## 1. Theory Theory



A mainstream view in analytic philosophy is that folk psychology, or
FP, is a theory and that FP abilities centrally involving theorizing
in some sense or at some level. These ideas have deep roots in the
analytic tradition and have shaped much received thinking on the
topic. The general view is known as theory-theory, or TT, in
philosophical and psychological circles--a name first introduced
by Morton (1980) to highlight the fact that the thesis that "FP
is a theory" *is itself a theory*, and not obviously a
true one. Others, such as Rosenberg, maintain that FP



> 
> 
> is so simple and mind-numbingly obvious, it seems almost preposterous
> to call it a "theory". (2018: 36)
> 
> 
> 



Many of today's philosophers and psychologists maintain that FP
abilities simply constitute, or are otherwise sponsored by, a Theory
of Mind, or ToM (see Baron-Cohen, Lombardo, & Tager-Flusberg
2013). This thesis is usually coupled with a familiar explanatory
hypothesis about how FP understanding is achieved, namely, FP
understanding is underwritten by capacities to mentalize or
"mindread". On the standard interpretation, mindreading
minimally requires:


1. Representing and attributing mental state attitudes (minimally
belief and desire, but possibly other mental states too);
2. Representing and attributing the contents of such attitudes;
3. Appreciating how such attitudes structurally interrelate.



Conditions 1-3 can be weakened in various ways, allowing for the
possibility of mindreaders with less than fully-fledged folk
psychological capacities. For example, it is possible to represent and
attribute mental state concepts and contents other than only those of,
say, beliefs and desires, and still qualify as a mindreader.



TT about FP is distinctive in assuming that when we understand minds
in daily life we use the same sorts of tools that we use to understand
other non-mental phenomena, specifically, we use the same sort of
tools we use in the sciences--namely, theories that aim to tell
us about the unobservable, hidden causal structure of the world.



ToM is a particular kind of theory: it is assumed to have a
distinctive sort of content. A ToM operates with mental state concepts
that feature in theoretical postulates that comprise the core general
principles of a theory of everyday psychology. The content of the ToM
that normally developing humans use is, for TTists, what enables most
of us to navigate our everyday social world fluidly and with ease. TT
holds that we succeed in understanding ourselves and others if we
manage to infer the mental states responsible for particular actions
correctly by applying a ToM, thereby bringing the laws of everyday
psychology to bear on particular cases. As such, TTists hold that, for
most of us, the heavy lifting in daily social cognition is done by our
acquaintance with, and use of, laws of a folk ToM.



According to TTists, engaging in FP involves the deployment of the
relevant mentalistic concepts by making use of a distinctive set of
principles--a network of laws or propositions about mentalistic
attitudes and their relations to other states of mind. This system of
inferences allegedly constitutes the core framework for making sense
of and rationalizing actions in terms of reasons, even though it must
be supported by further auxiliary generalizations about what people
typically do in a range of circumstances.



Several philosophical considerations conspire to make TT a compelling
view of FP. In his seminal "Empiricism and the Philosophy of
Mind" (1956), Wilfrid Sellars aired the idea that our
understanding of mental states is, essentially, theoretical. In an
engaging bit of philosophical anthropological fiction, he famously
mused about how our Rylean ancestors, who were as yet behaviorists,
might have first fashioned an understanding of thoughts as inner
episodes. He invented a mythical Jones who modeled inner thoughts on
overt speech acts, imagining that the former could, just like the
latter, be cited in the explanation of action. Assuming that reasons
are the inferred causes of action, it is but a short step to thinking
that explaining action using a schema that goes beyond what is merely
given in another's outward responses is necessarily a kind of
theoretical activity.



This way of understanding is a natural partner for the idea that
genuinely intelligent engagements with aspects of the world are
mediated by representations of one sort or another. It is a small step
from accepting a representational theory of mind to assuming that our
FP understanding of minds requires representing the representations of
intelligent creatures--thus taking a theoretical, or
spectator's, stance towards them. Understanding and interacting
with other minds, according to this view, requires formulating
hypotheses as to what exactly is "going on in" those minds
since those workings are not directly open to view.



Some philosophers are attracted to TT because they maintain that the
meanings of FP mental state concepts show signs of being theoretical
in character--namely, that such meanings are fixed by their
having appropriate links or relations to other concepts in a
structured theory. On this view, the meaning of mental states terms is
defined holistically by the special roles the entities such terms
denote play within a wider inferential network. Accordingly, the very
meaning of a mental concept is taken to be determined by the
distinctive role it plays within a network of principles. In this
respect, our familiar mentalistic vocabulary (viz. our talk of
thoughts, feelings, and expectations) would be similar in important
respects to other theoretically embedded vocabularies (e.g., talk of
electrons, atoms, and gravity).



In a series of influential papers, David Lewis (1970, 1972) defended a
particular approach to the semantics of theoretical terms.
He applied that same approach to everyday
psychological vocabulary (e.g., "belief" and
"desire"), and thereby obtained a functionalist theory of
mental states. Accordingly, when thinking about the semantics of
everyday psychological vocabulary, Lewis treats the conjunction of
commonsense platitudes about mental states as a term-introducing
theory. It is possible to identify folk psychology with that
conjunction. Alternatively, we could think of folk psychology as a
systematization of a set of platitudes. Either way, Lewis's
approach lends credence to the idea that FP is structured in the same
way as other kinds of theory.



Lewis also held that claims about the platitudes are empirical
claims--they are claims about what is commonly believed about
mental states. However, Lewis's intuitions about mental states
were likely influenced by his theoretical stance. Consequently, there
is little reason to think that Lewis's own intuitions are a good
guide to what people typically believe about the mind.



Lewis simply assumes that common sense is resolutely committed to the
idea that mental states are characterized by causal role; as a result,
his functionalist conclusion drives his characterization of the
platitudes. No doubt Lewis has philosophical arguments for denying
that mental states are substances that possess their causal powers
non-essentially or substances that lack causal powers altogether. But
that is beside the present point. Lewis aimed to capture what the folk
think about mental states, not what the philosophical
*literati* think.



A unifying idea that motivates all TT proposals is that the primary
job or function of folk psychology is that of third-personal
prediction and explanation. The standard TT assumption is that
prediction and explanation are symmetrical: predicting how another
creature might act or, on the flip side, explaining why it acted,
requires representing its complex state of mind--namely, the way
certain of its mental states relate to one another. Putting all of
this together can promote the appearance that FP is in the same
general line of business as scientific theories that are used to
understand other phenomena.



An important question for proponents of TT is: What are FP's
precise ontological commitments? Putatively, FP theorizes about what
goes on inside our heads--in the black box that lies between
perceptual stimuli and behavioral responses. If so, FP posits inner
entities that causally explain outward behavior. Taken at face value,
FP would appear to be theoretically committed to the entities and
properties that it speaks of as being causally responsible for our
actions. Those who understand FP as having these transparent
commitments assume that it is committed to explaining actions by
appeal to causally efficacious contentful mental items, such as
beliefs and desires (see, e.g., Fodor 1987, see also Rosenberg 2018).
TTists of a realist bent assume that FP is committed to an unqualified
realism about the entities and their properties that it quantifies
over.



