and the irreducibility of meaning. (shrink)

The present account explains (i) which elements of nonverbal reference are intersubjective, (ii) what major effects intersubjectivity has on the general development of intentional communication and at what stages, and (iii) how intersubjectivity contributes to triggering the general capacity for nonverbal reference in the second year of life. First, intersubjectivity is analysed in terms of a sharing of experiences that is either mutual or individual, and either dyadic or triadic. Then it is shown that nonverbal reference presupposes intersubjectivity in communicative (...) intent indicating and referential behaviour, and indirectly in modifications of previous behaviour in response to communication failure. It is argued that different forms of intersubjectivity entail different types of communicative skills. A comprehensive analysis of data on gaze-related intersubjective behaviour in young infants shows that interaffectivity and interattentionality enable referential skills early in development and together allow for complex behaviour. Early referential skills, it is proposed, arise by other mechanisms than in nonverbal reference. Reliable and consistent use of nonverbal reference occurs when interaffectivity and interattentionality coalesce with interintentionality, which affords general cognitive skills that together permit a decontextualisation of communicative behaviour. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept of the self (...) in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we think and talk about ourselves in a wide range of circumstances. The topic has been discussed in numerous articles during the last decades, but rarely in the form of a monograph. I felt the need for a book of this kind while working on my dissertation. The manuscript is the result of many years of reflection on the self and indexicals. Some of the theories that I advance have developed as a result of my teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of language the last couple of years. (shrink)

The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obligation, and that the (...) norms that guide social interaction are dynamic, situated, and heterogeneous. It is argued that normativity is intersubjective and negotiable and starts to develop in the first year, emerging as a practical skill that depends on participatory engagement. Three sources of compliance are discussed: emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversation. (shrink)

An experimental paradigm that purports to test young children’s understanding of social norms is examined. The paradigm models norms on Searle’s notion of a constitutive rule. The experiments and the reasons provided for their design are discussed. It is argued that the experiments do not provide direct evidence about the development of social norms and that the concepts of a social norm and constitutive rule are distinct. The experimental data are re-interpreted, and suggestions for how to deal with the present (...) criticism are presented that do not require abandoning the paradigm as such. Then the conception of normativity that underlies the experimental paradigm is rejected and an alternative view is put forward. It is argued that normativity emerges from interaction and engagement, and that learning to comply with social norms involves understanding the distinction between their content, enforcement, and acceptance. As opposed to rule-based accounts that picture the development of an understanding of social norms as one-directional and based in enforcement, the present view emphasizes that normativity is situated, reciprocal, and interactive. (shrink)

Several conditions for being an intrinsically intentional agent are put forward. On a first level of intentionality the agent has representations. Two kinds are described: cued and detached. An agent with both kinds is able to represent both what is prompted by the context and what is absent from it. An intermediate level of intentionality is achieved by having an inner world, that is, a coherent system of detached representations that model the world. The inner world is used, e.g., for (...) conditional and counterfactual thinking. Contextual or indexical representations are necessary in order that the inner world relates to the actual external world and thus can be used as a basis for action. To have full-blown intentionality, the agent should also have a detached self-awareness, that is, be able to entertain self-representations that are independent of the context. (shrink)

Recently, it has been suggested that at least somekinds of mental representation are strongly context-dependent. Not only what is represented, but also how, depends on the context and the subject's interaction with it. Theories about situated cognition stress the importance of the subject's bodily presence and physical activity in the environment for representing and thinking. What does this mean for creativity? Context-dependence can, it seems, both impede and support creativity. Is creativity a higher-level cognitive function, or does it mainly rely (...) on good old-fashioned know-how? (shrink)

The present account explains which elements of the act of nonverbal reference are intersubjective, which major effects intersubjectivity has on the development of intentional communication and at what stages, and how intersubjectivity contributes to trigger the general capacity for nonverbal reference in the second year. First, intersubjectivity is analysed in terms of a mutual or individual, dyadic or triadic, sharing of experiences. It is then shown that nonverbal reference presupposes intersubjectivity relative to communicative-intent indicating and referential behaviour, and the modification (...) of previous behaviour in response to communication failure. It is argued that different forms of intersubjectivity entail different types of communicative skills. A comprehensive analysis of data on various gaze-related intersubjective behaviour in young infants shows that interaffectivity and interattentionality enable referential skills early in development and together allow for complex behaviour, but also that early referential skills arise by other mechanisms than in nonverbal reference and their functions do not overlap. Reliable and consistent use of nonverbal reference occurs when interaffectivity and interattentionality coalesce with interintentionality, which affords general cognitive skills, and these capacities together permit a decontextualisation of communicative behaviour. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

