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

by Alvin I. Goldman

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

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Neuroscience

364 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Alvin Ira Goldman was an American philosopher who was emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology.

Reviews

[Evaggelia Nikolaou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for the basis of understanding Empathy (or Theory of Mind;).

The topic of my dissertation is whether phenomenological experience is mandatory for high-level empathy. The last week, I was quite confused whether my ideas were scientifically valid.

This book helped me have a glance in an enormous literature of philosophy of mind.

I'm quite excited, unconfused and impressed for the scientific validity of my ideas.

Literature about empathy is scarce. This book was so important and it guided me towards the right paths for the extension and investigation of my ideas.

Empathy is an extremely difficult subject, more than I expected. However, I would really advise people to read more about empathy.

Although a lot of people might have thought that the book talks about Philosophy of mind, it just set the foundations for understanding Empathy. The foundations are so many, something which makes empathy inherently complex, but, perhaps the core of everything. (Or that's how I feel for empathy)

[Adrian Manea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a challenging book to read, mostly because I feel it must be studied, rather than read. In many cases, it just presents surveys of research or theories that others have formulated about theories of mind. I wanted a lighter or at least a more streamlined approach, whereas this book gave me a dense overview, full of references and citations. This could be excellent — provided you're interested in reading with a notebook and some open tabs for references.

[Yasser Mohammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a GREAT book and looking back to my reviews I do not say that lightly.

The book is not philosophical nor does it claim to be. In fact the author explicitly states that he will be avoiding heavy philosophical issues throughout the book and he did.

Nevertheless, the book is very informed and very informing about empirical research surrounding the theory of mind debate.

I myself subscribe to a hybrid simulation-theory approach similar to the one proposed in this book for years and it forms the basis of my cognitive robotics research but I could have never dreamed of spelling it out that clearly.

The weakest part of the book -- in my view -- is chapter 9 (self-attribution). As Goldman argues, a simulation approach to ToM implies at some level some form of introspective perception which is denied by most theory-of-theory advocates (Dennett for example). Nevertheless, the analysis in this chapter is not as clear and convincing as the rest of the book.

The book is multi-disciplinary to the core and it is not easy to get the most of it if you are so focused on your field (whatever that is) but who is not multi-disciplinary these days!!

The references of this book are very representative and useful.

All in all, it deserved every second spent on reading it.

[Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard for me to express how important this book is to my thinking. So many of my ideas are either confirmed by this book, or they use this book as a launching pad. My blog is packed with ideas on simulation and synthetic experience. Goldman implicitly discusses synthetic experience on many occasions. He is not, however, concerned with using simulation as a pedagogical tool. And that is my primary interests. Fantastic, well researched, interesting inter-disciplinary book that legitimates simulation theory of mind supported by tacit theories. Five bloody stars.

[Tim]

PTR2 (Mirror Neurons / Metacognition)