Without pretense a critique of Goldman’s model of

Authors: Uku Tooming

Publish Date: 2013/11/10

Volume: 14, Issue: 3, Pages: 561-575

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Abstract

In this paper I criticize Alvin Goldmans simulation theory of mindreading which involves the claim that the basic method of folk psychologically predicting behaviour is to form pretend beliefs and desires that reproduce the transitions between the mental states of others in that way enabling to predict what the others are going to do I argue that when it comes to simulating propositional attitudes it isnt clear whether pretend beliefs need to be invoked in order to explain relevant experimental results and whether pretend desires can be distinguished from real ones as forming a separate kind of mental states Since beliefdesire model underlies the conception of pretend states in higherlevel mindreading dropping pretend attitudes from the picture isnt possible and due to that this model may be incoherent Nevertheless Goldmans theory could still survive because it includes an additional model of mindreading but simulation is given much lesser role there

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