In our response, we address four themes arising from the commentaries. First, we discuss the distinction between cognition and metacognition and show how to draw it within our framework. Next, we explain how metacognition differs from social cognition. The underlying mechanisms of metacognitive development are then elucidated in terms of interaction patterns. Finally, we consider measures of metacognition and suitable methods for investigating it.

More and more firms have a chief sustainability officer (CSO) to support the organizational focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Yet, there is much to learn about the boundary conditions that make the presence of CSOs particularly effective for firms’ CSR. Using an attention-based view lens, we investigate the relationship between having a CSO as attention carrier of CSR activities and examine the potential boundary conditions related to the three attention principles (attention selection, represented by board diversity; attention structures, represented (...) by a CSR committee; and situated attention, represented by country-level CSR standards). We test our hypotheses using a global sample of 3,470 firms across 54 countries. Our results show that the influence of the CSO on internal and external CSR is most important in the absence of attention principles that may act as alternative attention carriers of CSR. In other words, attention principles form boundaries to the CSO’s influence on internal and external CSR. Our study contributes to research on the attention-based view, CSOs, and CSR. (shrink)

The goal of the present deliverable is to provide a developmental analysis of attentional intersubjectivity, which, as we show below, is a more inclusive notion than the more commonly used term ‘joint attention’. The use of the term ‘joint attention’ is not consistent in the literature, sometimes referring to the general phenomenon when two or more subjects attend to the same target, sometimes to more reciprocal situations in which the subjects also are aware of attending to the same target. Most (...) often solely visual attention has been described, but implicitly the descriptions have been thought to generalize to other modalities. The concepts introduced in this deliverable constitute an attempt to construct a coherent framework that will allow for distinguishing and comparing the range of behaviours that in the literature have been addressed as ‘joint attention’ behaviours. By attentional intersubjectivity we refer to the general case when two or more subjects simultaneously focus their attention on the same target. Attentional intersubjectivity will be further divided into types, according to which behaviours that are typically associated with attentional intersubjectivity occur during the interaction, and in which combinations. The result is that the over-all behaviour of the subjects during different types of attentional intersubjectivity differs. Our contentions are that: a) the types of attentional intersubjectivity identified in this report build on each other cumulatively and constitute different levels, and b) these levels correspond to evolutionary and developmental stages. In saying that the types are cumulative we mean that there is a progress by successive stages where each type is causally dependent on the type preceding it, and, furthermore, has increased in complexity as compared to previous types. While attentional intersubjectivity involves several perceptual modalities, for practical reasons, this study primarily concerns the visual modality. Our analysis is, however, intended also to be applicable to these other modalities. (shrink)

The objects of attention can be located anywhere along the causal link from the source of stimuli to the final output of the vision system. As causes, they attract and control attention, and as products, they constitute targets of analysis and explicit comments. Stimulus-driven indexing creates pointers that support fast and frugal cognition.

In situations that require creative thinking, there is no well-known procedure for how to reach the goal, or the solution. Among other things, it is not clear how choices between outcomes are made, or when the search for a solution should terminate. The article focusses on the evaluation of solutions that are generated during the search. The general question concerns the standards according to which evaluation is made. Are they at all similar to those that are used in normal problem-solving? (...) Another question relates to the stages of the processs during which evauation occurs. Is it during the whole process that evaluations are made, or only towards the end? (shrink)

1. Introduction; 2. Indexical self-awareness; 3. Detached self-awareness; 4. Social self-awareness; 5. Basic social self-awareness; 6. Developed social self-awareness; 7. Person-consciousness.

The article discusses the role of intuition for insight. Creativity provides heuristic solutions to problems that are intractable if approached in standard, algorithmic ways. Intuition is claimed to occur during the incubation phase and to crucially depend on embodied memory and unconscious processing of memories, such as reconstruction and recreation. Two suggestions as to how memory contributes to intuition, and by which processes are analysed and compared: Barsalou & Prinz’ and Langley & Jones’.

