Self-knowledge by Introspection:
An Idle Wheel in Goldman’s Simulation Theory of Mindreading?
(Draft for Düsseldorf-conference, May 2008)
Johannes L. Brandl
University of Salzburg
The Cartesian tradition in philosophy praises introspection as a powerful although highly
limited source of knowledge. It is limited because it allows us access only to occurrences in
our own consciousness and nothing beyond it; yet it is supposed to have the power of
providing us with absolute certainties. Most contemporary philosophers reject this Cartesian
view because it conflicts with their commitment to fallibilism. There is, however, another
reason why this traditional view seems dubious. It is very hard to come up with a plausible
account of how introspection is supposed to work. The standard perceptual models all face
grave difficulties (see Lyons, 1986, Shoemaker, 1994). This raises the worry that
introspection – whether fallible or not – may be a mere fiction of our folk psychological
wisdom.
In his work on mindreading, Alvin Goldman has tried to defend introspection against
such radical skepticism (see Goldman, 1993, 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2006). Goldman advocates
a version of simulation theory that incorporates the claim that ascriptions of mental states to
others are “parasitic” on self-ascriptions (see Goldman, 1973: p.16). He thereby gives
introspection a fundamental role to play in our understanding of the mind, while at the same
time he follows the anti-Cartesian critique and does not assume that it is a method that leads
to absolute certainties grounding our empirical knowledge. Nevertheless introspection is an
important element in our cognitive toolbox that needs to be explained. Goldman therefore
calls his view an „introspection-simulation“ theory that “combines a simulation approach to
third-person attribution [with an] introspectionist approach to first-person attribution“.
(Goldman, 2000: 183).
In this paper, I will try to show that this combination is ill conceived. For this purpose, I
need not go into the details of Goldman’s theory of introspection as set out in his recent book
(Goldman, 2006: chapter 9). Other authors have already taken issue with Goldman on these
grounds (see Carruthers, 2008; Hill, manuscript). I want to focus rather on the foundational
role that Goldman assigns to introspection in his theory of mindreading. My worry is that –
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contrary to what Goldman assumes – there is no need for introspection to play this role. This
worry is not completely new either. It is shared by advocates of simulation theories who think
that this role can be played by some other form of self-knowledge (see Gordon, 1995; Röska
Hardy, 2000). However, I am not convinced by these alternative theories either. I think we
should explore here the more radical possibility that introspection is simply an “idle wheel” in
Goldman’s theory. It need not be replaced by ascent-routines, or some other method that has
its own problems.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 1, I describe a case of what Goldman calls
“low-level mindreading” and suggest a simple model for handling such cases. In section 2, I
compare this simple model with a more advanced case of mindreading that illustrates how a
simulationist approach can integrate elements of the so-called theory-theory approach. I then
turn to Goldman’s arguments in favor of introspection. The first argument invokes evidence
from neuroscience, which I will discuss briefly in section 3. The real backbone of Goldman’s
defense of introspection will be taken up in section 4. This part of Goldman’s argument can
be undermined, I will argue, by taking simulation theory a step further and let simulation
routines also explain how we acquire mental concepts. In the final section, I will consider
various responses to this suggestion that one could make on Goldman’s behalf.
1. Basic Mindreading
Humans – and perhaps some nonhuman animals – do not only have minds, they also know
about their mental activities. They know that they perceive objects in their environment that
they form beliefs about what they perceive, that they have emotions, feel pain and pleasure,
that they have intentions and make plans for action, etc. How do we acquire this knowledge?
This is the fundamental question addressed by theories of mindreading.
Like other mental faculties, our mindreading faculty is limited. Mindreading may give
rise to more or less justified beliefs that are in fact false. It may happen that we think we know
what happens in somebody’s mind, while in fact her thoughts or feelings are quite different.
Minds are also not transparent. People have hidden thoughts and experiences, and they can
hide such experiences and thoughts from themselves. Mindreading is therefore not the
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competence to gain knowledge about other minds; it is the faculty to form beliefs about
mental states and processes, however speculative they may be.1
The difficulty of forming reliable beliefs about mental states depends, of course, on
whose mind one is trying to “read”. Simple creatures have simple minds that are easier to
understand than the complex mind of a sophisticated person. It may also be that
understanding ones own mind is much easier in comparison to understanding another subject.
