st and tt hybrids

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JM Engelhardt The Processes Underwriting Social Cognition Are NotSimulations

In the recent book Simulating Minds, Alvin Goldman argues that in oureveryday practices of predicting, interpreting and explaining others behaviors,agents employ both simulation processes and theories of mind. As far as themindreading literature is concerned, then, Goldman proposes a hybrid ofSimulation Theory (ST) and Theory-Theory (TT). More particularly, he says the

simulation processes are an agents default mode of mindreading (e.g. 170, 176,178) whereas a tacit theory is employed only in unspecified unusualcircumstances. While its plausible that there are some instances in whichmindreaders use simulations, I argue here that simulation cannot be the defaultmethod. At the conclusion, Ill sketch a different hybrid of the two and note an areaof ST that requires clarification if were to decide whether we do any simulationalmindreading at all.1

Were trying to figure out how one agent, the attributor, comes to formbeliefs about what another, the target, believes or desires or will believe, desire, ordecide. We assume that people often do this accurately and that there existpropositional attitudes and contents (whatever these may be) belonging to some

agents for other agents to read. TT says we mindread by exploiting a store ofpsychological laws that arrange behaviors into equivalence classes that areconsidered effects of equivalence classes of beliefs and desires. If TT is true, givenbehavior phi, I token a psychological law that categorizes phi into class ofbehaviorspsi, then, given a law that says behaviors of typepsi are caused, ceterisparibus, by mental states of type alpha, I inferthat the target of my mindreadingis/was tokening state(s) of the type alpha. Whatever mechanism we use to do ourusual inferring and theoretical reasoning will be the same we use whenmindreading, according to TT. ST, on the other hand, says an agent A reads mindsnot with her general inference mechanism, but with whatever processor she woulduse were she doing what she wants to read from her target. For example, Wilma

predicts what Fred will choose between orange juice and milk at lunch bypretending to have Freds beliefs and desires about milk, juice, and his situation atthe time, and running these pretend states through her own practical reasoningprocessor. Wilma then predicts that Fred will make whatever decision her processorspits out. Employing ones processor in this way with pretend-states as input issometimes called taking ones processor off-line. (Goldman 2006: 19-20) Themajor differences between the theories, then, the information and cognitivemechanisms they impute to successful mindreaders. TT requires that Wilma havegeneral informationtypically in the form of psychological lawsthat apply in theparticular to Freds case if shes going to read him accurately. ST, on the otherhand, says Wilma needs only information applicable to Fred at the time she wants

to read his mind, so long as she can run the particular information through theright processor on her end.2 On the mechanism front, TT says Wilma can readminds with only the inference mechanism and a store of psychological

1 Ill be talking about reading propositional attitudes only. Goldman thinks there is also a lower-level mindreading of affective states. In fact, I think Goldmans simulation theory is quite plausiblethere and much empirical evidence supports him.2 Well see, in fact, that ST probably needs psychological generalizations even to get to the pointwhere a simulation can be run.

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generalizations (wherever they are) intact. ST says Wilma needs a practicalreasoning processor and a store of information about Freds beliefs or desires topredict his decisions, an inference mechanism and a store of information forpredicting his inferences, and so on for whatever mental process she wants toread.

Default MindreaderSomething can be the default process by which we read minds in at least

two ways. It could be the one we firstemploy in mindreading or it could be the onewe typicallyadvert to. Simulation cant play either role.

It cant be our first employed mindreading technique either phylogeneticallyor ontogenetically, and both for the same simple reason. Running a simulationrequires that there be input for the simulator to process, no matter whichprocessor it is. Inputs to these processes are mental states, and so having input forreading Freds mind means having already imputed some mental states to him.Wilma cant expect to predict his decision by simulating his decision processor

unless she has an idea (not necessarily a conscious thought, of course) of whatmental states hes going to put into it. If simulational mindreading is going tooperate in advance of the application of psychological generalizations, then, STmust tell us a story about the provenance of the input to the original simulation. Inthe absence of robust theories of empathy or extrasensory perception, this meansretrodictive mindreading, or the attribution of mental states taken as causes ofbehavioral or verbal act the attributor witnesses or otherwise knows of.

Goldman admits that ST has no good story about retrodictive mindreading.Its best bet, he says, is the generate-and-test strategy. (Goldman 2006: 183-4)Seeing Fred drink a glass of milk, Wilma attempts to discern why hed do such athing by throwing some mental states into her practical reasoning processor. If the

output gives her the behavior she sees Fred evincing, then shes successfully readhis mind and she can attribute to him the mental states she put into hersimulation. If not, she tries another combination of mental states (and perhapsanother processor), and over again until she gets it right. Its implausible thathumans read minds this way for a number of obvious reasons, but implausibilityaside it doesnt give us a story sufficient for retrodictive mindreading. Thatsbecause discerning whether the output behavior is relevantly similar to a targetsrequires something not yet provided by ST: equivalence classes of behaviors.

