PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS

VOL. 40, NO. 2, FALL 2012

Mindreading, Mindsharing, and the Origins of Self-Consciousness

James M. DowHendrix College

ABSTRACT. Philosophers and psychologists have traditionally understoodfolk psychology to emerge in one of two ways: either first through the ori-gin of the function of self-consciousness or first through the origin of thefunction of mindreading. The aim of this paper is to provide reasons todoubt that those options exhaust the possibilities. In particular, I will arguethat in the discussion about whether self-consciousness or mindreadingevolved first, we have lost sight of a viable third option. I will urge thatmindsharing—the kind of intersubjectivity involved in joint engage-ment—may have been an important precursor to the ascription of mentalstates to selves and others. I analyze arguments for the view that mindread-ing evolved prior to self-consciousness, which I call “the mindreading pri-ority account.” I acknowledge that proponents of the mindreading priorityaccount (Bogdan 2010; Carruthers 2009; Carruthers et al. 2013; Gopnik1993; Happe 2003; Sellars 1956) are correct to stress the importance of oursocial natures in the emergence of self-consciousness. However, suchaccounts have focused too narrowly on mindreading as the biologicalfunction that is the basis of the development of self-consciousness. I arguethat there are methodological reasons to doubt that mindreading is priorto self-consciousness, because awareness of oneself and awareness of oth-ers is symmetrical. I argue that there are empirical reasons to doubt that

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there is evidence for an adaptation explanation for mindreading. I providea skeptical argument against the mindreading priority account by cri-tiquing two central assumptions of that account, namely that mindread-ing is an adaptation and self-consciousness is a byproduct of mindreading.I consider an alternative view of mindsharing as the function of folk psy-chology and suggest that the mindsharing account may be on bettergrounds than the mindreading account in terms of providing an explana-tion of the origins of self-consciousness. In addition, I will outline anaccount of the development of self-consciousness and mindreading thatemerges from mindsharing. In the conclusion, I will consider two objec-tions to my account and reply to both objections.

In perceiving the other, my body and his are coupled, resultingin a sort of action which pairs them [action a deux]. This con-duct which I am able only to see, I live somehow from a distance.I make it mine; I recover it or comprehend it … . Mimesis is theensnaring of me by the other, the invasion of me by the other; itis that attitude whereby I assume the gestures, the conducts, thefavorite words, the ways of doing things of those whom I con-front … [it] is the power of assuming conducts or facial expres-sions as my own. I live in the facial expressions of the other, as Ifeel him living in mine.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, 118, 145, 146, respectively

Imagine you are backpacking in the African Savanna. Rain clouds, thunder, andlightning tell you there are storms developing in the distance. You, your family, anda small group of adults and children will hike through rough terrain to an oasis sur-rounded by large trees. The recent storms will mean that there will be berries, veg-etables, and greens to pick. In addition, antelope, birds, and other animals willconverge to gather food. During the hike, some of you will plan for a hunt. This is not a normal backpacking excursion. The journey involves coping with the typeof environment in which humans evolved. The ecological challenges that our evolutionary ancestors faced involved finding water, foraging, hunting, planning,coordinating, finding shelter, avoiding predators, and struggling with many otherissues.1 What abilities would you like to have in your psychological toolkit on thismillion-year trip?

It could be beneficial to be aware of oneself—one’s perceptions, actions, emo-tions, and thoughts. It might be helpful not only to perceive water and food, but also to be aware that one perceives water and food. The possession of self-consciousness would provide the ability to monitor and control one’s mental states,which might provide for a more successful excursion.

It could provide a fitness advantage to be able to think about other individu-als’ beliefs and desires. One might want to follow another’s lead in order to findgood spots for foraging and hunting. Alternatively, one might want to deceive about

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food stores in order to outcompete one’s rivals. The possession of mindreadingwould provide the ability to explain and predict others’ mental states, which mightprovide for success on the journey.

More importantly, perhaps, one would like to be able to engage in bouts ofshared intentionality. In particular, it would be important to jointly act in cooper-ative projects—for instance, gathering food, hunting, or securing shelter. While tra-ditional debates are concerned about whether being aware of oneself or being awareof others is central to the evolutionary success of homo sapiens, the goal of thispaper is make room for a heterodox view of the evolution of our ascription of men-tal states to selves and others. I suggest that the function of shared intentionality hasbeen of paramount importance in the evolution of self-consciousness. In particu-lar, I consider the evolution of mindsharing, which is the capacity to share experi-ences—perceptions, actions, and emotions—especially in the social context ofcooperation between oneself and others.2 In order to justify the introduction of theevolution of mindsharing, however, I need to argue against two competing ortho-dox hypotheses considered above: the self-consciousness hypothesis and the mind -reading hypothesis.

Philosophers and psychologists have traditionally understood folk psychologyto emerge either first through the origin of the function of self-consciousness orfirst through the origin of the function of mindreading. Some argue that self-con-sciousness evolved before mindreading (Focquaert and Platek 2006; Gallup 1982;Humphrey 1980; Nichols and Stich 2003). Some argue that mindreading evolvedprior to self-consciousness (Bogdan 2010; Carruthers 2009; Carruthers et al. 2013;Gopnik and Wellman 1994; Happe 2003).

The aim of this paper is to provide reasons to doubt that those options exhaustthe possibilities; I argue that in the discussion about whether self-consciousness ormindreading evolved first, we have lost sight of a viable third option. I urge thatmindsharing—Merleau-Ponty’s action a deux—may have been an important pre-cursor to the ascription of mental states to selves and others.

In §1, I outline what I mean by ‘self-consciousness,’ ‘mindreading’ and ‘mind-sharing.’ I analyze arguments for the view that mindreading evolved prior to self-consciousness, which I call “the mindreading priority account.” I acknowledge thatproponents of the mindreading priority account (Bogdan 2010; Carruthers 2009;Carruthers et al. 2013; Gopnik 1993; Happe 2003; Sellars 1956) are correct to stressthe importance of our social natures in the emergence of self-consciousness.However, such accounts have focused too narrowly on mindreading as the biolog-ical function that is the basis of the development of self-consciousness. In §2, Iargue there are methodological reasons to doubt that mindreading is prior to self-consciousness, because awareness of oneself and awareness of others is symmetri-cal. In §3, I argue there are empirical reasons to doubt that there is evidence for anadaptation explanation for mindreading. I provide a skeptical argument against themindreading priority account by critiquing two central assumptions of thataccount, namely that mindreading is an adaptation and self-consciousness is a

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byproduct of mindreading (Bogdan 2010; Carruthers 2009; Carruthers et al. 2013;Happe 2003). In §4, I consider an alternative view of mindsharing as the functionof folk psychology3 and suggest that the mindsharing account may be on bettergrounds than the mindreading account in providing an explanation of the originsof self-consciousness. In addition, I sketch an account of the development of self-consciousness and mindreading that emerges from mindsharing. In the conclusion,I consider two objections to my account and reply to both objections.

Let’s return to our African Savanna trip. We need to find water, forage, hunt,plan, find shelter, avoid predators, and struggle with terrain. Why would it be ben-eficial to possess mindreading as a psychological mechanism? Proponents of themindreading priority account argue that it would have provided a fitness advan-tage for our evolutionary ancestors to attribute thoughts, beliefs, and desires to oth-ers. In particular, the claim is that social intelligence enabled us to understand andexploit the thoughts, beliefs, and desires of others, which provided an advance overour last common ancestors.

One inspiration for the mindreading priority account could be found inWilfrid Sellars’s (1956) classic discussion of the Myth of Jones, in which Sellarsarticulates the origins of self-consciousness in the attribution of beliefs and desiresto others. According to Sellarsian cognitive anthropology, our ancestors behave lin-guistically and nonlinguistically just like we do, except that they lacked a vocabu-lary to talk about mental states. At some point, a genius named Jones invented atheory to describe, explain, and predict the behavior of people around him. Heconverted his fellows to the theory and after a period of time, Jones and his cohortsbegan to describe, explain, and predict their own actions with the theory of folkpsychology.