But accessibility of our own minds is a controversial issue and we can leave that open at the
beginning.2
A better idea here is to start with simple cases of what Goldman calls “low-level
mindreading“. Such cases require no sophisticated skills of interpretation and may occur in
non-linguistic creatures as well as in early stages of our own development. Goldman’s
prototypical example here is face-based emotion recognition (FaBER). It is well known that
we rely on facial cues to detect basic emotions in other subjects. Small changes in the way a
person looks can indicate whether she is angry, disgusted or afraid of something. This ability
is so widespread that it appears to be a good candidate for a basic mindreading capacity.
Reportedly, children can imitate faces almost from birth on (see Meltzoff and Moore, 1995).
However, as studies of this phenomenon have shown it is not so easy to trace the causal
paths in such interactions. One possibility is that a certain facial feature causes us to imitate
the expression in our own face, and that these movements then induce a certain emotion in us.
It could also be, however, that by looking into the face of another person we experience an
emotional response that leads to an activation of our own facial muscles.3
I want to set aside these complications here and will therefore use an example that is
even simpler than the cases mentioned by Goldman. Instead of observing somebody’s face,
we can recognize basic emotions more easily when an object of perception triggers them.
Imagine a subject observing a disgusting spider crawling over somebody’s face. As soon as
this person starts to scream and shout, the observing subject will know what goes on in the
other’s mind: obviously she is terrified by the spider.
Goldman describes it as “the activity of conceptualizing other creatures (and oneself) as loci of
mental life“ (Goldman 2006, p.3).
2
This does not mean that we should completely separate first-person mindreading and third-person
mindreading. The idea is to avoid naive assumptions by leaving it open how these two domains are
related to each other.
3
Another problem here is how to differentiate the recognition of emotions in other subjects from the
more primitive phenomenon of emotional contagion. Children may “catch” an emotion from
somebody’s face without recognizes that the other person (or they themselves) have those experiences.
1
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A very simple model of mindreading should suffice to explain such basic cases. The
model should capture the causal connections between the following events, all taking place in
the observing subject: (1) the observation of the spider on the others face, (3) the emotional
response triggered by this observation, (3) the observation of the behavior of the target, and
(4) the recognition of the other person’s emotion. I think we can capture the sequence of these
events here in the following diagram (the subscript “m” stands for “mindreading”, “t” for
“target.”):4
A model for basic emotion-recognition:
[perceiving O  experiencing emotion Em]

[observing T’s behavior Bt  attributing emotional state Et to T]
Although there is no fancy simulation or pretence involved here, this model shares an
important idea with simulation theories. The subject attributes a certain emotion to the target
because her own experiences are relevantly similar. The downward arrow connecting the two
lines in this model is meant to capture this idea. The emotion Et gets ascribed to T because
there is a prior emotion Em of the same kind that the observer experiences. If the observing
subject were simply amused by the spider, she would not know why the other person screams
and shouts. Since she is frightened herself, however, this emotion fits to the behavior she
observes, and that allows here to attribute this emotion to the target.
I will later return to this example in order to see whether there might be something
important missing in this model. Before I take up this question, I want to contrast this basic
case of mindreading with a more interesting, and demanding task. Mindreading seems to be a
much greater achievement when it draws on our imagination. This will then set the stage for
bringing introspection into the picture as well.
4
For the sake of simplicity, I assume that this is not a case of emotional contagion. The emotional
response in the observing subject
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2. Sophisticated mindreading
Usually discussions of mindreading open with the contrast between two types of explanations
and the question which of them is empirically more adequate: simulation-based explanations
or theory-based explanations. I have so far avoided the questions about folk-psychology that
fuel this debate. Once we turn to more complex cases, however, these questions are hard to
avoid. The best way to approach them will be again to begin with an example.
Consider the following situation: Andrew tries to find out why his brother Bill does not
want to go camping with his family. Bill always liked camping, so why does he refuse to go
this time? Andrew comes up with the following options:
a) Bill no longer likes camping.
b) Bill is reaching the age at which children no longer like to go on holidays with their
parents.
c) Bill had a terrifying experience with a spider and is now afraid of being attacked by spiders
while sleeping in the tent.
d) Bill has a new computer game and would prefer to stay home playing this game.
