The "theory" in theory-theory isn't really a theory

First a little bit of background for anyone who isn't familiar with the theory of mind debate.The question is how we are able to understand the mental states of other people, and whether, broadly speaking, we perceive them directly or rely on some kind of inferential process. There's also a subsidiary debate about whether that inferential process might involve "simulating" the mental states of others within our own mind, but I'm not going to discuss that here. What I want to focus on is the dialectic between Shaun Gallagher (probably the strongest proponent of the direct perception camp) and theory-theory, which is the theory that we rely on a theory in order to understand other minds.

As you may have noticed, philosophers are not particularly imaginative when it comes to naming their theories. Theory-theory is really quite simple, though. It basically says that we possess a theoretical model that we use to interpret other people's actions, allowing us to attribute folk psychological states such as pain and belief to other people, despite having no access to their mental life. So when I see you crying, I am able to understand that you are sad by checking my perceptual evidence ("crying") against my theory of mind ("crying = sad").

This infant, lacking a fully developed theory of mind, is unaware that she is sad.

In contrast, Gallagher appeals to phenomenological evidence to argue that we are actually able to perceive to the states of other minds directly, without any appeal to a theory. I was initially sceptical of this position, not because of the evidence that it appeals to (it certainly feels like I perceive your sadness directly), but rather because it seems to lack any account of the actual process that goes on when we perceive mental states. As soon as we try to give an account of this process, we seem to reintroduce a (limited) kind of theory, one that may not be explicit but nonetheless underlies so called "direct" perception.

My undergraduate supervisor Suilin Lavelle makes a similar point in her paper "Theory-theory and the Direct Perception of Mental States" (2012), and I won't deny that her view has undoubtedly influenced my own. However I do feel that Gallagher is right to deny that we explicitly theorise about other minds, at least under usual circumstances. It's still possible to reconcile his position with theory-theory, but not without putting pressure on our common-sense understanding of what constitutes a "theory".

A quick aside: I am focusing here on what is sometimes called "innate" or "modular" theory-theory. This is the theory that we are born with a theoretical understanding of other minds, one that develops in predictable ways as we pass through infancy. It can be contrasted with "scientific" theory-theory, which says that as infants we form a theory about other minds, based on our inter-personal experiences. I find the former theory a lot more plausible, for reasons that I won't go into here.

Back to direct perception. Lavelle argues that theoretical entities can be thought of as direct objects of our perception, provided that we are equipped with the correct theory (Lavelle 2012: 227-9). If mental states are like this, then theory-theory can claim that when I infer from your crying that you are sad, I am in a sense "directly perceiving" your sadness. This might not be enough to satisfy Gallagher, but it is certainly beginning to look a lot more like the kind of intersubjective experience of mental states that he advocates. In fact, I'm inclined to say that the dispute, from this angle, is little more than an aesthetic one. Gallagher doesn't want to call whatever underlies this process a "theory", whilst Lavelle (and others) do.

So why should we think that the tacit processes underlying our perception of mental states are theoretical? Theory-theorists tend to fall back on experimental evidence at this point, arguing that the kinds of systematic errors we find infants performing when they attribute mental states suggest that a certain kind of theoretical structure is at work. They also claim that in order to support inferential reasoning, our understanding of other minds must come in the form of a theory, with propositions and syntax. On the other hand, if this theory is relatively innate and non-explicit, it's unclear to what extent it could really be a "theory". Perhaps it is best described as a theory, just as we might want to say that I have a "theory of depth" that allows me to perceive a far-away cow as being normal sized, despite it appearing to be small. This doesn't mean that I literally understand depth theoretically though.

I think some theory-theorists would actually agree with this interpretation, which is why I said that the dispute is mostly aesthetic. Some people are happy to call a tacit "theory" a theory, others aren't, but this doesn't mean that they actually disagree about anything significant - which sadly is often the case in philosophy. There may be something more significant and fundamental resting on the distinction between a theory and a non-theoretical perceptual process, but I'll happily admit that I'm not quite seeing it yet.

Some credit is due to everyone in the Cognition, Culture, and Context seminar class at Edinburgh University, with whom I discussed this yesterday. Any mistakes that I've made are my own.

• Lavelle, J.S. 2012. "Theory-Theory and the Direct Perception of Mental States." Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3: 212-30.
• Image sourced from  http://flickr.com/photos/crimfants/327861820/, published under Creative Commons Share Alike.

Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and philosophical mysticism

I study embodied cognition, an emerging field which has taken considerable inspiration from the phenomenological work of the likes of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger. As such, I've been attempting to get to grips with phenomenology, which given my analytic, Anglo-American philosophical education, is a somewhat odd experience. Phenomenology, broadly speaking, was a reaction against both empiricism and idealism, placing primary emphasis on "lived experience" and the act of perception. Merleau-Ponty in particular also focused on the interaction between the perceiver and the world, and it is this sense of "embodiment" that embodied cognition has most taken to heart.

Merleau-Ponty: grumpy

However there is another side to phenomenology, one which has the potential to be profoundly inimical to the whole project of cognitive science, embodied or not. There is evidence to suggest that Merleau-Ponty, at least, understood phenomenology to be far more than a modification of our psychological methodology. His most famous work, Phenomenology of Perception, is  littered with cryptic remarks that undermine any attempt to read it as a work of empirical psychology. He explicitly states that it is a work of transcendental philosophy, aimed at achieving "pre-objective perception". It is not at all clear what this might be, or even whether it can be expressed in words. Throughout the book (which I'll admit I haven't yet read), there is apparently a sense in which many things go unsaid, perhaps even things which will "only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts".

Wittgenstein: even grumpier

That sounds familiar. The above quote comes from the introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (which I have read, although I won't claim to have understood it). Both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty seem to be struggling to express the unexpressable, and both, perhaps, ought to be read as "anti-philosophers", whose mission is not to solve any great problems but to help us understand why there never were any problems in the first place. This is certainly the opinion of a psychology lecturer I know who, under the influence of both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, seemed shocked that us philosophers might still be trying to solve the "problem" of consciousness. Whilst I think this is somewhat arrogant (and ignorant), it is true that both Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein regarded analytic philosophy as curiously misguided, tied up in knots of its own creation.

In light of which it may seem odd that half a century later analytic philosophy continues to venerate Wittgenstein, and that analytic philosophy of mind, or at least a certain strand of it, has recently adopted Merleau-Ponty as something of an idol. If both or either of them were right, surely we're completely missing the point? In fact I don't think this should worry us too much. Neither Merleau-Ponty nor Wittgenstein were perfect, and much of what they wrote may have been as confusing to them as it is to us. What is important is to pay attention to the issues that they do highlight, and to take to heart anything that does make sense to us. Daniel Dennett takes this approach with regard to Wittgenstein (in Consciousness Explained and elsewhere), and Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi seem to be doing something similar in The Phenomenological Mind, where they attempt to apply phenomenological insights to contemporary cognitive science. Regardless of whether or not either Mearlea-Ponty or Wittgenstein would have approved, I find this approach extremely useful, and phenomenologically speaking, perhaps this is all that should matter. It is, after all, my lived experience, not Merleau-Ponty's!

(Some credit should go to the phenomenology reading group at the University of Edinburgh, with whom I discussed much of the content of this post. Any errors or misunderstandings, however, are entirely my own.)

• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown & Company.
• Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, P. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge.
• Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
• Wittgenstein, L. 1921/1991. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Dover.