So construed, FP comes with built-in "heavy-duty", as
opposed to "light-duty", ontological commitments
(Langland-Hassan 2020). Light duty TTists actively eschew or are
otherwise agnostic about whether FP is committed to the existence of
entities with the properties that are referred to in our everyday FP
attributions. Several variants of TT, including instrumentalist and
fictionalist variants, that assume our everyday sense-making practice
has only light-duty ontological commitments (Egan 1995; Graham &
Horgan 1988; Schwitzgebel 2002, 2013; Demeter 2013).



One of the best known "light duty" versions of TT proposes
that FP should be understood as nothing more than an intentional
stance or heuristic we employ for quick and dirty predictions of the
behavior of a wide variety of systems (Dennett 1985, 1987). FP
ascriptions are, on the intentional stance view, irredeemably
indeterminate. As such, we have no grounds for taking FP attributions
ontologically seriously above and beyond the limited practical
leverage they give us in enabling us to make such predictions and
explanations.



Dennett (1985, 1987) assumes that, in principle, an ideal physics
trades in non-probabilistic laws capable of yielding perfect
forward-facing predictions and perfect backward-looking explanations.
By comparison, FP, though of great practical value, can never come
close to the predictive and explanatory successes of the hard
sciences: hence we have no reason to take FP's posits as
ontologically seriously as we take those found in the hard sciences.
Thus, for Dennett, FP constructs can be treated as only capturing
mildly real patterns: they are to be regarded as no more and no less
real than numbers, centers of gravity, or other
"calculation-bound" entities (Dennett 1991).



To adopt a light-duty TT view of FP's ontological commitments is
to hold that, however useful FP is in everyday contexts, the crude
predictions and explanations it sponsors are not the sort that
can seriously predict or explain the behavior of others. If we wish to
get at the underlying mechanics and drivers of behavior--its true
causes--we must look to mature cognitive science, not FP.


## 2. Varieties of Theory Theory


### 2.1 Modular Theory Theory



A popular explanatory proposal in cognitive science is that ToM laws
or principles are instantiated or contained in a mental module, which
is understood to be a special kind of cognitive device, gadget, or
mechanism. A ToM module is solely dedicated to the special work of
enabling us to predict and explain the actions of others by accurately
attributing mental state contents to them. The common denominator in
all TT modularist accounts is that ToM abilities, and by extension our
FP competence, are best explained by a cognitive architecture with a
particular design and a dedicated, domain-specific function (Fodor
1995; Segal 1996; Leslie, Friedman, & German 2004; Carruthers
2006; Heyes 2018).



For some, the most important feature of modules, which separates them
from other humdrum psychological mechanisms, is that they are assumed
to be cognitive through and through. Fodor (1983), for example,
maintains that the knowledge base of ToM modules is conceptually based
and has the structure and content of a set of semantically connected
propositionally articulated principles. In line with this view, Fodor
(1994, 1998) proposes that the core mentalistic concepts get their
meaning denotationally by means of special mechanisms that "lock
on" to the relevant extensions. These concepts each play
distinctive roles in constituting the principles that make up the
network of laws comprising our folk theory of mind.



A defining feature of mental modules, as per Fodor's (1983)
original formulation, is that they are informationally encapsulated.
Information contained in each module is encapsulated from other
modules and encapsulated from the information available in the
cognitive system. Modules have limited cognitive interests and
concerns: they operate on a strictly need-to-know basis. Because of
their informationally encapsulated limited interests, ToM modules are
not informed and updated by the subject's wider set of
background knowledge. It is assumed that modules work better and
faster by restricting their concerns to specialized dealings with only
certain topics.



Accordingly, each type of mental module is assumed to be restricted to
dealing only with the subject matter of its specialist concern.
Modules are domain-specific in the sense that only a circumscribed
class of inputs will activate them. Because they are thought to do
such specialized work, ToM modules are dissociable: they can be
selectively impaired, damaged, or disabled without affecting the
operation of other systems and vice versa. Some argue that this
feature of ToM modules makes them particularly well suited to explain
impaired mindreading abilities exhibited by those with specific
conditions. Such atypical cognitive profiles are hypothesized to be
rooted in the damaged or malfunctioning neurocognitive machinery of a
ToM module. It has been hypothesized that impaired ToM modules are
responsible for the specific profiles of FP abilities displayed by
cognitively diverse individuals -- those with specific
psychopathologies such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and
borderline personality disorder (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Leslie, &
Frith 1985; Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers 1991; Frith 1992;
Baron-Cohen 1995, 2000; Corcoran 2000; Brune 2005; Sprong et al.
2007, Fonagy & Luyten 2009; Arntz et al. 2009; Franzen et al.
2011).



Several practitioners and theorists question the explanatory value of
attempts to explain various psychological conditions in terms of
impaired ToM modules (see, e.g., Hobson 1991, 2002; Williams 2004;
Shanker 2004; Belmonte 2009). Neurodiversity advocates argue that the
entire framework of appealing to ToM deficits to explain putative
psychopathological disorders is offensive. They hold that the atypical
cognitive differences which are designated as psychopathologies should
not be characterized as cognitive deficits or disorders at all.
Instead, we should merely recognize that there are diverse cognitive
styles associated with particular atypical cognitive profiles and that
some of these profiles have special advantages (see Yergeau 2013, and
also Rosqvist, Chown, & Stenning [eds] 2020 for a set of critical
papers along these lines).



A common denominator for those who posit the existence of ToM modules
is that they assume that these mental devices are the means by which
everyday social cognition is normally conducted by unimpaired members
of our species. Beyond this point of agreement, advocates of
Modularist TT propose importantly different theories about the origins
of ToM modules and how they are acquired.



Some TT modularists are nativists. They assume that a ToM is a species
universal, biologically inherited device forged in our pre-history.
Such modularists hold that a ToM comes with core concepts built-in as
standard for all normally developing members of our species (Fodor
1983, Baron-Cohen 1999, Mithen 1996, 2000--see Fenici &
Garofoli 2017 for an alternative reading of the pre-historic
evidence).



ToM nativism is compatible with the possibility that the development
of ToM modules is shaped by environmental input. There are versions of
modular ToM theory that emphasize the role of the developmental
environment in shaping children's ToMs. However, such versions
of modularism hold that children are pre-set to acquire mentalistic
concepts automatically through a process of triggering and tuning when
appropriately stimulated (Segal 1996; Scholl & Leslie 1999).



Other TT modularists hold that ToM modules are acquired during
ontogeny, proposing that FP is enabled by an "acquired
module"--one that forms through the interaction of various
in-built abilities with the social environment during development
(Karmiloff-Smith 1995; Garfield, Peterson, & Perry 2001).



The idea of an acquired module opens up the possibility that our
everyday ToM is a specialized neurocognitive mechanism, a cognitive
gadget, that is embedded in our nervous systems through culturally
inherited processes rather than by processes of natural selection
(Heyes & Frith 2014; Heyes 2018). This proposal builds on the
niche construction hypothesis that sociocultural practices construct
and modify our environments in ways that are cognitively
consequential. To understand ToM as a culturally acquired module is to
think of it as akin to our culturally inherited capacities for print
reading or literacy. These too cannot be explained by direct appeal to
cognitive devices that may have been forged in the Pleistocene by
natural selection. Thinking of ToMs as culturally acquired cognitive
gadgets opens up the possibilities that FP may not be pan-cultural,
and that Lewis's platitudes may not be species universal.