Andrew might rule out some explanations as too ad hoc, e.g. that Bill suddenly dislikes
camping for no particular reason. This still leaves more than one option to be considered.
Simulation theory and theory-theory suggest different strategies how one might go about
solving this kind of problem. Following a simulationist routine, Andrew should try his
imagination to find the answer. He knows his brother well and can therefore put himself
easily into his position. In this way it might become clear to him that the spider-experience
overshadows all the other reasons Bill might have for staying at home. Andrew may then be
quite sure that it is Bill’s anxiety that counts.
A different line here would be taken by a theory-theorist. On this view, Andrew should
do what a trained psychologist would do, namely look for further cues in Bill’s behavior to
rule out some of the plausible hypotheses. This will be much easier if he cannot merely
observe what Bill does, but if he can involve him in some interaction. Perhaps he can
convince Bill that spiders will not attack him inside the tent, or that he will have plenty of
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time to play his game after he returns home. The hypotheses that turns out to be hardest to
disprove, will then count as the most plausible explanation of Bill’s resistance.
Which of these strategies looks more promising? Should Andrew’s goal be to verify a
plausible looking explanation by simulating it in his mind as best as he can? Or should he try
to falsify rival explanations by confronting them with further data? If one looks at the problem
in this way, the question seems to be ill motivated. Why should Andrew choose one approach
rather than the other, instead of trying to approach the solution from both sides? It is therefore
not surprising that many philosophers and psychologists now favor a hybrid theory of
mindreading that builds on the mutual strengths of both simulation theory and theory-theory.
Goldman now also endorses this idea of an “ST-TT hybrid” (Goldman, 2006: 21), but
he deliberately puts the ST-component first. He recommends a hybrid theory “with an
emphasis on the simulation component” (ibid. 21 and 23), while advocates of theory-theory
would put the emphasis on the TT-component (see Carruthers, 2008). Let us now see how
Goldman tries to defend the priority of ST over TT.
3. The place for introspection
The decisive question in this dispute, as Goldman sees it, is the question what role
introspection plays in mindreading. Theory-theory – but also some versions of simulation
theory – set aside introspection as problematic and inessential. This is a crucial mistake,
however, since introspection is a pervasive feature of our conscious life. As Goldman says,
“people, even children, have introspective access to [the content of their] conscious
experience” (see Goldman, 2000: 179). A theory of mindreading should not disregard this
fact.
One must be careful, however, not to confuse two different things here. On the one
hand, there is the fact that mindreaders have experiences of their own while trying to
understand the minds of others. On the other hand, there is the fact that we can reflect about
our own experience when we try to understand our own minds. Having an experience and
reflecting upon it are two different things. One might therefore agree with Goldman that
conscious experience should play a key role in mindreading, but not necessarily introspection
or self-monitoring.
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Goldman seems to be aware of this possible confusion since he offers an argument in
which he explicitly claims that self-reflection – not just conscious experience – is a condition
for mindreading. There is sufficient empirical evidence that supports this claim, Goldman
argues:
[E]vidence points to a type of cognitive activity that is intimately involved in the
simulation-projection method but quite dubious for theorizing. Self-reflection or selfreference, is a natural subactivity of third-person mindreading according to ST.5 [A]
paradigm simulation routine, at its next-to-last step, involves detecting and classifying
an output state of a cognitive mechanism (e.g. a decision). This detection-andclassification step requires self-reflection. (Goldman, 2006: 148)
Leaving aside unnecessary details, the argument rests on two premises and runs as follows:
1. There is evidence that self-reflection takes place while subjects are engaged in
mindreading.
2. Self-reflection plays a key role in running a simulation routine.
Conclusion: There is evidence that mindreaders employ a simulation routine in which selfreflection plays a key role.
It is noteworthy that the conclusion of this argument is not just that there is empirical
evidence that simulation plays an important role in mindreading. That this is so, I will simply
take for granted in what follows. Goldman’s conclusion is that simulation combined with
introspection plays a key role. This conclusion requires a particular interpretation of the
evidence, as we shall see. It is this interpretation of the evidence, not the evidence itself that I
want to challenge.6
The evidence on which this argument is based comes from neurophysiologic studies.
