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How “weak” mindreaders inherited the earth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Cameron Buckner
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN [email protected]://www.indiana.edu/~phil/GraduateBrochure/IndividualPages/cameronbuckner.htm
Adam Shriver
Affiliation:
Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Department, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO [email protected]://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/people/index.php?position_id=3&person_id=60&status=1
Stephen Crowley
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Boise State University, Boise, ID [email protected]://philosophy.boisestate.edu/Faculty/faculty.htm
Colin Allen
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN [email protected]://mypage.iu.edu/~colallen/

Abstract

Carruthers argues that an integrated faculty of metarepresentation evolved for mindreading and was later exapted for metacognition. A more consistent application of his approach would regard metarepresentation in mindreading with the same skeptical rigor, concluding that the “faculty” may have been entirely exapted. Given this result, the usefulness of Carruthers' line-drawing exercise is called into question.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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