Suppose Wilma gets very lucky and puts the pretend desire for milk, thepretend belief that theres milk in a cup before her, and the pretend belief thatdrinking the contents of the glass before her will sate her desire for milk into her

practical reasoning processor while leaving all her own actual beliefs out of it. Withthose mental states, her output behavior will be something like moving from whereshe is standing at the time of mindreading toward the refrigerator, opening thedoor, pouring a glass of milk, and then drinking the contents of that glass. To mostof us, it seems that this must be a lot like what Fred did. Indeed, most of usprobably think this behavior is so similar to Freds that its likely Wilma got themental states right. But how is Wilma to know this? If she doesnt employgeneralizations over classes of behaviors linking them to their mental causes, she

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has no reason to think of these behaviors as relevantly similar. Withoutequivalence classes of behaviors, Wilmas behavior would likely seem to her verydifferent from Freds. Whereas he tilted his head back at a 45-degree angle to drinkfrom the carton, she needs to go back 90 degrees (since he drank so much); if shedoesnt have a generalization according to which the two acts are effects of the

same mental states, she has no reason to think theyre relevantly similarbehaviors. If she doesnt think theyre relevantly similar behaviors, shell go ongenerating and testing, skipping over what most of us think is the appropriateattribution. Given considerations of this sort, if there is any collection of mentalstates that can pass the test portion of Wilmas generate and test method in theabsence of folk psychological generalizations, it would likely include beliefs anddesires that we tend to think irrelevant to behaviors like drinking milk. It wouldinclude, for example, beliefs and desires about what angle to tilt ones neck whendrinking milk, about the duration of milk-drinking involved in sating ones thirst,and so on to the end of Wilmas capacities for discerning differences between herbehavior and Freds.

Unless ST can tell a story for retrodictive mindreading or for generatingequivalence classes of behaviors, then simulation cannot be the mindreadingmechanism first used by humans historically or first used by each of usdevelopmentally.

Nor can simulation be the mindreading mechanism we use most frequently.Nichols, et al (1995) point out that when Wilma misreads Freds mind, ST canblame only two aspects of simulation. Either the processor shes running herpretend states through differs from Freds or the pretend states she put into theprocessor were insufficiently accurate. In any given case of failed mindreading,then, if neither of these explanations is plausible, then simulation wasnt used. (TT,by contrast, can say the mindreader lacked the necessary generalizations, folk-

psychological or otherwise.) Now we take a particular case of failed mindreading;in this case, it turns on the endowment effect. Loewenstein and Adler (1995)show that subjects fail to predict how much owning an object will change their ownvaluations of that object. First they had all subjects examine a mug, and theyasked half of the subjects to imagine owning it. They also asked those who wereimagining owning it to predict how much they might sell it for. On average, theypredicted theyd sell it for $3.73. Finally, all subjects were actually given mugs andtold they could exchange them for cash. The average actual cost of exchange for amug was $5.40 for those who had imagined owning one and $6.46 for those whohadnt. Subjects without a mug, the authors conclude, underestimate how muchtheyll value it once they have it. Subjects fail to predict the endowment effect

even in their own case. If the subjects were running simulations in predicting theirown behaviors, how can we account for the failures?

We cant, of course, say that the processes differ because the same peopleare running them offline one minute and then online another; if processors varythis much in individuals, cognitive science is doomed and we dont need to worryabout mindreading mechanisms. Is it plausible that the mental states run throughthe processor were inaccurate? It seems unlikely since, again, the predictor andtarget are the same person in each case, but maybe the difference is due to the

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change of mental states going from only imagining that one owns a mug toactually owning a type-identical mug.

In fact, this is one response Goldman gives. (Goldman 2006: 175) Perhapsits more difficult than we typically think to imagine how owning something willaffect our valuations, and when predictors imagined it, they did a poor job. Maybe

this is so, but it only invites another objection to ST.(1) Seldom do we have input for a simulator as accurate as the subjectsdid in the Loewenstein experiment, much less more informationthan that.

(2) Yet, it seems we accurately predict, explain, and interpret themental states of others and ourselves quite frequently.

(3) If Wilma is simulating Fred, and Wilmas information about Fred isless accurate and/or narrower in scope than that which the subjectsin Loewensteins experiment had about themselves, then Wilmassimulation will be inaccurate.

If its true that we seldom have information of the accuracy and breadth apparently

required for accurate simulation and its true that we often succeed inmindreading, then in those cases where we have less information about thetargets mental states and we yet get her mental states right, were not using asimulational mindreading process.