There are many fMRI studies that show, as Goldman reports, “that the medial prefrontal
cortex, especially the ventral sector, was found to be selectively engaged during tasks
“ST” stands here for Goldman’s introspection-simulation view that may include elements of theorytheory as well.
6
The argument that I am criticizing here provides only one of three sources of evidence to which
Goldman appeals (see Goldman, 2006, p.147). Even if this particular argument that I am criticizing
fails there are still these other sources that support Goldman’s theory.
5
7
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requiring self-reflection, self-referencing, or introspection.“ (Goldman, 2006: 162). These
very same regions are also known to be engaged in tasks of mindreading. This provides
support for Goldman’s first premise.
But this evidence can be taken in two ways. It might be taken to show that
i) introspection is a subactivity of third-person mindreading.
Or it might suggest that
ii) third-person mindreading is a subactivity of introspection.
Neuroscientists might therefore search for further data that cohere with one or the other of
these interpretations. In order to support interpretation (i) they would have to show that
introspection occurs while none of those brain-regions are active that are engaged in thirdperson mindreading. Conversely, in order to support interpretation (ii) they would have to
show that third-person mindreading occurs while none of the brain-regions are active that are
engaged in introspection. Whether such data will be forthcoming, we do not know yet.
It might therefore seem as if Goldman puts too much trust in the empirical evidence
here? But that is not necessarily the case. He may also have independent reasons for
preferring a specific interpretation of the data. This seems a likely guess, when one considers
the second premise of his argument. If one already believes that introspection plays a
fundamental role in simulation, one will naturally prefer a reading of the evidence that fits this
assumption. The rest is then just a matter of the internal coherence of one’s view.
But we are now one step ahead of the argument. So far nothing has been said to justify
Goldman’s second premise. It would therefore be easy to argue for the opposite conclusion by
turning the argument around. An advocate of theory-theory could insist that third-person
mindreading is a subactivity of introspection.7 Hence interpretation (ii) will cohere better with
his view.
An appeal to neurophysiologic evidence is therefore only of limited use in this context.
In addition, Goldman needs a philosophical argument to back up his assumption – the second
premise in the above argument – that self-reflection plays a fundamental role in running a
simulationist routine.
7
One need not simply take this for granted, of course, but might support this assumption by pointing
out that whenever we reflect on our own mental states we draw on knowledge and skills which we
acquire and practice in third-person mindreading.
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4. The detection-and-classification step
When we try to explain our faculty of mindreading, we must also explain the conceptual
competences involved it. This is another important assumption in Goldman’s reasoning, as we
shall see. These competences are more demanding, and therefore easier to identify, in more
sophisticated cases. Goldman’s favorite examples when discussing this issue are therefore
similar to the case of Andrew and Bill in section 2.
As Goldman describes these examples, they involve an imaginary decision (a „pretend
decisions“), and they terminate in a metarepresentational belief. This raises the question how
a subject manages to get from the one state to the other. Here is a crucial passage from
Goldman where he presses this question:
Unlike the pretend decision the belief state is a metarepresentation. It represents
another mental state, a future state of the target. Moreover, it characterizes that state in
terms of content and attitude type. Where does this characterization come from? It isn’t
provided by any prior element in the causal chain. This is clearly true of the attitude
type: being a decision. The immediately preceding state, of course, is a decision (in
pretend mode). But a decision does not characterize itself as a decision; it doesn’t
metarepresent itself. So how does the system “know” from this decision that the target’s
future state will be a decision? To select “decision” as an item of metarepresentational
content, some classification process is required, perhaps introspection or selfmonitoring. Thus, as I interpret ST, it naturally invites an introspective approach to
first-person attribution. (Goldman, 2006: 187).
From a philosophical point of view, this is the real backbone of Goldman’s defense of
introspection. Let us look more closely what it adds to the empirical evidence.
As with the first argument, we can break down the argument into two steps:
1. Understanding someone’s decisions means to form a metarepresentational belief with the
content [T will decide to do A]. Forming such a belief requires the conceptual knowledge
what it means to make a decision.
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2. The conceptual competence needed in forming metarepresentational beliefs results from a
classificatory process. In this process a subject classifies a mental state in her imagination
as a state of a certain kind (e.g. as a decision).
