Tobias Schlicht

A second-person neuroscience in interaction

In this response we address additions to as well as criticisms and possible misinterpretations of our proposal for a second-person neuroscience. We map out the most crucial aspects of our approach by (1) acknowledging that second-person engaged interaction is not the only way to understand others, although we claim that it is ontogenetically prior; (2) claiming that spectatorial paradigms need to be complemented in order to enable a full understanding of social interactions; and (3) restating that our theoretical proposal not only questions the mechanism by which a cognitive process comes into being, but asks whether it is at all meaningful to speak of a mechanism and a cognitive process when it is confined to intra-agent space. We address theoretical criticisms of our approach by pointing out that while a second-person social understanding may not be the only mechanism, alternative approaches cannot hold their ground without resorting to second-person concepts, if not in the expression, certainly in the development of social understanding. In this context, we also address issues of agency and intentionality, theoretical alternatives, and clinical implications of our approach.

Understanding other minds: A criticism of Goldman's simulation theory and an outline of the person model theory

Consider Ralph. Ralph is strolling along the beach where he sees a man wearing a brown hat, black sunglasses and a trench coat. He has seen this man several times before in town and his strange and secretive behaviour has made Ralph suspicious. Since the man, let’s call him Ortcutt, always tries to cover his face and turns around all the time to see if he is being followed etc., Ralph has come to believe that Ortcutt might be a spy. Since Ralph finds this exciting, he follows him. Now, Ortcutt is in fact a spy and when he turns around and notices Ralph, he starts walking faster, takes his cell phone out of his pocket and makes all kinds of wild gestures while talking to someone. Ralph, in turn, comes to believe that the man in the brown hat believes that Ralph has recognized him as a spy and that his cover has been blown. Only now does it occur to Ralph that it might not have been such a good idea to show so much interest in the man and he runs away. How does Ralph acquire this belief about what Ortcutt might be thinking? This question is an instance of the more general question of how we understand others, how we come to know what they believe and desire or intend to do, what they feel and perceive. Typically, when we think about what others are (or might be) thinking, we represent them as having mental states (processes or events) like beliefs, desires, emotions and so on. This mental capacity of ours is sometimes called mentalizing or mindreading and it has been among the most-discussed topics in recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This research area has been transformed profoundly by recent developments in the cognitive neurosciences and developmental psychology. In the last decade, there has been an intensive investigation into the neural mechanisms underlying the capacities associated with mindreading and we have also learned a lot about some of the relevant capacities displayed by young children at various ages. Thus, research in this field has become essentially interdisciplinary. But despite the scientific progress in the empirical disciplines, there is still no consensus about how we should best understand and conceptualize these capacities subsumed under the name of mindreading. What exactly do we do when we try to make sense of other people by ascribing mental states like beliefs and desires to them?

Non-Conceptual Content and the Subjectivity of Consciousness

Abstract The subjectivity of conscious experience is a central feature of our mental life that puzzles philosophers of mind. Conscious mental representations are presented to me as mine, others remain unconscious. How can we make sense of the difference between them? Some representationalists (e.g. Tye) attempt to explain it in terms of non-conceptual intentional content, i.e. content for which one need not possess the relevant concept required in order to describe it. Hanna claims that Kant purports to explain the subjectivity of conscious experience in this way. This paper examines this claim in some detail in the context of a more general criticism of this kind of attempt to explain subjectivity and proposes a different reading of Kant that also leads to an alternative account of subjectivity independent from content.

Self as cultural construct? An argument for levels of self-representations

In this paper, we put forward an interdisciplinary framework describing different levels of self-representations, namely non-conceptual, conceptual and propositional self-representations. We argue that these different levels of self-representation are differently affected by cultural upbringing: while propositional self-representations rely on “theoretical” concepts and are thus strongly influenced by cultural upbringing, non-conceptual self-representations are uniform across cultures and thus universal. This differentiation offers a theoretical specification of the distinction between an independent and interdependent self-construal put forward in cross-cultural psychology. Hence, this does not only allow for a deeper understanding of different self-conceptions, but also for a formulation of new hypotheses regarding the cultural influence on self-representations. As one example, we will highlight the role of the proposed levels of self-representation for emotional experience and formulate some major implications of our interdisciplinary framework for future empirical research.

Explaining Subjective Character: Representation, Reflexivity, or Integration?

While Williford puts forward a self-reflexive account of subjective character, which identifies the subject of experience with episodes (or the stream) of consciousness, an alternative account is defended here that identifies the subject of experience with the whole organism. On this latter approach, a mental representation is conscious if its neural substrate is integrated into the overall neuronal state underlying the conscious state of the organism at that time. This approach avoids an important problem arising for Williford ’s theory, namely the individuation of episodes. This problem is elaborated in greater detail.