### 2.2 Scientific Theory Theory



Scientific TT, henceforth STT, holds that folk psychology is the
result of evidence-driven scientific theorizing on the part of young
children (Gopnik & Wellman 1992; Gopnik 1996; Gopnik &
Meltzoff 1997). It proposes that each normally developing child forges
and revises their own theory of mind using the same rational
theory-construction methods that adults use when forging and revising
mature scientific theories.



Advocates of STT acknowledge that children's theories have the
characteristic static features of mature scientific
theories--e.g., internal coherence, causal implication, and
ontological import. Yet, their proposal focuses on the possibility
that children, like adult scientists, engage in the dynamic activity
of theorizing to produce their ToM through processes of collecting,
evaluating, and responding to evidence in a rational, truth-seeking
manner (Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997). Ex hypothesi, ToMs are the
hard-won products of sustained observation, statistical analyses,
experimental trial-and-error, and learning from others (Gopnik 2003,
2004; Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997). For these reasons, this brand of TT
has sometimes been dubbed the "child as little scientist
view", although Gopnik came to prefer the slogan
"scientist as big child view" (Gopnik 1996).



Emphasizing the dynamic character of theorizing, STT maintains that we
start life with a basic theory of mind which we actively develop
throughout our childhood and adolescence. In particular, the concept
of belief is thought to be constructed by each child, individually,
during ontogeny (Gopink 1988, 1990). In most cases, children who
follow a typical developmental pattern succeed in adding the concept
of a false belief to their ToMs by around the age of four and they
continue to enhance their understanding of belief even beyond this
stage--making further, less radical, changes to their ToM as they
become young adults (Gopnik 2004). Empirical findings arising from
false belief studies and methodological questions about such protocols
are extensively discussed in
 Section 3.2.



Supporters of STT take the appearance of conceptual development in
ontogeny at face value; they claim that genuine conceptual change
occurs as children fashion their ToMs. In particular, they
hold that the conceptual change this theory development
putatively involves is driven by their activities of theory
construction. On this version of TT, our FP understanding of minds is
theoretical in the strongest possible sense--both in its nature
and its mode of acquisition.


### 2.3 Model Theory Theory



The core TT assumption that FP is a kind of theory leaves open whether
our everyday ToM is a set of conceptually articulated, propositional
representations that detail the core FP laws or whether it takes the
form of a more flexible dynamic modeling of worldly structures.
Several TTists, inspired by Giere (1988), maintain that our FP
abilities are best explained by the tacit or unconscious processes of
building and utilizing models at the subpersonal level rather than by
appeal to the use of an inherited and fixed set of FP laws (Maibom
2003, 2007, 2009; Godfrey-Smith 2005).



Godfrey-Smith (2005) proposes that elements of models of a given
domain have structural similarities with items in their target domain
and that the modeling of specific domains exploits aspects of those
structural similarities for particular purposes. Going by this
definition, if theorizing is understood as modeling then a ToM may,
but need not be, thought of as intrinsically propositional,
representational, or contentful (e.g., Maibom 2009; see also Egan
2014, 2018).



To think of FP as best explained by the use of subpersonal models
assumes the existence of a set of structures targeting specific
mentalistic elements--beliefs, desires, actions, emotions, and so
forth. The Model TTist assumes that FP models can be elaborated in
various ways to serve different purposes in different circumstances.
FP models can be thought of as prediction devices: What will Fred do
when he discovers the cafe is closed? Or a model might be
used to arrive at FP explanations of action: Why did Fred go to the
cafe? Or the model might be elaborated upon to yield
explanations seeking to detail both proximate and distal causes
of behavior. Models also admit other kinds of elaboration. For
example, a distinction between degrees of belief and desire might be
introduced, and rationality constraints imposed.



Maibom (2009) argues that Model TT is well-placed to explain how we
manage to apply a ToM sensitively by adjusting to supporting,
context-sensitive knowledge that cannot be supplied by a core ToM
itself. In her view, Model TT can explain how it is possible to apply
our ToM sensitively in ways that address the particularities of
specific cases.



The idea that our everyday ToM abilities depend on the use of a set of
adjustable subpersonal models, as opposed to a fixed set of
propositions describing FP laws, fits well with predictive processing
accounts of cognition (Gopnik & Glymour 2002). Predictive
processing accounts of perception hold that--at its
core--such cognitive activity always takes the form of making
inferences concerning the hidden causes of sensory phenomena (Hohwy
2013; Clark 2016). Advocates of the predictive processing variants of
TT hold that the processes used in FP are of the same basic kind used
elsewhere in every other variety of cognition, including acts of basic
perception; the only difference is that in the case of FP the target
of the activity is to infer how other minds cause actions (see, e.g.,
Gopnik & Wellman 2012; Bowers & Davis 2012; Koster-Hale &
Saxe 2013; Hohwy & Palmer 2014; Palmer, Seth, & Hohwy 2015;
Pezzulo 2017; Zednik & Jakel 2016; Jara-Ettinger et al. 2016;
Jara-Ettinger 2019).



Making inferences about other minds can be understood as a matter of
solving an inverse problem, that of using observable evidence, in this
case, behaviors, to infer the invisible causal structure that produces
it, in this case, presumably, mental states. Proponents of Model TT
are free to assume that the models used in this process are complex,
operating simultaneously on multiple scales and levels. In line with
predictive processing assumptions, it is assumed that models
improve over time through the sustained effort of minimizing
prediction error by adjusting predictions in response to mismatches
between the content of top-down hypotheses and bottom-up
information.



Like all other versions of TT, an animating idea behind Model TT is
that the subpersonal work of brains is roughly analogous to what
scientists do when making inferences in their efforts to best explain
phenomena. The assumption is that brains develop generative models
that enable them to advance hypotheses--and those hypotheses are
further developed, refined, and improved by being tested against what
the world has to offer.



For all their promise, Model TT raises important questions that need
further attention. These include: What is the evidential support for
such accounts (Stuhlmuller & Goodman 2014)? What should we
make of their metaphysics? How seriously should we take the idea that
brains actually advance hypotheses and perform subpersonal modeling
operations?



Slors (2012), for example, warns of a tendency to think that ToM
attributions are ubiquitous even in the face of challenges posed by
those who believe that the best explanations of our FP abilities do
not involve theorizing of any kind, at any level (see
 section 4.3).
 According to Slors's diagnosis, those who fall foul of this
temptation commit the model-model fallacy. He holds, the model-model
fallacy occurs when a theorist systematically uses ToM models to
describe what are, in fact, non-mentalizing social-cognitive
processes. Though doing so may be valuable for various useful
theoretical or practical purposes, those who fall foul of this fallacy
systematically conflate features of the ToM models themselves with
what goes on subpersonally when exercising our FP competence.


## 3. Empirical Findings


### 3.1 Comparative Psychology



An important topic that has been hotly investigated is whether FP is
an exclusively human ability or one shared with other non-human animal
species. Empirical studies investigating ToM capacities have been
conducted with many species, including bottlenose dolphins,
corvids--ravens, scrub jays--and dogs (Dally, Emery &
Clayton 2006; Tomonaga et al. 2010, Bugnyar & Heinrich 2006;
Bugnyar, Reber, & Buckner 2016; Whiten 2013; Maginnity & Grace
2014; see Lurz (2011) for a book-length overview of mindreading in
animals). The most sustained experimental work on animal FP capacities
has centered on the social intelligence of non-human primates. In
1978, when the debate was just kicking off, Premack and Woodruff
launched a small industry by asking in their seminal paper,
"Does the Chimpanzee have a theory of mind?".