According to Sellars’s account, the Myth of Jones can also account for the ori-gin of self-consciousness through an account of mental state attribution based intheorizing: “Dick, using the same behavioral evidence, can say in the language ofthe theory, “I am thinking ‘p’ “ (or “I am thinking that p”). And it now turns out—need it have?—that Dick can be trained to give reasonably reliable self-descriptions,using the language of the theory, without having to observe his overt behavior”(1956, §59).4

According to Sellars, the capacity for being conscious of oneself and one’smental states is made possible by being conscious of other creatures and their men-tal states. For example, being conscious of my perception of a Savanna oasis is madepossible by first being conscious of other individuals’ perceptions of oases. The ori-gin of self-consciousness according to this historic mindreading priority account isbased in being conscious of others’ mental states—mindreading others’ beliefs,desires, perception, actions, emotions is prior to self-consciousness. However, thenotion of ‘priority’ is open to diverse interpretations.

Mindreading priority could be:

a conceptual priority—mindreading can be conceived independently of self-consciousness;

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a functional priority—mindreading can be posited as a cognitive mecha-nism independently of self-consciousness;

a developmental priority—mindreading develops in infancy prior to self-consciousness;

a neuroscientific priority—mindreading is a brain function that is distinctfrom and active temporally prior to self-consciousness;

an evolutionary priority—mindreading evolved prior to self-consciousnessand self-consciousness is a byproduct of mindreading.

The task will be to undermine those mindreading priority accounts that considermindreading to be prior in this last evolutionary sense.

One might object that if one denies the idea that mindreading is prior in theevolutionary functional sense, then one must affirm the idea that self-conscious-ness is prior. This type of process of elimination argument is a common argumentfor the mindreading priority account (Carruthers 2009; Carruthers et al. 2013) andcan be summarized as follows:

(1) Either self-consciousness evolved as an adaptation independently ofmindreading or self-consciousness is a byproduct that is dependentupon the adaptation of mindreading;

(2) It is not the case that self-consciousness evolved as an adaptation inde-pendently of mindreading;

(3) Therefore, self-consciousness is a byproduct that is dependent upon theadaptation of mindreading.

I am not convinced by this argument. However, I agree with Carruthers’s (2009;Carruthers et al. 2013) thorough debunking of the idea that an independent adap-tation explanation can be provided for the emergence of self-consciousness. I takeit that the evidence that self-consciousness and mindreading are symmetrical andmutually dependent is robust. Thus, I will not provide arguments against the self-consciousness priority view in this paper. The focus will be to put pressure on thepersistent assumption that premise 1 ought to be read exhaustively.

I suggest that if we want to provide a functional evolutionary explanation ofthe ascription of mental states to oneself and others, we need to consider the ideathat folk psychological engagement is for mindsharing.5

I. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, MINDREADING, AND MINDSHARING

1.1. WHAT IS SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS?

Most mindreading priority theorists think that self-consciousness is the ability toascribe experiences to oneself (Bogdan 2010; Carruthers 2009; Happe 2003). ‘Self-consciousness’ is said in many ways. When we ask questions about the conditionsof self-consciousness, we are asking factual questions about why, how, and when

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self-consciousness emerges, evolves, and develops. Work on self-consciousness hasfocused on separate kinds or levels of self-consciousness (Bermúdez 1998; Kriegel2008; Neisser 1993; Rochat 2003, 2009) in order to account for its emergence. Onemight think that in order to account for the origins of self-consciousness, an infantdevelopmental account is sufficient. For the purposes of this paper, I will assumewith the mindreading priority theorists—Happe (2003, 134), Carruthers (2009, 1),and Bogdan (2010, 80)—that self-consciousness is the self-ascription of mentalstates such as judgments, beliefs, desires, intentions, decisions, perceptions, andemotions.6

Traditionally, it is thought that self-consciousness should be understood interms of self-ascription (Bermúdez 1998; Brook 1994; Cassam 1997; Evans 1982;Kant 1781; Shoemaker 1968; Strawson 1959, 1966). I will assume in this paper that‘self-consciousness’ means the ascription of mental states to oneself as oneself.

Suppose I am carrying a handful of berries back to our campsite. I notice athin trail of berries on the trail and think <some idiot is spilling berries every-where>. I walk around the grass looking for the idiot. Suddenly, I realize that it is Ithat is spilling the berries, and think, <I am making a mess!> (cf. Perry 1979). Inthe first case, I am in fact ascribing actions to myself. In the latter statement, I amascribing actions to myself as myself. This suggests that self-ascription via a first-person perspective is dependent upon the possession of a self-concept. One ques-tion becomes “What makes possible possession of the capacity to self-ascribe mentalstates?” The mindreading priority account suggests that the evolutionary basis forthe self-ascription of mental states is the ascription of mental states to other indi-viduals; namely, the capacity to ascribe beliefs, desires, and emotions.

1.2. WHAT IS MINDREADING?

The ascription of mental states—beliefs, desires, thoughts, etc.—to others is oftenunderstood in terms of the capacity for mindreading. There are two orthodoxaccounts of mindreading in the literature. The two classic accounts of mindread-ing are the theory-theory and the simulation theory (Davies and Stone 1995). Thetheory-theory (TT) holds that the ascription of experiences is made possible by thepossession of the theorizing about other minds—explaining and predicting others’mental states. The simulation theory (ST) claims that the ascription of experiencesis made possible by the simulation of other minds—putting oneself in another’sshoes.

Since the mindreading priority accounts that I will discuss can all be read asendorsing hybrid accounts of mindreading, I will assume that mindreading has itsbasis in a combination of theorizing about others’ mental states; namely, explain-ing and predicting based on the observation of behavior employing the proposi-tional attitudes of beliefs and desires, and the simulation of others’ mental states,namely, putting oneself in another’s shoes. I stress that what is distinctive aboutmindreading as a capacity for social cognition is the cognitive attribution of propo-sitional attitudes—beliefs and desires—to other individuals.

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1.3. WHAT IS MINDSHARING?

However, even with hybrid accounts involved in the discussion, the debates aboutmindreading have stagnated. Philosophers like the mindreading priority theoristshave developed various hybrid TT-ST accounts, however, discussions of social cog-nition have begun to develop the possibility of a third nonhybrid account(Spaulding 2012). The development of a third player in the social cognition litera-ture ought to suggest that there is a third player in providing an account of thesocial origins of self-consciousness. This third nonhybrid account—“Inter -subjectivity Theory” (IT)7—according to which the ability to ascribe mental statesto selves and others develops from symmetrical forms of intersubjectivity, whichinclude capacities for imitation, face recognition, gaze following, pointing, and jointengagement. The central proposals of IT are that folk psychological engagement isvariably embodied, second personal, directly perceptive, mutually interactive, andreciprocally affective. It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue for IT and I havequalms about the viability of some proposals of that research program. My claimis that the existence of IT as a thriving research program opens up a third possibil-ity for our question about the evolution of self-ascription and other-ascription, apossibility that has not been discussed sufficiently—namely, the emergence out ofmindsharing.

‘Mindsharing’ refers to a component of intersubjectivity in general, and is thedescription of the biological function of such symmetrical forms of intersubjectiv-ity—mindsharing is what intersubjectivity is for. As such, mindsharing is a compo-nent of intersubjectivity that is one level down from the ascription of mental statesto selves and others (see Table 1). Carruthers (2009, 46–47) is correct to point outthat merely appealing to a mass of first-order nonrepresentational mechanisms as“intersubjective” is not precise enough to provide an alternative to the developmentof self-consciousness out of mindreading. Instead, in order to justify consideringan alternative to the mindreading priority account, arguments must be presentedagainst the mindreading priority account.

II. THE METHODOLOGICAL ARGUMENT AGAINSTMINDREADING PRIORITY

The methodological argument suggests that when we consider possible prioritiesdiscussed above—conceptual, evolutionary, developmental, neuroscientific—thereis not evidence for mindreading priority in those senses. The argument providesprima facie reasons to think that mindreading is not prior to self-consciousness ingeneral, and thus that it is not prior in the evolutionary functional sense. The ideathat mindreading is prior in the evolutionary functional sense may persist becauseevolutionary psychologists assume that adaptation explanations must be found some-where (Gould and Lewontin 1979, 587–88). The methodological argument presentsa series of points in favor of the symmetrical relation between self-ascription and

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other-ascription—“the Symmetry thesis”—and suggests that there are good rea-sons to think that mindreading is not prior to self-consciousness, but instead thatascription of mental states to selves and others arose out of a more primitive cog-nitive capacity.

