Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol. 80-2010

In the last decade or so, interdisciplinary research on the nature of social cognition has made enormous progress. New developments in developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience and ethology have had (and still have) a huge impact on philosophical work done in this area. Th e debates on how we understand other minds are no longer dominated by the choice between theory-theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST). Practically no one still defends either of these theories in its pure form; instead, more complex hybrid accounts have been put forward. But in addition, new alternatives have been developed (by Shaun Gallagher for example) in the course of a larger paradigm shift in the cognitive sciences. Th e computation-based cognitivist and representationalist framework is currently being replaced (or at least complemented) by an embodied, embedded and enactive cognitive science emphasizing that a full understanding of the workings of our mind needs to go beyond the investigation of computational brain processes and take into account the body and environment of the cognizing organism, in particular its interaction with other organisms/people. Hutto belongs to this recent movement and emphasizes that “our primary modes of interpersonal engagement . are characterized by the possession of embodied expectations” (3). In line with the enactive approach to cognition, he holds that in most ordinary encounters we can rely on a “wealth of telltale cues, expressions, and responses of a more embodied variety” (12). Th erefore, folk-psychology, understood as “the practice of predicting, explaining, and explicating intentional actions by appeal to reasons” (2), covers only a (small) part of our social cognitive capacities. Th e most basic intersubjective engagements depend on a biologically based perceptual sensitivity to certain informational cues. On top of that a more sophisticated folk-psychological understanding may (but need not) be acquired by “linguistically competent creatures” (4). According to this developmental and evolutionary theory of social cognition, the basis of folk-psychology is socio-cultural, but folk psychology does not exhaust the repertoire of social cognitive skills. Th e core claim of his contribution to the family of theories about understanding other minds—the so-called Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH)—is that “direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons—those supplied in interactive contexts by responsive caregivers—is the normal route through which children become familiar with both (1) the basic structure of folk psychology and (2) the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice, thus learning both how and when to use it” (p. x). Th is claim has some major consequences for a variety of (quite general) issues in the Philosophy of Mind, e.g. the nature and scope of animal cognition, the development of social understanding in infancy, the characterization of pre-linguistic mental capacities and the acquisition and mastery of mental concepts and so on. It also means that Hutto, who himself regards his approach to cognition as an “attempted fusion” of the approaches by Davidson and Millikan (p. xx), needs to discuss (and often refute) a large number of alternative accounts in these various areas. In this review, we can only mention some of these debates.