Early assessments gleaned from anecdotes of the behaviors of
individual animals seemed to return a positive answer to the titular
question (Byrne & Whiten 1991). Subsequent, more controlled,
experiments raised questions about that verdict. In naturalistic
settings, non-human great apes exhibit impressive social intelligence
(Byrne & Whiten 1997, Suddendorf & Whiten 2003). Despite this,
experimental findings are equivocal about whether, to what extent, and
in what ways they are aware of other minds. Initially, there was only
negative evidence that chimpanzees and orangutans understand the
concept of belief, even when tested by simplified non-verbal versions
of the "location change" false belief tasks (Povinelli
& Eddy 1996; Povinelli 1996, 2003; Call & Tomasello 1999; Penn
& Povinelli 2007).



Switching from a cooperative to a competitive design in their task
protocols marked a turning point in the field (Hare, Call, &
Tomasello 2001). This change of testing regime yielded evidence that
apes may be aware of simpler mental states other than beliefs, such as
seeing. Even so, that evidence is equivocal: the results are
"decidedly mixed" (Call & Tomasello 2005: 61). A safer
conclusion at this stage of inquiry is that simian capacities for
engaging with other minds exhibit signature profiles that differ in
important respects from that of adult human beings, and even that of
human infants.



The dismal performance of chimpanzees on the standard human variants
of non-verbal false belief tasks--which test the subject's
capacity to understand that beliefs can be false--galvanized a
widespread agreement that the social cognition of great apes does not
depend on a sophisticated capacity for FP, certainly not one based on
their having an understanding of belief and inter-relations between
that concept and other canonical mental states.



Call and Tomasello (2008) highlight this fact when revisiting Premack
and Woodruff's big question 30 years later. Concluding their
review of the field, these authors tell us that while the evidence
suggests that, in many respects, chimpanzees do have some grip on
other minds in many other respects, it also tells us that they do not.
Comparing the test results for apes with those of human children has
all but secured the conviction that if apes do have any FP abilities
then they are not of the same form or in the same degree as that of
humans.



The live issue today is not whether chimpanzees or other non-human
animals make use of a fully developed FP, but whether they have any
degree of mindreading ability at all. Ethologists and primatologists
have shifted their focus in this new direction. The main questions now
occupying the field are: How do apes and other non-human animals
manage their sophisticated social interactions without the capacity
for full-blown human-style FP understanding? And, if so, what form
does their everyday grip on other minds take?



The gap between evidence and theory generates a logical problem in the
interpretation of empirical data which poses, some argue, an
insurmountable challenge for anyone hoping to establish the truth of
TT based on empirical findings (Whiten 1996; Povinelli & Vonk
2003; Lurz 2009, 2011; Buckner 2014). This problem arises because
there is always logical room for characterizing and explaining
evidence concerning FP capacities in deflationary non-TT terms. The
logical problem reminds us that positing ToMs--of whatever number
and type--is not the only live theoretical option for
characterizing or explaining the relevant empirical data.



Not everyone is pessimistic about overcoming the logical problem by
purely empirical means. Heyes (1998) suggested this might be done by
finding evidence of subjects projecting first-person experiences onto
others. Some researchers find this protocol promising and seek to
develop it (see Southgate 2013, Kano et al. 2019; Lurz & Krachun
2019).



There is now a range of proposals about how best to characterize the
apparently FP abilities of non-human apes and other animals. Within
the TT camp--the axiomatic assumption is that an everyday
understanding of minds essentially involves attributing mental states
by employing some kind of ToM. It is accepted, however, that the ToMs
in question need not be identical to the fully-fledged version of FP
used by adult humans. Under the TT umbrella, it has been proposed that
non-human animals may be using a naive, weak, or minimal theory
of mind (Bogdan 2009; Apperly & Butterfill 2009); perceptual
mindreading (Bermudez 2011); or an early mindreading system
(Nichols & Stich 2003). Others favor the idea that animals only
simulate the effects of mindreading. It has been proposed that certain
feats of social cognition might be variously carried off by a
sophisticated theory of, or special sensitivities to, behavior
(Povinelli & Vonk 2004, Gallagher & Povinelli 2012);
sub-mentalizing that utilizes domain-general non-ToM processes (Heyes
2018, though see Kano et al. 2017 for a challenge); mind-minding
abilities that target but do not attribute mental states or contents
(Fenici 2013, 2015, 2017; Hutto 2017; see Hutto, Herschbach, &
Southgate 2011 for a discussion of non-mindreading proposals). Another
interesting possibility is that non-human animals, like human children
and adults, could be using a much more diverse mix of strategies and
tactics to enable their everyday understanding of minds than imagined
by FP traditionalists (see
 section 4.4).


### 3.2 Developmental Psychology



There exists a substantial body of research on the development of folk
psychological abilities in young children. A range of findings in
developmental psychology reveals how younger children perform in
experimental settings when it comes to their dealing with a wide
variety of everyday mental states. For example, at around two years of
age, children are sensitive to the fact that different people have
different goals and desires (Wellman & Phillips 2001; Bartsch
& Wellman 1995; Repacholi & Gopnik 1997). A
two-year-old's understanding of desires can be rather
sophisticated: children understand, for example, how desires relate to
emotions and perceptions, and what would relevantly and consistently
satisfy specific desires, exhibiting some fluency with counterfactual
thinking of a limited sort.



As impressive as these abilities are, they neither equate to nor
entail an understanding of belief--and it is testing for belief
understanding in younger children that takes center stage in child
developmental research on ToM. Testing for an understanding of belief
is deemed by many to be the empirically robust, gold standard way of
ascertaining the presence or absence of ToM abilities. The
false-belief test or FB test (sometimes referred to as "ToM
test") was first constructed by Perner and Wimmer in 1983, and
the experimental protocol has been further modified by others. It now
comes in many subtly different variants, including location change
tasks, unexpected contents tasks, and appearance/reality distinction
tasks (see Wimmer & Perner 1983; J. Flavell, E. Flavell, &
Green 1983; Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith 1985; Perner, Leekam,
& Wimmer 1987).



In the original test of young children's grasp of false belief,
participants were introduced to a puppet, Maxi. The participant
watched as Maxi's mother put Maxi's chocolate in cupboard
X. In Maxi's absence, the mother moved the chocolate to cupboard
Y. When Maxi returns, participants are asked where Maxi would look for
the chocolate. Significantly, no participants in the 3-to-4-year range
answered correctly. A familiar explanation of these findings is that
those who fail these kinds of FB tests lack the concept of belief, or
sufficient facility with it, be able to represent how things appear,
cognitively speaking, from a vantage point that diverges from their
own.



FB tests have been greatly popular because they provide psychologists
with a well-defined yet modifiable experimental protocol that can be
applied to different populations, across species, and in diverse
settings. In their 2001 meta-analysis focusing on experiments
conducted before 1998, Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001) reviewed 178
such studies, conducted in 591 conditions.



A standard assumption in developmental psychology has been that
something important happens in the normal pattern of child development
somewhere between the ages of 3 to 5. These are the ages around which
FB understanding is usually thought to be acquired by most normally
developing children (Astington 2001; Wellman & Liu 2004). Indeed,
for many, the passing of FB tests is thought to tell us something
important about a subject's ToM abilities. Some hold that
success at FB test is the mark of a subject having acquired the final
component of their mature ToM. The tacit assumption made here is that
children put the finishing touches on their FP competence by mastering
the concept of belief.



