Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding Other Minds

by Shaun Nichols, Stephen P. Stich

The everyday capacity to understand the mind, or 'mindreading', plays an enormous role in our ordinary lives. Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich provide a detailed and integrated account of the intricate web of mental components underlying this fascinating and multifarious skill. The imagination, they argue, is essential to understanding others, and there are special cognitive mechanisms for understanding oneself. The account that emerges has broad implications for longstanding philosophical debates over the status of folk psychology.

Mindreading is another trailblazing volume in the prestigious interdisciplinary Oxford Cognitive Science series.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Psychology

246 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2003

Reviews

[Robert Bogue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mindreading – it’s the stuff of comic books and science fiction. At the same time, Dr. Paul Ekman struggles with the implications of his discovery of micro-expressions and the emotions they reveal (see Nonverbal Messages and Telling Lies). All the while, Jonathan Haidt believes our ability to read others’ intentions is the point at which we became the truly social and cooperative species we are today. (See The Righteous Mind.)

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