In an experimental study of humans reactions to social motor intention in a humanoid robot, we showed that SMI cause the emergence of social interaction between human and robot. We investigated whether people would respond differently to a humanoid robot depending on the kinematic profile of its movement. A robot placed a block on a table in front of a human subject in three different ways. We designed the robot’s arm and upper body movements to manifest the human kinematic profile (...) of either a non-social motor intention or a social motor intention. In the control condition the robot performed an irregular movements. Once the robot had finished its task, the task of the human was to place another block on top of the first one. We distinguishedbetween social and non-social responses to the robot’s behavior based in gaze behavior and kinematic profile of the human’s arm movement during the task. Our results show that the behavior of the human can be modulated by the kinematics of a robot’s motor action. In several cases the participants reciprocated movements displaying social motor intention with movements with a similar kind of kinematics, attempting to make eye contact during the task. This shows that HRI can emerge implicitly by sensorimotor processing and suggests that implementing a mechanism for social-motor intention in social robots designed to interact spontaneously would be useful. (shrink)

Neste artigo pretender-se-á estabelecer as bases sobre as quais Martín de Azpilcueta demonstra sua fundamentação da autoridade política no intuito de refletir sobre como este pensador articula sua argumentação no intuito de apresentar o povo como detentor originário, por direito natural, do poder civil. Para que este objetivo possa ser alcançado buscar-se-á apresentar como o autor relaciona e distingue o poder eclesiástico do poder laico ou civil. Em seguida demonstrar-se-á como o pensador espanhol estabelece sua fundamentação da autoridade civil popular (...) ao defender que o poder civil se legitima por ter sua origem em Deus, por ser de ordem natural e ser dado de forma imediata à comunidade dos mortais. A partir disso é possível considerar que a autoridade política laica, conforme o pensamento de Martín de Azpilcueta, tem o povo como seu legítimo depositário e que disso decorre a igualdade original primária de todos os homens na vida pública. Para que se possa realizar o objetivo apresentado neste trabalho estudar-se-á, de maneira específica, a Notabile tertium presente na obra Martín de Azpilcueta chamada Relectio C. Novit de Iudiciis publicada pela primeira vez em Coimbra no ano de 1548. (shrink)

O artigo busca examinar, no pensamento de Martín de Azpilcueta (1492- 1586), a questão da justificação moral da prática comercial. Na intenção de alcançar este objetivo, buscar-se-á explorar a compreensão da moralidade envolvendo a atividade comercial em pensadores anteriores a Azpilcueta que trataram do tema e, que de certa forma, o influenciaram na abordagem da questão. Nessa perspectiva, será destacada a discussão trazida por Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274) e João Duns Scotus (1265-1308). Assim, se investigará como o legado destes dois (...) grandes filósofos medievais influenciaram a compreensão de Azpilcueta sobre o tema da defesa da legitimidade moral da prática comercial, discussão essa que o pensador trata em sua obra Commentaria in septem distinctiones de poenitentia. (shrink)

Taking a psychological and philosophical outlook, we approach making as an embodied and embedded skill via the skilled artisan’s experience of having a corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue with the material while working with it. We investigate the dynamic relation between maker and material through the lens of pottery as illustrated by wheel throwing, claiming that the experience of dialogue signals an emotional involvement with clay. The examination of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of habit, the skilled intentionality framework, and material engagement theory shows that (...) while these theories explain complementary aspects of skillful engagement with the material world, they do not consider the dialogic dimension. By way of explanation, we submit that the artisan’s emotional engagement with the material world is based in openness and recognition and involves dialogue with the material. Drawing on the intimate relationship between movement and emotion, it promotes an open-ended manner of working and permits experiencing with the material, acting into its inherent possibilities. In conclusion, we suggest that dialogue, whether verbal or nonverbal, constitutes a primary means for making sense of the world at large, animate and inanimate. (shrink)

The paper discusses the concept of explanation in metaphysics. Different types of explanation are identified and explored. Scientific explanation is compared with metaphysical explanation. The comparison illustrates the difficulties with applying the concept of explanation in metaphysics.