There are two things to note concerning these assumptions. Firstly,
empirical studies of characteristic developmental patterns have
focused almost exclusively on subjects from WEIRD (Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies, and, as such,
conclusions drawn from them should be treated with caution (Henrich,
Heine, & Norenzayan 2010). Secondly, even in industrialized
Western populations, the full suite of standard FP abilities is not
securely in place in children's performance until after the ages
of 5 or 6. Summarising a range of empirical findings, Apperly and
Butterfill (2009) report that even older children who are capable of
passing false belief tests still have problems understanding how
beliefs are acquired, how beliefs interact with desires, and in
anticipating the emotional consequences of false beliefs.



In recent years, new kinds of FB tests experiments have shown that
children as young as 25 months (Southgate, Senju, & Csibra 2007);
15-months (Onishi & Baillargeon 2005); and 13-months (Surian,
Caldi, & Sperber 2007) can pass language-free versions of
false-belief tasks. Taken at face value the new infant data suggests
that very young children must have some command of the concept of
belief, even though much older children lack, as we have seen, the
capacity to pass standard, verbally based, FB tasks. These findings
have led to the articulation of the so-called developmental
"paradox" (Southgate 2013; De Bruin & Newen 2014). Why
is it the case that cognitively typical 3-5-year-old children
struggle with explicit FB tests if they are already competent with FP
at much younger ages?



Some TTists seek to explain the evident developmental changes in
children's conceptual abilities without the need to posit any
radical change to or development of ToM concepts. These TTists propose
that children do not change the conceptual components of their ToM.
These TTists hold that children operate with one and only one TOM with
the same basic concepts throughout their entire lives--from early
infancy to adulthood (Baillargeon, Scott, & He 2010; Scott &
Baillargeon 2017).



TTists of this stripe claim that the developmental paradox is an
illusion. By their lights, the core concepts of FP never change even
though the capacity to apply concepts comes in degrees. The variation
in children's performance, they propose, is the result of other
complicating factors, such as the development of executive function
capacities, working memory, and language abilities. On this view, the
failure of explicit, verbal false belief tasks does not reveal a
conceptual deficit, rather it reveals a deficit of performance rather
competence (Carruthers 2013, 2016; Baillargeon, Scott, & Bian
2016; Schonherr & Westra 2019).



An alternative TT proposal is that we can beset explain the
aforementioned developmental changes in humans by positing the
existence of two functionally distinct ToMs. On this theory, one type
of ToM underwrites adult FP capacities to ascribe propositional
attitudes. Yet we also make use of a more minimal ToM, one which
employs and attributes weaker concepts than that of belief proper.
This second, earlier developing ToM is, *ex hypothesi*, used
for fast and efficient, but limited ToM tasks (Apperly &
Butterfill 2009; Butterfill & Apperly 2013). On this dual-ToM
theory, our first ToM never grows up. Instead, radically new concepts
and principles come into play with the advent of our adult ToM, which
arrives at around ages 3 to 4 in normally developing Western
populations. After that point, both ToMs begin to work alongside one
another.



Neutrally presented, the findings of FB tests do not automatically
support ToM interpretations. What the FB data shows is that before a
certain age, which varies considerably with individual differences,
children are unable to make correct belief attributions or to
correctly answer questions about belief-related actions when this
requires them to specify the content of the divergent cognitive points
of view of others. All such tests confront children with a task that
inherently demands that they adopt a spectatorial stance.
Consequently, the experimental data provide no direct insight into the
true range of children's FB understanding. Nor do they reveal
what role such FB understanding might play in children's ability
to make sense of others in more natural and less restricted
interactional settings (Reddy & Morris 2004; Buttelmann,
Carpenter, & Tomasello 2009).



It has been argued that FB tests do not probe deeply into the
child's FP understanding because they only test for such
understanding in third-personal, experimental conditions. Such tests
leave us none the wiser as to how frequently or centrally such FB
understanding is used; how the children come by it; what enables its
acquisition; which other tasks it might be used for; and so on.



Several psychologists and philosophers have emphasized the
artificiality of FB experiments and the contrived nature of the
situations, those requiring subjects to take up a third-personal
stance on others, in which they are conducted. These critics of FB
testing conclude that while FB tests allow for the focused collection
of data, that collected data tells us precious little about the
use of FP in everyday human social engagements, namely those we find
"in the wild" and "in the streets" (Gallagher
2001, 2015; Leudar, Costall, & Francis 2004; Leudar & Costall
2009). Given the limits of the FB experimental protocol, it has been
argued that such tests do not tell us much about children's FP
capacities in other, more ecologically valid contexts and
settings.


### 3.3 Neuroscience



A great deal of experimental work has been devoted to identifying the
dedicated brain regions or network of brain regions that are reliably
involved in ToM tasks (see Koster-Hale & Saxe, 2013 for an
overview). This empirical work usually takes the form of correlative
fMRI neuroimaging and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, TMS, studies.
Schuwerk, Langguth, and Sommer (2014) report on findings that have
been employed using both of these methods to test a diverse range of
subjects of different genders, ages, and cultural backgrounds.



Based on accumulated evidence, it is now claimed that five regions of
the brain are specifically and reliably active in ToM tasks. These
regions have been identified as (1) the left and right temporoparietal
junction (LTPJ and RTPJ); (2) the left and right dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); (3) the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG);
(4) the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC); and (5) the
posterior medial prefrontal cortex (pMPFC) (Schuwerk et al. 2014).



The idea that mindreading involves a large-scale network respects
Apperly's (2010) warning against over-emphasizing the importance
of any single brain region and assigning it the function of
"mindreading" per se. Focusing too narrowly on single
brain regions, it is argued, overlooks the importance of a broader set
of neural regions that must work together in concert, on the
assumption that many such regions serve their own important or even
indispensable mindreading functions.



Data-driven meta-analyses of networks seek to reveal the more
specialized functional contributions of specific brain regions within
a broader neural network. For example, it has been claimed that TMS
studies can identify the specific contribution of particular regions
to overall ToM tasks (Kalbe et al. 2010). Reportedly, TMS studies
suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex (pMPFC), for example, plays
a part in enabling subjects to distinguish their perspective from that
of others. By contrast, other findings suggest that the R-TPJ brain
region is selectively enlisted for tasks requiring the
interpretatively complex attribution of mental states to others (Mahy,
Moses, & Pfeifer 2014). For example, Saxe and Wexler (2005) found
that R-TPJ activity is increased compared to other regions. This
happens when the professed beliefs or desires of story protagonists
conflict with a subjects' background expectations about what
these characters ought to believe or desire. Moreover, this region is
not similarly recruited for other tasks that involve assessing other,
more general, socially relevant facts about persons.