Bermúdez (1998, ch. 9) has argued explicitly for the Symmetry thesis. Theaccount Bermúdez presents is inspired by the work of P. F. Strawson (1959; 1966)and Gareth Evans (1982).8 According to the proponents of the Symmetry thesis, theability to self-ascribe requires the ability to other-ascribe, and vice versa, which sug-gests that the latter is not prior to the former. The Symmetry thesis suggests thatthe ascription of mental states in general is based in more basic kinds of intersub-jectivity, in particular in what might be called “a contrast space” (Bermúdez 1998)or “perspectival differentiation” (Musholt 2012; Pauen 1999) between self andother. In section 4, I will consider the relationship between mindsharing and theperspectival differentiation view of the development of the ascription of mentalstates to self and other.

Apart from Bermúdez’s Strawsonian argument, we might ask if there is anyempirical evidence that disconfirms the Symmetry thesis in psychopathology, com-parative psychology, developmental psychology, or neuroscience. Disorders alongthe autism spectrum can be understood as disorders that affect the mindreadingsystem but also affect the capacity for the self-ascription of mental states. Williamsand Happe (2010) suggest that individuals along the autism spectrum have adiminished awareness of their own and others’ intentions and that this diminutionis associated with other impairments in theory of mind. Disorders such as schizo-phrenia are often understood as a disorder that affects self-consciousness (Grahamand Stephens 2000), but also affects the mindreading system. For instance, Janssenet al. (2003) suggest that individuals with schizophrenia also have deficits on twoversions on hinting tasks and false-belief tasks, both measures of mindreading.Mazza et al. (2008) found deficits in theory of mind and the understanding ofGricean conversational maxims (which depend upon mindreading abilities) inpatients with schizophrenia. In a response to the mindreading priority account,Couchman et al. (2009) point out, “it is a remarkable phylogenetic fact that thereappear to be no species that show mindreading ability but fail to show metacogni-tive ability [self-ascription]” (2009, 22). It was thought that mindreading prioritycould be defended by developmental evidence (Gopnik 1993). However, Wellmanet al. (2001) provide a summary of experiments on self-ascription and other-ascription and found no significant evidence of self-other asymmetry in infantdevelopment. While recent work on experimental testing of mindreading in infancy(for a good summary, see Carruthers 2013b) has pushed the age of mindreading(measured by surprise-looking, expectancy-looking, and active helping) to earlierstages than the traditionally discovered age of four, there still has not been system-atic research that develops parallel nonverbal tests for the ability to self-ascribe men-tal states, although retooling appearance/reality tests may be one route. In a reviewof the literature on the relation between self-knowledge and other-knowledge,

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Robbins’s (2009) survey of the neuroscientific evidence concerning priorities ofself-ascription or other-ascription, but finds no evidence for such priorities. Therehas been an emerging consensus that the medial prefrontal cortex underwrites bothself-ascription and other-ascription of mental states (Mitchell et al. 2005), whichcould be taken to point away from neurofunctional priority.

The point of the above methodological argument is to provide prima facie rea-sons against hypothesizing that mindreading is prior to self-consciousness. As I men-tioned above, my diagnosis of the persistence of the idea that mindreading is priorin the evolutionary sense is that it is assumed that one must find an adaptation expla-nation somewhere. However, given arguments in favor of the Symmetry thesis andlittle extant evidence against the Symmetry thesis, I will now present the skepticalargument against the idea that mindreading can be given an adaptation explanation.

III. SKEPTICISM ABOUT THE ADAPTATION EXPLANATION FOR MINDREADING

The skeptical argument suggests that the evidence for an adaptation explanation ofmindreading does not meet the standards of explanation in evolutionary biology.I will elucidate Richardson’s (2007) skeptical framework for critiquing adaptationexplanations in evolutionary psychology and argue that the evidence for mindread-ing as an adaptation is not sufficiently robust.9

3.1. ADAPTATION INFERENCES

Evolutionary explanations are explanations in terms of biological functions. Inadaptation explanations, the explanations cite biological functions that served a fit-ness advantage for an organism’s evolutionary ancestors. There are at least two waysto infer that the function of a particular trait, character, or behavior was adaptive.David Buller (2005) has provided a helpful distinction between reverse engineer-ing and forward engineering to distinguish these two ways.

Reverse engineering involves inferring from the structure of some trait, to thefunction of that trait, then from the function of the trait to the historical environ-ment in which that trait evolved. For example, one might think that mindreading—the explanation and prediction of behavior through positing propositionalattitudes—is the function of folk psychology. One might begin with mindreadingas a trait and ask about the historical environment in which that function evolved.As I will make transparent below, reverse engineering is the type of design inferencethat mindreading priority theorists use.

Forward engineering involves inferring from the historical environment inwhich a species evolved to the function that were adaptive for that species, to thetraits that enabled the species to adapt to the environment of evolutionary adapt-edness.10 According to Richardson (2007), in an ideal adaptation explanation, we

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would use forward engineering to infer the design of a trait, because in such infer-ences the principled parameters and detailed criteria for adaptation explanationsare independently established. The alternative account of the emergence of mind-sharing that I present will employ the forward engineering inference for the dawnof folk psychology.

I will elucidate the account of forward engineering using Richardson’s ownexample from evolutionary biology (2007, 71–74). Consider the water stridersHalobates, bugs that can walk on water. The adaptation explanation for Halobates’striding trait begins with an understanding of the environmental, physical, and eco-logical environment of the water surface, then infers a set of hypotheses about whatstructures of the organism would have been beneficial to its survival and reproduc-tion, testing these diverse hypotheses against each other.

The ideal design explanations begin with the environmental constraints thatare known prior to the consideration of the organism and its traits, and infer theadaptive functions from those environmental factors. I will argue below that themindreading priority account employs a reverse engineering methodology and thusdoes not use the ideal design inference used in evolutionary biology.

3.2. BIOLOGICAL STANDARDS

The second issue with adaptation explanations in evolutionary psychology is thatsince they are evolutionary explanations, they ought to meet the criteria for adap-tation explanations. Robert Brandon (1990) outlines five conditions for adaptationexplanations. Adaptation explanations need to have evidence of selection, evidenceconcerning ecological factors, evidence of heritability, evidence of population struc-ture, and evidence of trait polarity. For example, as Richardson points out, a nearlyideal adaptation explanation can be found in the evolution of heavy metal toler-ance in grass plants exposed to mining conditions (2007, 105). However, these conditions will be explained in turn with special emphasis on the adaptation expla-nation for mindreading.

3.2.1. Selection

In order for a trait to be an adaptation, there must be evidence that selection of thattrait has occurred. In order to ensure that selection for mindreading has occurred,we need information about variation of the trait and the closest traits similar tothose traits in order to affect a compare and contrast between mindreading andother capacities. In addition, we need information about differential survival andreproduction of the various traits that might have evolved as functions of folk psy-chology, as selection is the differential survival and reproduction of one trait ascompared and contrasted with others.

3.2.2. Environmental Factors

We need to have information about the physical, ecological, and social environ-ment, in order to ensure that the selection explanations are based in sound infer-

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ences from the actual environment in which the organisms evolved. In general, theenvironment itself may include basic needs such as air, water, food, etc. In addition,ecological information concerning predators and prey are important for providingaccounts of the survival of the organism. For the explanation of mindreading, ofsignificant relevance are the social factors that might influence competition for sur-vival and reproduction. In addition, we need to consider the selective environ-ment—namely, the differences between populations’ performances in the socialenvironment which might include competition, cooperation, or a mix of both, inparticular the role of mindreading in mating.