It is argued that the capacity to focus attention is crucial for intentional communication. Intentional communication is goal-intended; directed at changing mental states and as a consequence behaviour; about a referential object common to sender and recipient; and about objects that may be context-and referent-independent. Three different kinds of attention is discerned: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. The focus of attention can, depending on the abilities of the subject, be on objects or subjects that either are contextual or stable, and (...) it can be individual or shared. For language use, subject-subject focusing along with shared attention are necessary. This does not require Gricean metarepresentations, but basically only attention contact between the subjects and behavioral co-ordination. Language use can be compared with tool use to bring out the characteristics that distinguish informational from intentional communication. The capacities required for tool use are in several cases similar to those required for language use. A basic similarity is that both activities are used as means to an end. (shrink)

Comparative psychology is a strongly interdisciplinary field that shares many of its experimental methods and observational techniques with ethology and developmental psychology. The great variety of theories that comparative psychology evokes to explain behavior generates a wide array of exciting and potentially fruitful accounts, but is also problematic. It increases the risk of error in the forms of inconsistent background assumptions, conceptual misunderstandings, unfalsifiable hypotheses and incoherent explanations, which in spite of perhaps being minor by themselves will impede scientific progress (...) in the long run. Moreover, similarly to psychology at large, comparative psychology tends to emphasize empirical investigations to the disadvantage of the analysis and development of theories and concepts. Consequently, disagreements that have their roots elsewhere than in methodology and experimental design do not receive sufficient attention. Furthermore, while evidence about biological evolution is notoriously hard to find, the methodology for comparing the capacities of different species is under continuous development. This forces comparative psychology to rely on the adequacy of the theoretical and conceptual framework to a greater extent than normally in the empirical sciences. In view of investigating the background of the problems that contemporary comparative psychology is facing, the present chapter examines central parts of the methodology and explanatory framework of comparative psychology as well as its global objective. (shrink)

Imperative and declarative pointing are distinct kinds of communicative acts that rely on different cognitive capacities in the speakers. Declarative pointing is an important precursor to language, seen from both an evolutionary and a developmental perspective. Declarative pointing is functionally independent of affective intersubjectivity, yet it is intimately related to it in development. It is argued that declarative pointing once evolved because it allows for the mutual evaluation of joint objects of attention. Interaffectivity and joint attention to a distal object (...) together constitute the prerequisites for using declarative pointing for the purpose of evaluation. Mutual evaluation has the benefits of enhancing co-operation and allowing for vicarious learning. It also makes possible the non-linguistic, active interrogation of others about their attitudes to jointly attended objects. (shrink)

[1] To know who one is, and also know whether one's experiences really belong to oneself, do not normally present any problem. It nevertheless happens that people do not recognise themselves as they walk by a mirror or do not understand that they fit some particular description. But there are situations in which it really seems impossible to be wrong about oneself. Of that, Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: " It is possible that, say in an accident, I should feel pain (...) in my arm, see a broken arm at my side, and think it is mine, when really it is my neighbour's. And I could, looking into a mirror, mistake a bump on his forehead for one on mine. On the other hand there is no question of recognising a person when I say I have toothache.... it is as impossible that in making the statement "I have toothache" I should have mistaken another person for myself, as it is to moan with pain by mistake, having mistaken someone else for me. " In the passage in which this remark is found, Wittgenstein distinguishes between two kinds of use of "I". The first use, as object, as in "I have broken my arm" or "The wind is blowing in my hair", he holds, involves the recognition of a particular person, and there is the possibility of error as concerns the identity of the person. In the other use, as subject, as in "I think it will rain" or "I am trying to lift my arm", no person is recognised. No mistake can be made about who the subject is. (shrink)

Apperly's and Butterfill's theory about belief reasoning is taken as a starting-point for a discussion of how we make sense of other people's actions in real time. More specifically, the focus lies on how we can understand others' actions in terms of their epistemic states on an implicit level of processing. First, the relevant parts of Apperly's and Butterfill's theory are summarized. Then, their account of implicit theory of mind in terms of registration ascription and perceptual encountering is discussed and (...) rejected. While accepting Apperly's and Butterfill's general epistemic account of belief reasoning, the author suggests that implicit theory of mind involves visuomotor, second-person pragmatic representations. Moreover, this presentation emphasizes the central place of interaction, claiming that perceptual intentions-to-interact are fundamental to social understanding. Via the mechanism of social attention, social intentions automatically prompt agents to share and exchange sensorimotor, pragmatic information. (shrink)