The remainder of the argument is not contained in the above quote. It contains Goldman’s
account of introspection that is tailor-made to explain our classificatory competence. As I
already said in the introduction, I will not consider Goldman’s theory of introspection in
detail here. Hence I will grant Goldman the final part of his argument. I concede that we can
introspectively classify our own mental states, including those that we imagine to occur in
other persons. 8 What I do not grant thereby, however, is the second premise above. This
premise smuggles in a Cartesian assumption that we need not accept, or so I shall argue.
The Cartesian character of this premise becomes more vivid if we formulate it as a
single claim, not as a conjunction. We can put it more concisely as follows:
2.*
The conceptual competence required for mindreading results from a subject’s ability to
classify her own (real or imaginary) mental states.
Notice that this is premise is not restricted to sophisticated cases of mindreading. It is about
mindreading in general. That Goldman subscribes to such a general assumption is confirmed
by passages like the following: “Third-person mindreading by simulation borrows
classifications of one’s own states to classify states of another.“ (Goldman, 2006: 223). This
claim should therefore also be true for basic cases of mindreading, like the example of
emotion recognition described earlier. Let us therefore take another look at this case now.
The model suggested in section 1 contained a sequence of events in the following
order: the perception of an object (a spider), an emotional response to this object, the
observation of the target’s behavior, and finally the attribution of an emotional state (fear or
horror) to the target. If Goldman’s argument is sound, this description is incomplete in an
This may seem to be a large concession from the point of view of those who reject Goldman’s theory
of introspection but accept that some theory of self-monitoring plays an important role in mindreading
(see e.g. Nichols and Stich, 2003). However, it may be that Goldman’s tentative conclusion here is
misleading here. Contrary to what he suggests, it may be that no theory of self-monitoring has the
explanatory power that Goldman’s argument requires unless the theory is a variant of his
introspectionist theory. In this case, the final step of the argument is not decisive any more since all
other candidate theories are already ruled out in the first part of the argument.
8
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important respect. It omits the self-reflective classification of the emotional response that the
subject feels in perceiving the spider. We should extend the model by adding a further
component (I have marked the additions in bold):
An extended model for basic emotion-recognition:
[perceiving O  experiencing emotion Em]

[classifying the emotion Em as an emotion of type X]

[observing T’s behavior Bt  attributing an emotional state Et of type X to T] 9
What could be the motivation for adding this extra step? My conjecture is that the motivation
derives from a dilemma. When we try to explain the conceptual competence of a person who
forms a metarepresentational belief, one has two possibilities to consider: either this person
holds a theory of mind that includes this competence in form of explicit or implicit
knowledge; or she has acquires this competence by reflecting on her own mental states. Since
Goldman advocates a simulation theory, he avoids the first horn of this dilemma and settles
for a theory of introspection.
But this reasoning is faulty. There is no need to accept this dilemma in the first place.
There are also other explanations available here. One such explanation comes into view when
we think of rules that contain conceptual information. How do we learn, for instance, the
concept “checkmate”? We do this by grasping the following rule for playing chess:
If a king is attacked and cannot escape and if the attack cannot be countered by either
capturing or blocking a piece, then the king is checkmate.
The crucial point here is this: In order to articulate this rule, one needs to know all the
concepts employed in it, including the concept of being checkmate. From this it does not
follow, however, that one has to acquire this concept prior to grasping that rule. One can learn
the rule and at the same time acquire the concept of being checkmate.
In Goldman’s models for face-based emotion recognition the addition of this extra step is masked by
incorporating the classificatory step into the attribution step. In these models the final step is described
as “classifying one’s current emotion and attribute this state to the target.” (Goldman, 2006: 125f.)
9
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The same point also holds for basic simulation routines. Following such a routine can
result in a conceptual competence; it need not presuppose it. There is no need to acquire
mental concepts first by some independent process, e.g. by an act of introspection, and then
use those concepts in ascribing a particular mental states to another person. One can do both
things at the same time since one can learn to follow a routine prior to describing it in an
articulate form.10
This undermines Goldman’s claim that we need to bring in introspection into the
foundations of mindreading. We can resist this move even if Goldman is right to point out
that a classificatory competence is clearly involved in it. Looking again at premise 2, we see
that one can accept its first part without the second. The second part introduces the Cartesian
assumption that the classificatory competence involved in mindreading has to be acquired by
classifying one’s own mental states. This has not been established.
