How to think about the modularity of mind-reading

Gregory Currie*, Kim Sterelny

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

62 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

It has been suggested that the fixation of beliefs about people's beliefs, desires and intentions is modularized. We argue that this is unlikely. We argue that there is modularity lower down: social-intentional 'markers' are produced by an encapsulated mechanism intermediate between perception and belief-fixation, and that these markers make a distinctive contribution to the fixation of beliefs about the mental. But belief fixation itself is not modular. Finally, we suggest some complications to our simple picture, and some ways in which our thesis might shed light on pathologies of social understanding.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)145-160
Number of pages16
JournalPhilosophical Quarterly
Volume50
Issue number199
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2000
Externally publishedYes

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