3.2.3. Heritability

We need evidence concerning the relation between parent organisms and offspringif we are to have evidence that a trait is an adaptation. There must be a “correlationbetween the phenotypic traits of parents and offspring that is greater than wouldbe expected by chance; that is, there must be a correlation between parents and off-spring that is greater than the correlation between arbitrarily chosen individuals”(Richardson 2007, 100). For an account of mindreading, we would need to haveevidence that mindreading was heritable; namely, some evidence that mindreadingcan be explained in terms of genetic inheritance. In particular, we might discoverthat any of the variance in mindreading in certain populations is due to geneticvariance in those populations (Richardson 2007, 101).

3.2.4. Population Structure

We need to have information about the size of populations, population structure,and the flow of genes among (and between) individuals of a species (Richardson2007, 104). In the articulation of the details of the evolutionary situations in whichthe creatures’ and the organisms’ traits evolved, it is important to fix the space andtime in which the populations of a species existed. We need to be able to compareand contrast the relationship between species and subspecies, determining whatorganisms are breeding and interbreeding, in order to understand the relativehomogeneity of the populations. Of particular importance is the gene flow withinand between populations in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. For anaccount of mindreading, we would need to have a sense of the population in whichmindreading first evolved, and in particular, have a sense that that population pos-sessed mindreading with high homogeneity.

3.2.5. Trait Polarity

The fifth constraint upon an adaptation explanation is that we need to know whattraits are primitive or ancestral and what traits are derived. A trait that is primitivewithin a lineage will likely not be an adaptation but will be passed from parents tooffspring as an inherited trait. A trait that is derived is a trait that is novel amongthe descendants. A derived trait is one that is more likely to be an adaptation(Richardson 2007, 104). To discuss mindreading in more detail, we would need tohave a sense of a population of creatures that did not possess mindreading evolved

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into a population of organisms that did. Further, in order to present evidence thatself-consciousness was a byproduct, we would need evidence that mindreading isthe derived trait that allowed self-consciousness to develop.

3.3. COMPARE-AND-CONTRAST METHODOLOGY

As should be clear from the above conditions, providing an adaptation explanationrequires information about the environment in which the organism evolved. Inparticular, it is important that we be able to retrieve the evolutionary history of theorganism. This provides us with a way to distinguish between traits that are at pres-ent adaptive and traits that were adaptations in the past. To discuss the latterinvolves making a distinctively historical claim about the evolved organism’s envi-ronment.

In addition, as Richardson argues, “to propose that a trait, behavior, or charac-ter is adaptive entails that that trait confers an advantage relative to other organ-isms that lack that trait. To propose that a trait, behavior, or character is anadaptation entails that that trait is present because in the past it did confer anadvantage relative to other organisms that lacked that trait” (2007, 148).

Thus, in order to provide evidence for a comparative claim as the basis of anadaptation explanation one needs to perform a double task. First, one needs tocompare and contrast the existence of the trait, behavior, or character with itsnonexistence in other creatures. For example, for mindreading, one would need tocompare and contrast the effects of the existence of mindreading in one populationwith the effects of a lack of mindreading in another population. Second, one needsto compare and contrast the relative survival and reproduction of the species pos-sessing that trait against closest branches in the phylogenetic tree (see Fig. 1).

For example, for mindreading, one would need to compare and contrast theeffects of the existence of mindreading on survival and reproduction of HomoSapiens as compared and contrasted with Homo Neanderthalensis or HomoHeidelbergensis. However, even if one found that H. Sapiens possessed a trait andH. Neanderthalensis lacked a trait, one would have to show that our last commonancestor lacked that same trait to rule out that the trait emerged in that last com-mon ancestor.

It should be granted that these standards for adaptation explanations are ideal -izations, but when one considers the origins of traits, characters, and behaviors, onemust respect the criteria used in evolutionary biology. I will argue that as it standsthe mindreading priority account does not meet the standard of evidence requiredfor adaptation explanations.

3.4. ADAPTATION EXPLANATIONS FOR MINDREADING PRIORITY

I agree with the view that self-consciousness emerged from social interactionamong individuals rather than evolved as a distinct ability.11 However, the mind -reading priority account does not meet the standards of evidence for adaptation

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explanations of mindreading, and thus we ought to look for a different account ofthe emergence of self-consciousness out of social interaction. I will suggest in thenext section that self-consciousness and mindreading are both based in the ascrip-tion of mental states and are both byproducts of the evolution of another capac-ity—the social interaction involved in mindsharing.

3.4.1. Happe’s Suggestion

About the evolution of self-consciousness from mindreading, Happe suggests, “Theevolutionary function of self-reflection, or more broadly self-consciousness, hasremained uncertain … . On the other hand, the fitness advantages of anticipatingthe thoughts of competitors (so called Machiavellian intelligence) or cooperators(collaboration and communication) are clear. Might, then, the ability to read others’minds have evolved first, with the turning inward of the metarepresentational spot-light upon our own inner states developing only later?” (2003, 141). Happe infersthat mindreading is prior to self-consciousness through a process of eliminationargument. She suggests that mindreading evolved first and self-consciousnessemerged as a byproduct therefrom. As such, she presents a contemporary exampleof a mindreading priority account.

Further, mindreading is presented as an adaptation, insofar as our evolution-ary ancestors who possessed mindreading had a fitness advantage over ancestors

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Figure 1

who lacked that trait. As is common for the mindreading priority accounts, Happe’sspeculations about the design of mindreading engage in a form of reverse engineer-ing. Happe begins with the target trait mindreading, then proceeds to articulate thestructure of that behavioral trait—explaining and predicting others mental states—as a function of folk psychology. After the function is determined, the design expla-nation is then developed in evolutionary historical terms. Happe’s account alsocommits to the idea that mindreading “evolved” and thus is committed to the ideathat such traits would meet biological standards of explanation. In addition,Happe’s discussion of “fitness advantages” implies that a compare-and-contrastmethodology would be involved in determining whether mindreading was the traitthat solved the adaptive problem that our ancestors faced.

While Happe does discuss the context of the evolution of mindreading—byemphasizing our social environment involving competitive and cooperative con-texts—she does not survey the possible functions that might have developed tomeet those adaptive problems. This is typical of the design inference involved inreverse engineering. When one begins with mindreading, and reverse engineers fora design, then one has closed off other possible adaptive solutions, which hindersgenerating alternative evolutionary hypotheses.12 Instead, the discussion of the eco-logical context of our social environment needs to be expanded upon. One mightobject that Happe’s suggestion is just that—a suggestion—and as Happe herselfsays, her remarks are merely speculative. Regardless, she does not provide evidencefrom evolutionary biology for the adaptation explanation of mindreading and nei-ther does she present evidence through a comparative methodology. For a morefully developed account of the mindreading priority account, we turn to PeterCarruthers’s work.13

3.4.2. Carruthers’s Mindreading Priority Account

Carruthers’s (2009) account is inspired by Happe’s. According to Happe’s (2003)account, the reflection upon one’s own mental states and the attribution of mentalstates to other individuals are based in the same mechanism; namely, the mindread-ing mechanism. While Carruthers (2009) distinguishes between the same mecha-nism/two ways account (Frith and Happe 1999; Happe 2003) and the mindreadingpriority account as a same mechanism/one way account, insofar as we consider theevolutionary functional priority question, Happe’s and Carruthers’s accounts areidentical.

According to Carruthers’s (2009) account, self-ascription—what Carrutherscalls ‘meta-cognition’ in the BBS article—“is merely the result of turning our mind-reading capacity upon ourselves” (3). According to Carruthers’s account, the expla-nation of how self-ascription of mental states is possible is ultimately third-personbased. For example, receiving as input the perception of a person looking at a dog,the mindreading system is capable of forming the judgment “That man is seeing adog.” The mindreading mechanism is prior to the capacity for the self-ascription ofexperiences in the sense that it is functionally prior in the level of inputs and out-

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puts. In other words, in the flow of information, the mindreading system is priorto the metacognition system that makes self-ascription possible. For example, inorder for me to judge “I am seeing a dog,” although unconsciously, the self-ascrip-tion of experiences is a product of interpretative mindreading of my mental statesincluding “any sensory or quasi-sensory (e.g., imagistic or somatosensory) statethat gets ‘globally broadcast’ to all judgment-forming, memory-forming, desire-forming, and decision-making systems” (Carruthers 2009, 4).