Once this premise is rejected, Goldman looses the backbone of his defense of
introspection. It is then unclear why self-reflection should be a subactivity of mindreading
rather than the other way round. I want to emphasize, however, that this does not mean to
deny that mindreading is basically not a theoretical activity, but the capacity to run
simulationist routines. This claim remains untouched by my criticism; it is even strengthened
by the fact that learning a simulation routine can provide us with the conceptual competences
needed in forming metarepresentational beliefs.
5. Possible responses
In the remainder of this paper I want to consider three responses that one could make here on
behalf of Goldman’s position.
A first response could be that my criticism merely exploits a well-known
Wittgensteinian theme. One of Wittgenstein’s central claims was that rule following has to be
controlled by public norms. If acquiring a concept means learning how a concept is correctly
applied, this rule cannot be learned privately. Mental concepts therefore cannot be acquired
by an introspective method independently of any public norms.
10
We may acquire mental concepts also by “ascent routines”, as Gordon describes them. Different
mental concepts may be acquired in different ways.
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Goldman is not much impressed by such Wittgensteinian arguments. He thinks these
objections overstate their point and argues that his account of first-person mindreading can be
made compatible with Wittgenstein’s view (see Goldman, 2006: 226ff.) A similar response
might therefore also cut out the ice from my argument that introspection is not needed for
mindreading.
I think that these Wittgensteinian arguments should not be dismissed too easily.11
There is an important truth in them that can cause trouble for Goldman’s position.12 However,
this is not what I have tried to show here. I did not use the example of rule following as an
argument against the possibility of acquiring concepts in a private manner. It merely should
illustrate a way of learning concepts that does neither depend on theoretical knowledge nor on
introspection. Therefore my objection does not simply repeat the common Wittgensteinian
theme that mental concepts could not be learned by introspection. My point was that they
need not be learned in this way. This suffices to undermine Goldman’s claim that
introspection is a necessary pre-condition for mindreading.13
A second response to my criticism could be as follows. Attributing mental states to
other persons does not merely consist in a causal sequence of events; it means to form
judgments based on reasons. Even in the simplest cases we have to ask what reasons a subject
may have, for instance, to attribute an emotion of horror to somebody attacked by a spider.
According to my story this reason must be provided by the fact that the mindreader himself
has a certain emotional reaction by observing the spider crawling over the others face. Yet,
this emotional response itself cannot be a reason for forming the metarepresentational belief
that the other person is horrified. The subject has to know what his own experience is like, and
she has to assume that his target shows an emotion that is relevantly similar to his own
emotional response. Therefore we need an explanation of how the subject comes to know all
this before she is in a position to make a third-person attribution. We need a theory how selfattributions can provide the rational ground for third-person attributions.
11
Goldman acknowledges the force of such arguments when he grants that there is empirical evidence
that “fits with suggestions of Wittgenstein“, namely the evidence that goal-detection may be
stimulated by external motion or behavior alone. See Goldman, 2000: 19.
12
Arguments of this kind can be found in Röska-Hardy, 2000, and in Clark 2002.
13
Interestingly, Goldman comes close to accepting this point when he offers a “dual representation
hypothesis” according to which introspection plays no role in the initial stage of concept-acquisition:
He says: “Representations associated with behavioral characteristics are an initial entry-way into a
conception of desire of desire and intentionality” (Goldman, 2000b: 20). In his later work this idea
seems to have disappeared from his view.
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This response also rings a familiar tone. It follows the pattern of the classical argument
from analogy. In order to know what goes on in the minds of others, we first have to know
what goes on in our own minds. We can attribute mental states to others only by first
reflecting on our own mental life. The well-known difficulty with this argument is that it
threatens to end in solipsism. Goldman mentions this threat, but thinks that the argument can
be interpreted in a way that does not have this disastrous consequence (see Goldman, 2006:
224f.). Perhaps it can then be used to argue that introspection does play a key role in
mindreading.