Importantly, it appears that the relevant selectivity of this brain
region comes late in the day, emerging "in the R-TPJ between
ages 6 and 11 years" (Saxe 2009: 1206). Citing work by
Kobayashi, Glover, and Temple (2007), in their systematic examination
of the neural evidence of major theories of ToM acquisition, Mahy,
Moses, and Pfeifer (2014) also emphasize that



> 
> 
> although 8-to-12-year-old children significantly engage TPJ
> bilaterally in ToM stories ... younger children do not always
> show this selective TPJ recruitment. (2014: 70)
> 
> 
> 



There is some consensus that the TPJ is recruited and involved in FP
modes of understanding minds in later stages of development. There is
also evidence that there no single, dedicated neural network at play
in ToM-related tasks across all stages of development (Gweon et al.
2012). In a bid to make sense of these findings, Saxe and colleagues
take seriously the



> 
> 
> recent hint that middle childhood is a critical time for interactions
> between language and theory of mind. (Saxe 2009: 1207)
> 
> 
> 



These findings present a *prima facie* challenge for approaches
that assume ToMs are innate and early-maturing (see Saxe 2009; Mahy,
Moses, & Pfeifer 2014).



Importantly, it is worth noting that even the TPJ is not deployed only
or solely in ToM tasks. Commenting on this lack-of-specificity problem
concerning the TPJ, Apperly (2010) reports the following conclusions
reached in a meta-review of neuroimaging studies: the so-called
"mindreading network" was implicated not only in
mindreading tasks but also in tasks involving information recall,
general reasoning, and inductive reasoning in uncertain conditions. It
turns out that many tasks that do not appear to inherently involve ToM
nevertheless evoke activity in the TPJ, violating the specificity
criterion (see Mahy, Moses, & Pfeifer 2014).



Some, such as Rosenberg (2018), are sanguine that, taken together, the
neuroscientific findings provide



> 
> 
> evidence that the theory of mind is localized to a small number of
> specific brain regions acting together as a mental module. (2018:
> 60)
> 
> 
> 



These considerations also allow for the possibility that mindreading
is, at best, enabled by a loose confederation of brain areas that pull
together in widescale networks to complete ToM task as opposed to
consisting of a stable dedicated brain network (Anderson 2014).



ToM-focused neuroscience is still developing. A recent verdict on the
state-of-the-art summarizes the current situation:



> 
> 
> Although functional neuroimaging techniques have been widely used to
> establish the neural correlates implicated in ToM, the specific
> mechanisms are still not clear. (Zeng et al. 2020: 1)
> 
> 
> 


### 3.4 Cross-Cultural Psychology



Many studies in cross-cultural psychology reveal apparent
socio-cultural variation in FP and FP-related abilities (e.g., Avis
& Harris 1991; Vinden 1996, 1999, 2002; Naito & Koyama 2006;
Liu et al. 2008). These empirical results suggest there may be
important differences between the forms of FP used in different
cultures (Mills 2001). Assessing a body of cross-cultural data
relating to FB tests, Mayer and Trauble (2013) reach the cautious
conclusion that



> 
> 
> it is not clear whether it is justified to assume a universal onset of
> false-belief understanding across cultures. (2013: 22)
> 
> 
> 



Plenty of cross-cultural variation has been found when comparing
non-Western and Western societies concerning other aspects of
FP-related understanding. The standard explanation for such
differences is put down to the fact that the



> 
> 
> early social experiences of children [in such societies] clearly
> differ from the experiences of children in Western cultures. (Mayer
> & Trauble 2013: 22; Barrett et al. 2013a, 2013b)
> 
> 
> 



Consider, for example, Mayer and Trauble's (2013) study of
the onset of FP understanding in Samoan children. Like other
cross-cultural researchers, they choose to look at this particular
population precisely because "ethnographical work reports
different practices of intersubjective understanding" (Mayer
& Trauble 2013: 22). A plausible explanation of differences
in the timing of the emergence and application of FP-related abilities
in the Samoan case focuses on how, and how frequently, mental states
terms are used in that culture. As cultural anthropologists and
ethnographers observe, it is widely asserted in societies of
the Pacific that



> 
> it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to
> know what other people think or feel. (Robbins & Rumsey 2008:
> 407-408)
> 



A possible explanation of Samoan FP-related tendencies is that mental
states are talked about less frequently and in different ways in
Samoan populations than they are in populations with other
socio-cultural practices.



Another line of research reveals that belief understanding varies in
certain Eastern populations (Hong Kong, Japan) when compared with
their Western (US, Eastern Europe) counterparts (Doan & Wang 2010;
Liu et al. 2008). Again, this difference may be connected to the fact
that different explanatory practices prevail in these societies (Chao
1994; Bradford et al. 2018). Fiebich (2016) proposes that these
cultural differences are evident in early mother-child conversations.
Caretakers from Western cultures seem to favor mentalistic narratives,
whereas caretakers from Asian cultures exhibit a preference for
behavioral-contextual narratives. For example, when reading a picture
book together with their child, European and American mothers tend to
refer more often to the mental states of the protagonist (e.g.,
"the bear is sad") rather than to the embodied aspects of
those states (e.g., "the bear has tears on his face"), in
contrast to Chinese mothers. This correlates with earlier evidence
that suggests children from several non-Western cultures do not employ
the familiar Western FP schema, or at least that they do not do as
readily or with the same proficiency as Westerners do (Vinden 1996,
1999; Lillard 1997, 1998; see also Lavelle forthcoming).



Other cross-cultural evidence reported by Wellman and Peterson (2013)
found variations in the developmental sequence in which the component
elements of FP competence are acquired. They observe people can
understand other minds in terms of a range of attitudes, including,
diverse desires concerning the same object (Diverse Desires, DD),
different beliefs about the same situation (Diverse Beliefs, DB), that
something can be true while the person may not know that (Knowledge
Access, KA), that something might be true while the person believes
otherwise (False Belief, FB), and that someone can feel one way but
display a different emotion (Hidden Emotion, HE).



The order and sequence in which children get a grip on different
attitudes vary socio-culturally. Based on a series of studies
involving over 500 preschool children in the USA, Canada, Australia,
and Germany, it was found that 80% of children exhibit a common
pattern of acquisition, developing their FP-related understanding in
the following sequence: DD > DB > KA > FB > HE. However,
it has been discovered that Chinese and Iranian pre-schoolers come by
their FP understanding in a different order, acquiring KA competence
before DB (Shahaeian et al. 2011; Wellman et al. 2006; Wellman 2011).
Once again, a possible explanation of these differences ties them to
local conversational-cultural preferences.



Taken together these findings suggest that not all cultures engage in
all the same FP practices, nor do they do some in the same sequence or
the same way. Evidence gleaned from the handful of cross-cultural
studies that have been conducted suggests that neither full FP
understanding nor mastery of the concept of belief comes automatically
or in equal measure to all members of the human species.



Looking at the practices of other cultures, there is apparent
heterogeneity in the explanatory tendencies and methods used in making
sense of people's actions. In some parts of the globe great
emphasis is placed, for example, on situational, trait-based, and even
supernatural explanations factors (Morris & Peng 1994; Lillard
1997, 1998). The accumulated cross-cultural evidence should make us
cautious in assuming that all human populations exhibit the same kind
of FP understanding or use FP to the same extent or for the same
purposes.


## 4. Philosophical Challenges to Theory Theory


### 4.1 Eliminativism



TTists assume that mature scientific psychology and FP both offer up
theories that are in precisely the same line of work--namely,
that of causally explaining behavior. Yet, to the extent the mature
scientific psychology and FP compete in this domain, the latter looks
like a poor contender.



Good theories run deep. They are based on hard-won knowledge of
underlying causes rather than on generalizations based on surface
data. Good theories provide a powerful means of anticipating,
explaining, and controlling what happens. They do so by tapping into
the world of the unseen and the abstract. A good theory allows us to
make solid bets that pay off quickly and selectively, using minimal
evidence. Good theories reliably guide expectations, even in novel
circumstances.



