ABSTRACT
The Simulation Theory (ST) is an account of how we understand other people. In brief, the theory holds that we understand others by mentally simulating being them. Observing your behavior, I imagine what I would think, feel, and do in your situation. On the basis of this imaginative simulation, I make an inference about what you think, feel, and will do. Originally, ST was advanced as a theory of mindreading, i.e., as a theory about how we
attribute mental states to others in order to explain and predict their behavior (Goldman 2006b, 1986). The theory has been co-opted to explain pretense (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002), engagement with fiction (Currie 2010; Goldman 2006a), imitation (Hurley 2005), and other cognitive feats (Davies and Stone 1995b). In each of these roles, simulation crucially involves imagination. In this chapter, I will focus on ST as a theory of mindreading. However, when appropriate, I will draw connections with these other uses of the theory. Mindreading consists in attributing a mental state to a target in order to understand the
target’s behavior and anticipate future behavior. Mindreading theorists typically fall into two distinct camps: Theory Theory (TT) and ST. Theory theorists argue that we understand others by employing a folk psychological theory to explain and predict others’ behaviors (Carruthers and Smith 1996; Davies and Stone 1995a). In contrast, simulation theorists argue that we do not need to employ a theory about folk psychology to understand others. The theory theorists overintellectualize this process. To understand a target’s behavior, all we need to do is imagine what we would think, feel, and do in the target’s situation, and on that basis we come to understand what the target thinks, feels, and will do (Davies and Stone 1995b). There are two kinds of simulational mindreading, which often work together. The first
kind is retrodictive simulation. We simulate the target to figure out what the target’s mental states could have been to cause the observed behavior. That is, we imagine ourselves in the target’s situation and imagine what mental states could have caused us to act in the way the target acts. The result of the retrodictive simulation is an explanation of the target’s behavior. The second kind is projective simulation, which can take as input the output of the retrodictive simulation. We imagine that we have the target’s beliefs and desires, and we imagine what we would do next in that situation. We take the resulting conclusion and attribute it to the target. The result of the projective simulation is a prediction of what the target will do next.