One important difference between Happe’s and Carruthers’s accounts, how-ever, is that Carruthers’s account of the evolution of mindreading is not merely sug-gestive or speculative. The mindreading faculty is an innate domain-specificlearning mechanism with a body of core knowledge about minds—beliefs, desires,perceptions, intentions, and emotions—that evolved for social purposes (2004a).Carruthers is explicit that the context of our evolutionary ancestors provided adap-tive problems of competition and cooperation, which required an uptick in theamount of folk psychological attribution required. Thus, the adaptive solution to those social and political problems was the development of the mindreading faculty.

Carruthers’s methodology for arguing for the mindreading priority account isto generate predictions to the effect that species living in social groups with com-petition and cooperation will have the capacities for mindreading (2009, 8).Carruthers suggests that mindreading priority accounts will be committed to “someor other variant of the ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ hypothesis (Byrne & Whiten1988, 1997; Dunbar 2000), which points to the immense fitness advantages that canaccrue to effective mindreaders among highly social creatures such as ourselves”(2009, 8).

How does Carruthers infer the design of mindreading? It seems that Carruthersemploys a reverse engineering methodology. Carruthers’s (2009; 2011, 65) accountbegins with the structure of mindreading and seeks to compare and contrast pos-sible functional accounts of mindreading and metacognition. While this makesprogress over Happe’s account—because it compares and contrasts functionalaccounts of traits explicitly—this methodology does not generate hypotheses abouta range of possible explanations for the emergence of the ascription of mental statesto selves and others. Instead, as a reverse engineering inference, it compares andcontrasts explanations assuming that mindreading is the pivotal trait, character, orbehavior central for folk psychology. As such, Carruthers’s design inferences are notideal, because they do not begin with the environmental structures that are knownindependently, and proceed to generate hypotheses about the design of cognitivefunctions.

Does Carruthers’s account provide evidence for adaptation explanations thatmeet the standards of evolutionary biology? Of selection? Of environmental fac-tors? Of heritability? Of population structure? Of trait polarity? In general, theaccount that Carruthers has developed does not provide such evidence explicitly,

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but instead relies on puzzling notions of adaptation to bolster the adaptation expla-nations for mindreading.

Carruthers et al. (2013) do discuss some conditions concerning adaptations,which he calls ‘adaptive signatures’, which might be used as evidence for selection.Carruthers et al. suggest that there are three predictions that demonstrate that acharacter is an adaptation: (a) a trait should be good at what it does; (b) a traitshould emerge in development as soon as it is needed; and (c) a trait should be con-stant given environmental variation. I am skeptical about Carruthers’s notion of“adaptive signatures” as evidence for adaptation explanations.

About each putative adaptive signature, it should be said that it is not sufficientto generate predictions in order to present an adaptation explanation. Instead, it isnecessary to provide an evolutionary historical—backward-looking—account.About prediction a, two points should be made. First, a trait may be adaptive now,but not adaptive in the past; it may be adaptive in the past, but not adaptive now.Thus, in order to avoid ambiguity, a trait being “good at what it does” needs to betied to the particular selective environment (Brandon 1990). Second, little evidenceof selection of mindreading is presented; no information about differential survivaland reproduction of the various traits other than mindreading are presented, exceptinsofar as there is a hint that humans are inveterate mindreaders. However, humansare also seasoned imitators, face recognizers, gaze followers, pointers, coordinators,and cooperators.

About predictions b and c, it may be that criteria for adaptations and criteriafor innate mechanisms are not being distinguished. Predictions about a trait beinginnate are different from predictions about a trait being an adaptation. From thefact that a trait is the former, it does not follow that a trait is the latter. Even if a traitis innate, we cannot infer from some or other measure of heritability (Richardson2007, 129–31), a point which Chomsky has emphasized (Chomsky 2011). Further,apart from the implicit inference from innateness, Carruthers does not present evi-dence that mindreading is a heritable trait.

In Carruthers’s work, he does engage in a compare-and-contrast methodologyby consulting evidence from comparative psychology. In his recent work on mind-reading, Carruthers (2013a, 2103b) makes a distinction between two levels ofmindreading. System 1 mindreading involves the attribution of lower cognitivecapacities, such as others’ perceptions, goals, and emotions, without the need toapply propositional attitudes. System 2 mindreading involves attribution of others’false beliefs, unfulfilled desires, and other higher cognitive capacities, which doinvolve the need to apply propositional attitudes.

Carruthers suggests that the compare-and-contrast that is relevant to the mind-reading priority account is between humans and apes: “all accounts [of mindread-ing] should predict that one might expect to find simpler versions of mindreadingcapacity among other animals (perhaps confined to recognition of perceptual accessand ignorance together with intention), especially among mammals who live incomplex social groups. These predictions appear to be borne out (Call & Tomasello

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2008; Cheney & Seyfarth 2007; Hare 2007; Hare et al. 2000; 2001; Tomasello et al.2003a; 2003b)” (Carruthers 2009, 8). However, predictions about similarities and dif-ferences between our phylogenetic cousins are not sufficient evidence for claimsabout similarities and differences between our phylogenetic siblings (see Fig. 1). As Idiscussed above, if we share a trait with many of the great apes, then, it is likely thatthe trait is a primitive or ancestral trait. Thus, mindreading cannot be a derived trait,and since it will not have the proper trait polarity, it is unlikely to be an adaptation.However, the relevant compare-and-contrast would be similarities and differences inthe hominin line between Homo Sapiens and other species within the genusHomo—H. Habilis, H. Georgicus, H. Erectus, and H. Neanderthalensis.

However, the central information we possess about the difference between thegenus Homo and the genus Austrolopithecus is cranial size and shape (Fleagle1999) (see Fig. 1). Change in brain size and shape did occur in the evolution of thegenus Homo, but that does not enable us to infer enough about the functionalcapacities that either were enabled by or enabled that change—especially not formindreading. H. Neanderthalensis had a larger cranial volume than Homo Sapiens.There are differences between the genus Homo and the genus Austrolopithecuswith respect to cranial size and shape; however, evidence for the compare-and-contrast between other species in the Homo lineage cannot be made as sharplyenough to bolster the mindreading priority account.

Without further argument, Carruthers’s evidence for an adaptation explana-tion for mindreading cannot meet the biological standards for adaptations. I nowturn to Bogdan’s account of the mindreading priority account.

3.4.3. Bogdan’s Mindreading Priority Account and the Hint of Mindsharing

According to Bogdan’s account (2010), self-consciousness develops—in the phylo-genetic and ontogenetic senses—out of sociocultural grounds. Bogdan understandsself-consciousness to be based in executive abilities—intentions to act, means-endsreasoning, top-down attention, monitoring and control, memory of action schemes,intermodal cooperation, mental rehearsal, multitasking, and online metacognition(2010, 105–8). Like other mindreading priority accounts, Bogdan understands self-consciousness to be a form of self-ascription of mental states.

The ascription of mental states, what Bogdan calls “intuitive psychology,” goesthrough a two-part process. Infants first develop “extrovert self-consciousness,”which next develops into “introvert self-consciousness.” Extrovert self-conscious-ness is awareness of objects in the world and the relation between subjects andobjects. Extrovert self-consciousness is characterized by a “self-to-target relatedness,”which is basically a form of mindreading.14 Introvert self-consciousness is a subject’sawareness of the subject’s “own thoughts as they relate to targets” (2010, 16), whichis not “just consciousness of a thought but consciousness of being related to whatthe thought is about” (2010, 73). According to Bogdan’s account, extrovert self-consciousness—or the mindreading of others’ mental states—is functionally priorto introvert self-consciousness—or the self-ascription of one’s own mental states.

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Bogdan’s (2010) account also defends the idea that mindreading is prior toself-ascription in the evolutionary sense. One passage is especially significant.“What about our direct ancestors in the homo lineage? As in chimpanzees, intensesociopolitical life may call for domain-specific executive abilities that light up a lim-ited and extrovert self-consciousness when active” (2010, 114). Bogdan suggeststhat tool making and foraging—which required an increase in folk psychologicalengagement—provided our evolutionary ancestors with adaptive problems thatwould have recruited forms of mindreading capacities.