The key question then is: If FP is a theory of everyday human
psychology, is it a good theory? Some argue, given what we already
know and are likely to discover, that is almost certainly a false
theory. Some think it is so poor that we have reason to think the
states over which it quantifies do not exist. Going by
Churchland's (1981) assessment, we have every reason to think
FP's principles are false and its ontology is an illusion.
Churchland (1979, 1989, 1993) highlights FP's lack of unity and
fit with a growing body of theory elsewhere in the sciences. Others
agree. Rosenberg (2018), for example, maintains that modern
neuroscience directly refutes FP proposals about the true causes of
human behavior.



Without the benefit of a sustained and thriving scientific research
program, FP seems to be, at most, a low-grade theory that is in
tension with the best theories of mind that the mature cognitive
sciences are developing. Many suppose that the advancing theories of
cognitive science and neuroscience offer a deeper and more accurate
means of understanding mind and cognition (see Carruthers 2011; Heyes
2018; Rosenberg 2018; see Horgan & Woodward 1985 for a defense of
FP on this score).



It has been argued that as long as we assume FP is any kind of ToM
then it won't remain in the theoretical running unless it allows
for revision and is prepared to incorporate the latest findings of
mature scientific theorizing about minds (Murphy 2006; Gerrans 2014).
Assuming FP is not open to such significant, open-ended revision,
Churchland (1989) famously characterizes it as a stagnant or
degenerating research program.



Eliminativists regard FP's theoretical commitments as backward
and outdated. FP is often compared to rejected theories that sought to
explain diseases by appeal to witches as opposed to germs.
Importantly, a ToM can be an imperfect, false theory that fosters only
illusions even if it is hardwired in our brains. If so, FP is a bad
theory that we, as a species, may find it hard to shake because we are
universally pre-set to acquire it due to its quick and dirty utility
in everyday contexts.



Other reasons have been offered for thinking that FP is an inferior
theory when compared to the theories of scientific psychology. It has
been argued that the contents of propositional attitudes are
necessarily world-relating in a way that requires us to look beyond
the bounds of an organism's skin when assigning contents to such
attitudes (Stich 1983). On this analysis, the ways we attribute mental
state concepts and contents involves recourse to "similarity
conditions" and normative principles of charity that could not
possibly feature in a mature science of the mind (Davidson 1984,
1987). On this view, FP involves the ascription of contentful
attitudes by employing interpretative methods that are inescapably
bound up with norms of rationality. For those persuaded by such
arguments, to the extent that FP is properly characterized as a theory
at all, it must be regarded as a domestic theory of very limited
scope: one that is unfit to predict or explain the behavior of exotic
subjects, such as very young children and animals (Stich 1983). If
this analysis is correct, it reveals FP to be inherently wedded to an
explanatory schema that is incompatible with the demands of serious
scientific psychology.



To the extent that FP embeds such features, it breaks faith with the
alleged central tenet of any *bona fide* scientific
psychology--namely, that proper causal explanations should only
cite proximate causes of action, those located physically, inside the
skin of agents (Fodor 1981; McGinn 1989). For those persuaded by this
line of argument FP will be incapable of providing causal explanations
of action if it turns out that the content of propositional attitudes
needs to be individuated by factors that necessarily require looking
beyond an agent's skin.


### 4.2 Simulation Theory



Since the mid-1980s the main rival to TT has been the simulation
theory, or ST, of which there are many varieties. The major proponents
of ST diverge in their views about what exactly simulation involves.
They heterogeneously characterize the process of simulation as a form
of imaginative transformation (Gordon 1986, 1995, 1996), thought
replication or co-cognition (Heal 1986, 1995, 1996, 1998a, 1998b),
introspective modeling (Gopnik & Wellman 1992) and off-line
practical reasoning (Goldman 1989, 2006).



Simulation theorists take it for granted that we regularly engage in
FP, but they hold that doing so does not imply the existence of a set
of conceptually articulated ToM principles. They propose that as our
minds are already populated with the relevant mental states and that
we can systematically manipulate those mental states in precisely the
sorts of ways TT principles aim to describe. Proponents of ST also
propose that when we make mentalistic attributions to other minds we
use our minds as models for those targets. Thus, even though the
simulation process is a structured activity involving the attribution
of mental state concepts, no theoretical principles need to be
consulted or used when we understand minds in FP fashion.



Goldman (2006), for example, depicts high-level mindreading of the
sort associated with FP understanding as a three-stage process. In the
primary or preparatory phase, appropriate targets must be identified
(viz. intentional actions or what at least looks to be such). During
the second, or what might be called the simulative phase, appropriate
inputs--"pretend" thoughts, beliefs, or desires (or
the same entertained hypothetically)--are "fed into"
specific subpersonal mechanisms (e.g., the practical reasoning
mechanism operating in an off-line mode). These mental states are then
internally manipulated to yield predictions or explanations.



Mentalistic concepts are not needed for the first two stages of the
process. But they come into play when attributing mental states to
targets in the final phase. Making such attributions requires
identifying *which* mental states it is that one is
ascribing--these must be classified both by appeal to their
general attitudinal type (belief, desire, hope) and their specific
content (e.g., that "The bus leaves from stand 25".).



To the extent that simulation processes might exhaustively explain our
FP abilities, ST directly challenges TT explanations. ST offers to
explain how FP ascriptions can be carried off without positing any
kind of "theory" as being involved in the central
mindreading process. Motivated by the acknowledgment of some
limitations of pure TT accounts (see Heal 1998a, 1998b), some TTists
have come to favor hybrid explanations of the cognitive basis of FP in
which both theory and simulation have clear-cut parts to play in
achieving FP understanding (Goldman 2006). Yet however this alliance
is precisely conceived, there remains a crucial question about which,
if either, of the two theories--TT or ST--does the work of
explaining the core structural aspects of our FP competence (see
Apperly 2008 for a critique of the explanatory value of both
approaches).


### 4.3 Phenomenological Critiques of TT



Several authors, drawing on phenomenological considerations, offer a
fundamental critique of all variants of TT, arguing that TT approaches
systematically mischaracterize their target explanandum in crucial
respects (Gallagher 2001, 2020; Ratcliffe 2007; Gallagher & Zahavi
2008; Gallagher & Hutto 2008; see Hutto & Ratcliffe 2007 for
an overview). Such critics maintain that the way we engage with and
understand others in everyday life is misdescribed when they are
depicted as being essentially theoretical. These philosophers
challenge the idea that interpersonal engagements of the sort that are
meant to be captured under the FP umbrella are a matter of seeking to
infer the underlying causes of another's behavior by means of
mental state attribution.



Phenomenological reflection, they argue, speaks against the TT
assumption that our situation with respect to others is fundamentally
that of a scientific spectator to target phenomena. That TT assumption
is fostered by thinking that if we are to understand other minds we
must bridge an assumed epistemic gap that exists between us and
others, and that we must bridge that gap by accurately depicting the
mental states that move others to act.



It has been argued that modeling FP on a scientific
enterprise paints a distorting picture of its character.
Positively characterized, our everyday ways of engaging with and
understanding others are said to be a matter of responding
directly to the attitudes and emotions of others, making sense of
their projects and commitments, and trusting or not trusting the
accounts they give us about why they do what they do.
Phenomenologically motivated critics of TT argue that when we deal
with others in these kinds of ways we do not take up a scientific
stance towards them.



