Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading

People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create (or attempt to create) surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis.


Author: Alvin I. Goldman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/02/2008
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780195369830

About the Author

Alvin I. Goldman is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.

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