Like other mindreading priority accounts, Bogdan’s account employs a reverseengineering methodology to account for the emergence of executive abilities involvedin mindreading, because Bogdan (2010) considers the executive abilities that mightbe central for the development of extrovert and introvert self-consciousness, thenlooks for the design of those executive abilities in our phylogenetic history. Heappeals to the sociopolitical context involving both competition and cooperationas a means to account for the emergence of the executive abilities that is hypothe-sized as central for mindreading. As such, Bogdan does not employ ideal forwardengineering inferences to generate functional design hypotheses.

In addition, Bogdan does not highlight evidence for the adaptation explana-tion that he provides for executive abilities. Bogdan does not consider selection,ecological factors, heritability, population structure, or trait polarity in the expla-nation of the emergence of executive abilities involved in mindreading. Bogdandoes employ a compare-and-contrast account that makes advances past Carruthers’saccount, however.

Bogdan points to Mithen’s (1996) work on the possibility that “early humansand Neanderthals in particular may have enjoyed a similarly domain-specific fleet-ing or ephemeral (nonintrospective, extrovert) consciousness, when engaging intool-making and foraging” (2010, 114). While Bogdan is correct to compare andcontrast similarities and differences within the Homo lineage, two objections needto be presented. First, Bogdan wrongly suggests through an analogy that chim-panzees are within that lineage. Second, the compare and contrast between HomoSapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis actually points away from mindreading beinga human-specific capacity, since populations of such species were so enmeshed.

In sections 2 and 3, I have presented two arguments against the mindreadingpriority accounts. I presented the methodological argument that suggested that ifwe find symmetrical relations between self-ascription and other-ascription to besystematic, then this points away from hypothesizing a mindreading priorityaccount. This suggested that the mindreading priority account stands or falls withthe evidence that might be presented for the adaptation explanation of mindread-ing. However, I argued in the skeptical argument that such adaptation explanationsare not well supported, because the accounts of mindreading as an adaptation asyet do not meet the standards set by evolutionary biology.

These two arguments are not intended as wet-blanket skepticisms. Instead, Ihave expressed my misgivings about the reverse-engineering design inferences,

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weak evidence for adaptation explanations, and deficient compare-and-contrastinferences involved in providing adaptation explanations for mindreading with thegoal of respecting the standards of inquiry in evolutionary biology. The upshot tobe taken from these arguments is that we ought to consider additional alternativesto the self-consciousness priority account and the mindreading priority account.

Bogdan (2010) has outlined (although not himself endorsed) an alternativepossibility as an account of the emergence of folk psychology: “the overarching ideais that young minds either come equipped with or develop capacities to resonatedirectly to and thus to share in the experiences, actions, perceptions and attitudesof others, without the mediation of representation, imagination or inference”(2010, 61–64). As expressed by Bogdan, the alternative account is a noncognitive,nonrepresentational account in terms of mindsharing. I now turn to a moredetailed account of the possibility of mindsharing as the origin of the ascription ofmental states to oneself and others.

IV. MINDSHARING AND THE ASCRIPTION OF MENTAL STATES TO ONESELF AND OTHERS

4.1. WHAT IS MINDSHARING?

In a recent article by Dan Hutto (2011), he presents a distinction between mind-reading and more basic functions of folk psychological engagement that he calls‘mind minding.’ Hutto offers a quick critique of the mindreading priority accountwith specific emphasis on the evolutionary sense of priority employed by the mind-reading priority account: “[the mindreading priority account] appears to violatethe ‘Don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut’ principle by positing quite sophisti-cated capabilities for doing a task that could be completed much less expensivelyby other means” (2011, 332).

Hutto argues that the origins of folk psychological engagement is not bestexplained as an operation of some kind of “biologically inherited mindreadingdevice” (333) but, instead, that “it is much more likely that fully fledged folk psy-chology had (and has) a sociocultural basis rather than a biological one” (332).Fully fledged folk psychology involves the ascription of mental states to selves andothers. This critique of the evolutionary function of mindreading encourages us toopen up an alternative to the mindreading priority view. However, there is littlecompare and contrast between mindsharing and mindreading in the literature.15 Iwill remedy that gap here by offering a forward engineering account of mindshar-ing, some provisional evidence for the emergence of mindsharing, and a discussionthe importance of mindsharing for the evolution of folk psychology.

Before I do, there are two versions of the mindsharing view that might beconsidered. On the strong version of the view, all of our folk psychologicalengagement involves mindsharing. On the weaker version of the view, some of

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our folk psychological engagement involves mindsharing, while of course, someof that engagement involves mindreading—namely describing, explaining, andpredicting through the cognitive attribution of mental states. I will focus in partic-ular on joint engagement as the closest more primitive account than mindreading.16

4.2. THE EVOLUTION OF MINDSHARING

As I discussed above, ideal inferences concerning the adaptation of a psychologicalmechanism proceed through a forward engineering methodology. Such an accountbegins with the antecedently known facts about the environment—physical, eco-logical, and selective—of the species. We would consider a set of possible adaptiveproblems that our primitive ancestors faced and hypothesize a diversity of evolu-tionary functions that might be posited to solve those problems. In evolutionarytheorizing about humans in general, there is a tendency to posit a single adaptiveproblem—competition in our social environment—and a single adaptive solution—mindreading—as a means to articulate the key distinction between humans andnonhuman ancestors (Byrne and Whiten 1988, 1997; Dunbar 2000). However, amultiple problems-multiple solutions methodology ought to be preferred.

The adaptive problems of our evolutionary ancestors were probably multifar-ious. However, it is agreed that an increasingly social and cultural environmentplayed an important role. As Carruthers (2011) points out, our Pleistocene envi-ronment might have involved social contexts that were competitive (Byrne andWhiten 1988, 1997) or cooperative (Hrdy 2009; Nowak 2012; Nowak and Highfield2011; Tomasello 2009, 54–55) or both. While I agree that the social and culturalpurposes were quite varied, I wonder whether, if cooperation were taken to be onbalance a greater social purpose, then this would point toward an alternative to themindreading account and in favor of the mindsharing hypothesis. It is beyond thescope of this paper to argue for the claim that cooperation is the central and greaterpurpose of social engagement (however, see Sterelny 2012; Tomasello 2009; andZawidzki 2013).

Let’s return to our African Savanna excursion. Suppose our primitive ancestorswere forced into situations where water and food were isolated or focused in oneparticular region. This would bring about an increase in population in that partic-ular region and an increasing need to socially cooperate, to coordinate gatheringfood and hunting prey. One solution to the social cooperation problem is for ourancestors to develop forms of folk psychological engagement that depend uponmindreading; namely, describing, explaining, and predicting each other’s beliefs,desires, and emotions. However, to borrow a line from Hutto (2011), such a solu-tion would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. To put it in more clear andprecise terms, the solution to the adaptive problem uses a cognitive solution to solvewhat is at bottom a noncognitive problem.17

The alternative account is a noncognitive solution that depends upon mind-sharing in general; for example, imitation (Meltzoff 2011; Meltzoff and Moore

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1977, 1983, 1989), face recognition (McKone and Kanwisher 2005), gaze following(Flom et al. 2007), pointing (Cappuccio 2013), and joint engagement (Seemann2011a) might be recruited as noncognitive capacities. The claim is that if our coop-erative social problems were a greater challenge, then folk psychological engage-ment that favored cooperative and collaborative engagement—joint engagementin perception, action, and emotion—would be a more efficient solution. Throughforward engineering we have generated an alternative explanation in terms ofmindsharing.

To consider the biological standards that adaptation explanations must meetwould involve pursuing several lines of research. Since mindsharing is a newhypothesis about the origins of folk psychology, it has not been articulated enoughto outline the evidence concerning selection, ecological factors, heritability, popu-lation structure, and trait polarity. However, I will provide some provisional evi-dence that mindsharing can meet the biological standards.

One central point in favor of mindsharing as an adaptation is that it may be distinctive for humans that they engage in joint engagement. Tomasello andCarpenter (2007, 124) argue that there is an affective and emotional elementinvolved in mindsharing that is not involved in the social engagements of our clos-est primate relatives. However, it should be admitted that this does not support acompare and contrast in the hominin line. Further, research by Schilbach et al.(2009) shows that self-initiation of joint engagement recruits reward-related brainareas. Schilbach et al. argue that this suggests that there is an intrinsic motivationfor humans to engage in the interpersonal coordination of perspectives. However,it should also be admitted that the inference from reward-related processing to anadaptation is also fragile.