These phenomenologically motivated critics deny that TT provides an
accurate description of what we do when we make sense of actions in
everyday life (Herschbach 2008; Strijbos & de Bruin 2012). For
example, often when we are interested in another's reasons for
acting, we get at their reason by being told directly why they acted
thus and so though second-personal exchanges, obviating the need to
infer or attribute mental states to the other (Hutto 2004, 2008). To
understand FP exchanges of this kind aright is, in McGeer's
words, to recognize that we do not "interact with one another as
scientist to object, as observer to observed" (2007: 146).



The most radical phenomenologically motivated challenge to TT holds
that when we look closely at how we understand one another in everyday
life we do not find people making mental state attributions of
standard FP sort at all (Ratcliffe 2006, 2007). Defending this
analysis, Ratcliffe offers a deflationary appraisal of FP, regarding
it as a kind of philosophical fiction. By his lights, FP is a
misleading picture of our everyday ways of understanding one
another--a picture that lacks depth and which does not come close
to the richness of our actual practice.


### 4.4 Pluralism



Up until the 2000s, it was the received view that FP abilities were
based, wholly or primarily, in mindreading abilities and that such
abilities were assumed to be best explained by TT, ST, or some hybrid
combination. That orthodoxy has been challenged by pluralists about FP
who maintain that we engage in FP for many purposes other than
prediction and explanation. For example, it has been proposed that FP
enables us to coordinate, justify and regulate our actions and
behavior. FP pluralists maintain that we achieve these diverse ends by
diverse means and methods (Bermudez 2003; Slors & MacDonald
2008; Andrews 2008, 2012; Fiebich, Gallagher, & Hutto 2016;
Andrews, Spaulding, & Westra forthcoming).



A signature pluralist assumption is that the extension of FP is wider
than traditionally supposed, encompassing anything we do when
understanding minds and navigating everyday interpersonal relations
(see Hornsby 1996; Spaulding 2018b). According to FP pluralists, there
are many ways that we keep track of and think about minds--our
methods for doing so are not exclusively restricted to attributing
mental states but include being sensitive to a range of factors
including socio-cultural situational norms, conventions, stereotypes,
implicit biases, and person-specific character traits. How we think
about minds on any given occasion, pluralists claim, varies as a
function of context and our shifting FP goals.



Some variants of FP pluralism are perfectly compatible with TT. They
assume that the use of ToM lies at the core of FP understanding and
that a ToM interacts with and is informed by other kinds of
information concerning the aforementioned range of socio-cognitive
factors (Spaulding 2018a, 2018b; Westra 2018, 2019, 2020).



Other versions of FP pluralism do not give TT pride of place as
FP's primary or default function. Some variants place TT
predictions and explanations on equal footing with other FP methods
and goals. FP pluralism of this kind assumes that FP has no single
primary function or method. Rather FP uses various means to achieve
multiple ends--such as, making and justifying moral judgments,
fostering social bonding, molding, and regulating behavior.



Yet other versions of FP pluralism directly threaten TT by assuming FP
has a primary function and basis that is non-theoretical. Such
accounts reject TT by holding that FP's primary function is not
that of making third-personal predictions and explanations about
minds. For example, it has been proposed that FP's primary work
is to achieve regulative mind-shaping by means of imitation, pedagogy,
and other social conformity mechanisms. So understood, the main work
of FP is that of normatively molding, not descriptively reading, minds
(McGeer 2007, 2015, forthcoming; Zawidzki 2008, 2013; Castro 2020). It
is assumed that as a result of such mindshaping minds become more
predictable, enabling--amongst other things--successful
cooperation and the successful predicting and explaining of minds by
attributing contents to them. Importantly, on these mindshaping
accounts, anything we might call theorizing about minds is a parasitic
and peripheral capacity that only comes into play in special
contexts.


### 4.5 The Narrative Practice Hypothesis



The Narrative Practice Hypothesis, or NPH, offers a thoroughgoing
challenge to TT. In its original formulation, it incorporates versions
of the challenges to TT issued by phenomenological critics and FP
pluralists. Inspired by Bruner (1990), the NPH holds that folk
psychology is a kind of narrative practice and hypothesizes that our
FP competence is fostered by engaging in socially supported
story-telling activities (Hutto 2004, 2007, 2008).



The NPH maintains that engaging in specific kinds of narrative
practices is the normal route by which human beings come to
understand, explain and make sense of actions done for reasons in FP
terms. It is through such narrative practices that we normally become
acquainted with mental attitudes or predicates (e.g., belief, desire,
hope, fear) and learn of the complex ways such attitudes can
inter-relate. The NPH is consistent with the fact that FP practice is
quite variable. We call on many kinds of mental states, other than
beliefs and desires--such as hopes, fears, and other more basic
kinds of perceptions, emotions--as well as character traits and
non-psychological attributes when making sense of why someone may have
acted. The NPH assumes that fuller and more complete explanations of
action will give details of the person's character, situation,
and history--in short, more of the person's
"story".



The primary function of FP, according to the NPH, is the hermeneutic
understanding and justification of action through normalizing
explanations. It assumes that such explanations cannot be understood
as backward-looking retrodictions that mirror forward-looking
predictions. Following Andrews (2003), the NPH thus challenges the
assumption that prediction and explanation are symmetrical. In
agreement with the mindshaping hypothesis, the NPH assumes that any
theorizing we do about minds, by calling on generalizations, is
peripheral and parasitic on the more primary narratively based ways of
understanding reasons for action. The NPH assumes theorizing only
occurs in third-personal contexts and that core FP understanding upon
which FP predictions and explanations are based need not be grounded
in any kind of ToM.



The NPH acknowledges that our FP competence is structured. Yet it
maintains that FP structure derives from the patterns embedded in the
ambient narratives found in our socio-cultural environments and not,
say, from the pattern of a set of internalized rules stored in
the brains of individuals. The NPH advances the view that we acquire
our structured FP competence through dealing with special kinds of
narratives--FP narratives--when appropriately supported by
caregivers. A range of empirical findings lend apparent support to the
NPH (see Astington 1990, 1996; Astington & Jenkins 1999; Richner
& Nicolopoulou 2001; Nelson 2003, 2007).



FP narratives are a special sub-set of narratives--those that
make mention of and show how mental states figure in the lives,
history, and larger projects of their owners. Like all narratives, FP
narratives depict a particular series of events in the lives of
certain protagonists. Yet FP narratives differ from other kinds of
narratives in that they explicitly showcase the various psychological
states and attitudes. The NPH predicts that if cultures diverge
significantly in their narrative practices, then we should expect to
find different patterns, tendencies, and proficiencies in the use of
FP across those cultures (Hutto 2008).



Ultimately, the NPH holds that FP competence--our facility with
FP forms and norms--is grounded in non-representational
capacities that have been structured by social interactions and
narratives. This proposal rejects the intellectualist individualism
that is standardly assumed in mainstream cognitive science and
proposes instead that FP competence is a kind of enculturated know-how
(McGeer forthcoming). Some, however, for example, Overgaard and
Michael (2015), object that to be workable as an account of FP
competence the NPH has no choice but to assume that a ToM, and not
just enculturated practical know-how, is acquired via engaging in the
relevant narrative practices.