The advocate of ST might, of course, reject one or more of the steps in theargument. Or, she can, as Goldman proposes, relax all three.3 This looksunpromising. (1) If third-person mindreaders often have more information abouttheir targets than the subjects did about themselves in the experiment, then itseems were more ignorant about ourselves than we are about others. But thisharms ST more than it helps. After Wilma runs her simulation, she reads herpretend output so that she can attribute it to Fred. That is, ST requires Wilma to

read her own mind in order to read Freds. It cant also say that she knows Fredsmind better than her own. (2) Its well known that toddlers succeed at false belieftasks, and Goldman himself endorses results according to which children as youngas 15 months regularly succeed at mindreading. (Goldman 1006: 77-8) Respondingto these results and to our intuitions is an uphill battle. (3) Since the ST theoristmust explain the prediction failure with the endowment effect, the amount and sortof information Wilma needs about Fred in order to read his mind by simulation will,in any case, have to be more and/or better than subjects had about themselves(just a few minutes in the future) in Loewensteins case. Unless Loewensteinssubjects were especially self-ignorant, this is a very high standard.

Theres another response to this line of argument that says the mindreading

done in the endowment effect isnt representative of mindreading in general, andso we cant infer from it anything about how or when we use simulation in general.(Goldman 2006: 174) Once weve given a principled reason for thinkingLoewensteins case is exceptional, we can say simulation doesnt typically requireinformation more precise and far-reaching than the subjects had in Loewensteinscase, or an advocate of a ST-TT hybrid like Goldman may then say we employ folk-psychological generalizations in Loewensteins case, as Nichols et al argue, but we3 In conversation 10/17/06

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still simulate most of the time. There may be an explanation of why this apparentlyquotidian prediction task is in fact extraordinary, and this explanation may not bead hoc, but at present theres no indication that this explanation is forthcoming.Furthermore, this explanation needs to be given not just for the endowment effect,but for probably for all surprising psychological phenomena that are systematically

mispredicted.Without a response to the challenge posed by predictions of surprisingpsychological phenomena, theres no reason to suppose simulation is our usualmechanism for mindreading.

Supplemental MindreadingStill, there is reason to think that we sometimes do simulate others mental

processes. Goldman reviews cases of egocentric biases in mindreading. (Goldman2006: 164-70) In all of these cases, ranging over the reading of others beliefs andknowledge, values, and feelings, mindreaders attribute to their targets mentalstates that are, one way or another, shown to be more appropriately attributed to

the mindreaders themselves. For example, Van Boven and Loewenstein (2003)asked subjects to predict 1) the feelings of hikers lost in the woods without food orwater and 2) how they, the subjects, would feel in the same situation. One groupmade their predictions before vigorous exercise, and the other group did it afterexercise. Those who predicted after exercise were more likely than the other groupto predict that 1) the hikers would feel more thirsty than hungry, and that 2) theywould feel more thirsty than hungry were they in the hikers situation. If weassume that the post-exercise predictors were themselves more thirsty thanhungry, it seems they imputed their own feelings to both the hikers and theirhypothetical selves.

Goldman thinks these egocentric biases reflect quarantine failure in the

simulation routine. Some of the mindreaders own mental states slip into thesimulating processor for one reason or another with the result that the outputattributed to the target is colored by the mindreaders beliefs, values, or whatever.This is supported by substantial evidence that failure to inhibit ones own mentalstates is a difficult task and is perhaps one reason many infants fail false-belieftasks. (Goldman 2006: 72-6) In the above case, people who were thirsty regularlylet their thirst slip into their simulating process. But what is it about thirstor abouthiking that makes quarantine failure common here? This approach fails to explainwhy quarantine failure occurs where it does. If egocentric bias were exclusively amatter of quarantine failure, wed expect to see correlations between failures anddemands on executive control appropriate to each subjects cognitive capacities,

and wed see little quarantine failure in cases like the hiker story, which makeslittle demand in the way of either executive control or memory. A more plausibleexplanation of egocentric bias in these cases, and a more plausible approach to TT-ST hybrids, is to say we resort to simulation when our information about the targetunderdetermines what we want to predict, explain, or interpret. In the presentcase, theres not much reason to say the hikers will be either hungry or thirsty,given that the mindreader hasnt any reason to attribute particular beliefs ordesires to them. We havent been given any individuating features about the

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hikers, and so we cant apply our folk-psychological laws. If we ask how gluttonswould feel when lost in the woods, I suspect mindreaders would attribute hungermore often, no matter whether theyd exercised first. Without clues as to the lawssubsuming the targets mental states, mindreaders fall back on simulation.

I submit, then, that besides cases of neurological disorders and failures of

inhibition correlated with processing or memory demands, we will see anegocentric bias when whats to be predicted, explained, or interpreted isunderdetermined by the information available to the mindreader plus her folk-psychological theory. This is of a piece with Goldmans urging that possible folk-psychological laws must be constrained along some dimensions to explain regulartendencies in mental state attributions, like our bias for spelke-objects in ourrepresentations of both the world and others mental states. (Goldman 2006: 178-9) In the absence of a folk-psychological law (or perhaps other determiningfactors), mindreaders export their own biases and run their own mental states ontheir own processors. This, of course, demands clarification and supplementationbut not here.

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