I disagree. I think that the argument from analogy cannot be remedied so easily. The
fundamental mistake in the argument is that it overlooks the key role that the observation of
somebody’s behavior plays in mindreading. As the argument was set out above, the subject’s
own experience could not provide the reason for attributing a similar emotion to someone
else. I have nothing to object to that. It does not follow, however, that the reflective
knowledge of ones own experiences has to provide this reason. This reason can be provided
by the observation of the other person’s behavior. If she screams and shouts, this is the real
reason why we think she is horrified?14
This is not to deny that the subject’s own emotional reaction also plays a role here. But
its role is different. It consists in the fact that the subject associates his own emotional
experience with the observed behavior of the other person and thereby recognizes this
behavior to be appropriate. For this to happen it is not required that the subject knows what
his own experience is like. Associations between emotions and behavior can be established
without reflective knowledge of these associative links.
A third response to my criticism may be as follows. Perhaps I am right that
introspection does not play an essential role in low-level mindreading. It is indeed implausible
to suggest that a process of self-reflection has to take place before we can recognize even the
most basic emotions and intentions in other subjects. This idea becomes more plausible,
however, when we turn to more sophisticated cases of mindreading. In those cases
introspection may be indispensable. Thus, one might try to safe Goldman’s introspectionistsimulation theory by restricting it to forms of high-level mindreading.
14
Of course, this reason is defeasible like any other reason we may have for believing
something.
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There are two things I want to say in response to this suggestion. First, this move
would put additional pressure on the idea that mindreading is a unique mental faculty.
Modularists, like Stich and Nichols, argue against this assumption by postulating various
modules to explain different types of mindreading and simulation. A self-monitoring module
may be part of this architecture, but it does not play the fundamental role that Goldman
assigns to it (see Nichols, 2000; and Stich and Nichols, 2003). Goldman thinks, in contrast,
that the terms “mindreading” and “simulation” pick out a single theoretical category.
Although he agrees that different cognitive mechanisms may be involved in low-level and
high-level mindreading, he sees “unity amid this diversity” (Goldman, 2006: 35). This unity
may be illusory, if it is conceded that introspection plays an essential role in high-level
mindreading but not in low-level mindreading.
But I have a more serious worry with this suggestion. It is not clear to me how
introspection could be of much help in high-level mindreading once it is granted that it is not
necessary for basic mindreading. For instance, how could it help Andrew to find out why his
brother Bill does not want to go camping with the family? The help could not be with
conceptualizing Bill’s situation. We have already seen that conceptual competences are better
explained without invoking introspection. If introspection should play an essential role here, it
must be for a different reason. Probably the idea is this: sophisticated mindreading requires an
evaluation of different possible explanations. As long as Bill does not say why he does not
want to join his family, we have no unmistakable clue in his behavior what is going on in his
mind, like we have in the case of the horrified person who screams and shouts. How do we
resolve such indeterminacy created by the scarcity of behavioral data?
This is a true problem, but why should introspection be of much help here? When
Andrew starts to wonder about Bill’s decision, he must also realize that such decisions have
to be explained individually for each person. If his sister Clara had refused to go, her reasons
could be different even if her situation would be otherwise the same, i.e. if the same set of
explanations would be available in her case. The explanatory options have to be evaluated
differently for each person. Could Andrew find out by introspection the difference between
Bill’s and Clara’s character? This is very unlikely. All he could find out in this way is how he
would decide if he were in either Bill’s or Clara’s situation. But this is not relevant and could
only lead to an egocentric bias. Hence, we may conclude that introspection should better play
no essential role in high-level mindreading either.
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6. Conclusion
According to the traditional Cartesian view we can know the minds of others only when we
have prior knowledge of our own minds. This is the powerful intuition that guides Goldman’s
introspectionist-simulationist theory of mindreading. To be sure, Goldman’s position is
Cartesian only in a very unorthodox sense since he is also a reliabilist and naturalist. But he
believes in the validity of this intuition and tries to make it cohere with contemporary science.
If my criticism in this paper is on the right track, this part of his project needs to be
reconsidered. Goldman’s arguments in favor of the central role of introspection in
mindreading do not hold under scrutiny. In particular, these arguments cannot show that the
conceptual competence required for mindreading has to be derived from self-reflection. This
may not mean very much, since one can trust the power of ones intuition independently of
any argument. It also may not mean very much, since I have not addressed here the problems
that arise for Goldman’s specific model of introspection. Still, it is important to know why
simulation theory is not committed an introspectionist foundation.
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