Are there any significant alternatives to the theory that the mind exists? Are there any psychological models which do not presuppose the existence of the mind?  

In the same way that there are theories of physics which do not presuppose the existence of a luminiferous aether, is the sort of thing that I mean.

Can there be, or is it impossible by definition?
Theory of mind doesn't really "presuppose" a mind. Theory of mind is just a name for a particular cognitive capacity: the ability to know that you have a mental state and to realize that others have a mental state, and that their mental state is not the same of yours. Calling this ability "theory of mind" might be a bit confusing because it sounds like it's a scientific theory, but it's not, it's just referring to an ability to theorize (make educated guesses) about the contents of other peoples' mental states. It could have been named something else (see Why is the theory of mind named as such? as well). Therefore, it doesn't really make any sense to think about "alternatives" to theory of mind, maybe just alternatives to the name of the ability. 

Theory of mind is really important to human social interactions, and impairments in theory of mind are part of the spectrum of social difficulties in autism.

As one example of how theory of mind works day-to-day, very young children who have not yet developed theory of mind have difficulty understanding that knowledge they have is not shared by everyone. If they see you hide a candy under one of two cups, they would be confused why someone else who wasn't in the room to see where the candy was hidden doesn't know which cup the candy is under (Frith and Frith, 2005, tell a similar story to explain theory of mind).

The nature of the mental state is not actually a part of the definition of theory of mind. You might be thinking of philosophy of mind.



Frith, C., &amp; Frith, U. (2005). Theory of mind. Current Biology, 15(17), R644-R645.