A general argument could be made that it is easier to find evidence that fitsbiological standards for traits, characters, or behaviors that are thinner function-ally. The mindsharing account of folk psychological engagement will requirerethinking our thick or cognitive explanations in favor of thin or noncognitiveexplanations. According to the mindreading priority account, social cognitioninvolves metarepresentation. The suggestion on offer here is that the folk psycho-logical engagement involved in mindsharing involves merely first-order abilities,such as affective sensorimotor processing (for details of such an account, seeGallagher 2011 and Hutto 2011).

However, it is not transparent without argument that such thin evolutionaryexplanations ought to be preferred to thick evolutionary explanations. Thick evo-lutionary functionalism posits higher-order representations—which are innate andmodular—and thin evolutionary functionalism that posits first-order skills or abil-ities (Cummins and Cummins 1999; Cummins et al. 2003). There are two reasonsto object to thick evolutionary functional explanations of folk psychologicalengagement.

One reason is parsimony, since to posit first-order skills and abilities, affectivestates, and sensorimotor capacities is more simple and elegant than higher-order

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concepts, which opens up a wider domain of evidence to consider. Another reasonis the commitment to the modularity of mindreading on the part of mindreadingpriority theorists. Against modularity of mindreading, Woodward and Cowie sug-gest that “rather than building in a ‘folk psychology’ module, evolution may havegiven us dispositions to create the kinds of social and familial environments inwhich children’s generalized developmental and learning abilities enable them toacquire knowledge of other minds” (Woodward and Cowie 2004, 318). This pointstoward an account of the evolution of mindsharing in terms that fit a niche con-struction model.

This outline of mindsharing as a hypothesis is only one among many accountsthat might be outlined through a forward engineering methodology. The goal ofusing forward engineering as the central kind of “adaptive thinking” (Richardson2007) is to begin with what we know about the ecological factors that put pressureon our evolutionary ancestors. Future research and development of the mindshar-ing account will consider selection, ecological factors, heritability, population struc-ture, and trait polarity. Some recent work by Kim Sterelny, however, does makesteps in that direction.

A key feature of our social environment was the advent of cooperative forag-ing (Sterelny 2012). “Cooperative foraging (and especially cooperative huntingand cooperative defense against predation) requires coordination, and thus com-munication. Cooperative hunters must plan and coordinate before targetingpotentially difficult and dangerous targets, especially if there is task specialization… cooperative foraging demands care, coordination, and skill” (Sterelny 2012,11–12). According to the mindsharing account, first-order capacities such as imi-tation, receptivity to learning, and cooperation become central as social learningbecomes more significant. This supports the idea that mindsharing becomes acentral capacity in our evolutionary psychological toolbox. One might wonderwhat this means for the origins of the ascription of mental states to selves andothers in general.

Hrdy (2009) has argued that social cognition can be approached in terms of“‘intersubjectivity,’ which emphasizes the capacity and eagerness to share in theemotional states and experiences of other individuals—and which, in humans atleast, emerges at a very early stage of development, providing the foundation formore sophisticated mind reading later on” (2). Hrdy suggests that the kind of coop-eration involved in the early hominin line shows that humans can be differentiatedfrom nonhumans through the idea of the emotions surrounding joint engagement,sharing experiences, and mutual care of young. Thus, in Hrdy’s account, this earlyform of mindsharing is the target mechanism that is getting the explanation, ratherthan the later capacities for ascription of mental states to selves and others. Instead,the ascription of mental states to selves and others develops in infancy, and thusaccording to Hrdy’s account, self-consciousness has a sociocultural basis in self-other differentiation.

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4.3. MINDSHARING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-OTHER DIFFERENTIATION

I will briefly consider how ascription of mental states to self and other mightdevelop from mindsharing. The mindsharing account suggests that self-conscious-ness and mindreading develop out of the capacity for mindsharing. Thinking aboutthe ascription of mental states to self and other in general in terms of self-other dif-ferentiation theorizes about “a contrast space” between self and other in terms of“perspectival differentiation” (Musholt 2012; Pauen 1999).

Such an account is inspired by the work of Barresi and Moore (1996) in whicha multilevel approach to the understanding of self and other is developed. Self-awareness is understood in terms of information gathered from the first-personperspective; other-awareness, in terms of information gathered from the third-per-son perspective. The task of understanding the relation between self and other isunderstood as a matching and differentiation task between two perspectives.However, what is unique about the mindsharing account, is that the recognition ofself and other similarity is the initial setting (Meltzoff 2011).

Neonatal imitation can be seen as the first instance of psychological interac-tion between self and other (Meltzoff and Moore 1977, 1983, 1989). At this stagethe infant engages in tasks that involve self-other matching and differentiation (seeTable 1; cf. Musholt 2012). At the next stage, infants engage in what has been called‘protoconversations’, which involve proto-imperatives—pointing to objects to getadults to fetch them—and proto-declaratives—pointing to objects to show thingsto adults (Tomasello et al. 2007). The next stage involves the joint, shared, ormutual engagement between two individuals with an object.

For example, my two-year-old son Afton and I are sitting on a knoll watchingcattle grazing. Afton and I are both consciously perceiving the cattle grazing. At thispoint, both Afton and I are visually attending to the cattle together. However, weare not yet jointly attending. Gaze following and pointing may enable the initiationand maintenance of joint engagement (Carpenter and Liebel 2011). Suppose I lookaway, thinking about the possibility of some berrypicking. Afton will attempt toreinitiate and maintain the jointness of our engagement. I hypothesize that it isthrough this failure of maintenance of joint engagement that infants develop anunderstanding of perspectives involved in mindreading and self-consciousness(Moll and Meltzoff 2011b).

Axel Seemann (2008, 2011b) has developed an account of joint engagementthat shares many features with my view. According to Seemann, “the intersubjec-tivist perspective enables an infant to develop an understanding of the distinctionbetween self and other that then makes it possible for him to engage in this kind ofperspective-taking. It is precisely the sharing of feelings that puts one in a positionto think of oneself and other persons as selves” (Seemann 2008, 250). According tocontrast space account, then, the emergence of the ascription of mental states toselves and others develops out of the capacity for joint engagement.

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I began with the question about how level 4—ascription to self and other—emerges. The mindreading priority theorists explain the development of self-con-sciousness through the adaptation of mindreading at level 4. Similarly, Bermúdez(1998, 247–65) assumes that mindsharing was only important at level 4. However,I have suggested that mindsharing occurs at levels 3 and 2, prior to the capacity toascribe mental states to selves and others. These more basic levels of mindsharingthat enter in at levels 2 and 3 explain the development of self-consciousness andmindreading at level 4.

V. CONCLUSION

In the conclusion, I consider two possible objections. The first objection is that myskeptical argument proves too much and that I have thrown the baby out with thebathwater. In arguing against the adaptation explanation for mindreading, I havemade it too difficult to provide evidence for any adaptation explanation in evolu-tionary psychology, and in particular for an adaptation explanation for mindshar-ing. My reply is twofold. First, if the standards for adaptation explanations are asrigorous in evolutionary biology as skeptics such as Richardson have outlined, thenit appears that proving too much is the price we will sometimes need to pay forengaging in sound science. Second, I have at least made progress on the skepticalcritique of adaptation explanations of mindreading. The skeptical argument doespresent a response to the commonplace objections that Richardson’s skeptical cri-

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Table 1: Levels of Self-Other Differentiation

level of self and other age- range onset— ability contentmonth”

5. reference to self and other 24-36 onwards language “I am f” and

“You are f”

4. ascription to self and other 18–24 onwards ascription of [I am f] and

folk psychology [You are f]

concepts

3. mindsharing– 12–18 onwards perspective- intersubjective

joint engagement taking— schemata

sensorimotor

ability

2. mindsharing- cooperation, 9–12 onwards sensorimotor intersubjective

gaze- following, and pointing ability18 image

1. discrimination between birth onwards imitation intersubjective

self and other discrimination

tique of evolutionary psychology does not provide sufficient discussion of partic-ular cognitive capacities (Mason 2009).

The second objection comes from the mindreading priority theorists. Onemight argue that mindsharing can be assimilated to the mindreading priorityaccount, because imitation, receptivity to learning, gaze following, pointing, etc.,depend importantly upon mindreading abilities (Carruthers 2009, 47). After all,one might contend the primary purpose of mindreading is interaction with otherswhich is second-personal. While accounts of joint engagement have in the pastrelied upon mindreading—of both the theory-theory and simulation theorystripe—recent developments in theorizing about joint engagement point awayfrom cognitivist accounts (Seemann 2011a). Further discussion will no doubt con-sider the viability of noncognitivist accounts of joint engagement.

I have suggested that mindsharing is the functional evolutionary grounds forthe ability to ascribe experiences to oneself and others. I discussed the idea that self-consciousness is often understood in terms of the ascription of mental states tooneself. However, I argued through the methodological argument that if theSymmetry thesis is true about the ascription of mental states to selves and others,then the idea that mindreading is prior in an evolutionary functional sense shouldbe put into question. I argued through the skeptical argument that the mindread-ing priority account cannot meet the demands placed on adaptation explanationsfor mindreading. In place of mindreading, I have suggested that we can provide anevolutionary functional explanation of the more basic form of intersubjectivity—namely, joint engagement—the function of which is mindsharing. The mindshar-ing account opens up the options and enables us to consider a new account of theevolution of self-consciousness in contrast with its emergence from mindreading.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Richard Brown for organizing Consciousness Online: The OnlineConsciousness Conference and for inviting me to organize a special session on thedevelopmental conditions of self-consciousness. I want to thank Peter Carruthersand Radu Bogdan for contributing outstanding papers to that session. I would liketo thank the commentators from the conference—Kyle Ferguson, Jee Loo Liu,Robert Lurz, Henry Shevlin, Joel Smith—each of whom deepened the discussionand enabled me to clarify many issues in the literature on the development of self-consciousness. I found the conversation during the conference and the correspon-dence following to be profitable in developing my ideas.

I would also like to thank John Schwenkler, Gabriel Gottlieb, Alex Madva,Adam Gies, and Leonard Finkelman for extensive comments, critiques, and ques-tions on prior drafts of this paper. I want to thank George Harper for helpful dis-cussions about adaption explanations and about human cognitive evolution. I amdeeply grateful to students from my The Evolved Person course at Hendrix College,

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since they provided illuminating discussions of the standards of adaptation expla-nations in evolutionary biology.

NOTES

1. This camping trip thought experiment is inspired by a discussion of our evolved responses tolandscapes in Orians and Heerwegen (1992).

2. The account of mindsharing presented in this paper is inspired by a discussion of reward-relatedcircuitry involved in shared intentionality in Schilbach et al (2009, 2713–14), a discussion of alter-native intersubjective accounts of social cognition in Bogdan (2010, 61–64), and suggestive com-ments by Hutto (2011, 331–33) about alternatives to mindreading.

3. I will use the term ‘folk psychology’ interchangeably with ‘the ascription of mental states to selvesand others’ throughout the paper.

4. For commentary on Sellars’s Myth of Jones consult Garfield (1989), DeVries (2006), Rosenberg(2007), Schiller (2007), and O’Shea (2012). Of particular relevance is O’Shea’s (2012) contentionthat Sellars’s view can be used to argue against accounts of ascription of mental states that stressintersubjectivity. I would argue that meditating on Sellars’s own theory/observation distinctionand his various discussions of intersubjectivity (especially in his correspondence with Casteneda)points away from accounts of the emergence of self-consciousness based in theory-theoryaccounts of mental state attribution.

5. Both Carruthers and Bogdan briefly consider alternative explanations from the mindreading pri-ority account. Carruthers et al. 2013 imply that the closest alternative is that the ascription ofmental states in general is based in domain general learning mechanisms (Prinz 2002). However,I would argue that this alternative conflates providing an adaptation explanation with providinga nativist explanation, which does not generate a genuine alternative. The authentic alternativecan be discovered through considering the evolution of joint engagement as the basis for theemergence of the ascription of mental states to selves and others (Bermudez 1998; Dow 2012;Seemann 2008). Bogdan (2010, 61–64) suggests an alternative that minds are made for sharing,which I will develop in more detail below.

6. Both Carruthers and Bogdan on occasion discuss self-knowledge and suggest that it differs func-tionally from self-consciousness. However, if the way to interpret the term ‘knowledge’ involvedin self-knowledge is through the beliefs one has about one’s mental states, then those judgmentswould be based in self-consciousness (cf. Gertler 2011). By my account, self-knowledge is a nor-mative status that is conferred on self-consciousness—namely, being justified in the contents thatone’s beliefs about oneself represents—and thus, self-knowledge is not a distinct ability from self-consciousness.

7. The central theories in this camp include Zahavi’s (2005; 2011) Direct Perception Theory,Gallagher’s Interaction Theory (2005; 2008), and Hutto’s (2009) Narrative Practice Theory. Alonger list of thinkers in the IT camp includes Trevarthen (1979); Thompson (2001); Hobson(2002; 2011); Seemann (2008; 2011); Reddy (2008); Roessler (2005); McGeer (2007); Gallagherand Hutto (2008); De Jaegher (2008); Zawidzki (2008; 2013); De Jaegher, Di Paulo, and Gallagher(2010); Krueger (2010; 2011; 2012); Krueger and Overgaard (2012); Newen and Schlicht (2009);and Dow (2012). For a survey article on the proposals and hurdles of Intersubjectivity Theory, seeDow (MS).

8. In the classic essay “Persons,” Strawson (1959) argues that self-consciousness is the self-ascriptionof experiences. The ascription of experiences requires meeting a generality constraint, which is aconstraint upon the universalization of representations in general. When applied to the self-ascription, Evans’s (1982) account of the generality constraint tells us that if a subject is able toself-ascribe the experience “I am F,” then she must have two distinct abilities: (GC1) she must beable to ascribe experiential predicates, e.g., “b is F,” “c is F,” to arbitrarily distinguishable individ-uals; (GC2) she must be able to ascribe “I am G,” “I am H,” for any experiential predicates she pos-sesses independent of “F.” What follows from the need to meet the generality constraint is that

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subjects must be able to identify selves and others as subjects of experience. Strawson argues thatthis can only be achieved through perception of oneself and others as persons among persons.

9. My use of Richardson’s skeptical framework should not be taken to lead to pervasive doubts aboutevolutionary psychology. Instead, my skepticism is targeted at the inferences, evidence, andmethodology of the mindreading priority account.

10. Buller (2005, 92–107) is skeptical of forward engineering inferences because we do not have evi-dence of the ecological conditions of our environment of evolutionary adaptedness, we cannotinfer from the lives of extant hunter-gatherers the lifestyle of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, andthe comparative methodology only reaches back to our last common ancestor, the chimpanzee. Iam inclined to agree, however, for the purposes of this paper, I only need the assumption that for-ward engineering inferences are preferable to reverse engineering inferences.

11. I will not consider accounts of mindreading as an adaptation apart from the mindreading prior-ity account of the development of self-consciousness. For general skepticism about the under-standing of the evolution of social cognition based in mindreading, see Zawidzki 2008, andespecially 2013, ch. 3. I will not consider accounts of self-consciousness as an adaptation, either;however, I suspect a similar skeptical argument could be presented against self-consciousnessbeing an adaptation.

12. Gould and Lewontin’s (1979) argument is often interpreted as claiming that adaptation explana-tions are not falsifiable; however, Richardson (2007, 54ff) is correct to point out that a more gravemistake is the limitation placed on generating alternative hypotheses.

13. Carruthers presents his mindreading priority account in multiple places: in his account of phenom-enal consciousness (2004b, 230–32), in the account of self-knowledge (2011), in the account of thedevelopment of self-consciousness (2013a), and in his recent view of the evolution of self-knowl-edge (Carruthers et al. 2013). I will interpret Carruthers’s account broadly; however, the discussionin the 2009 Behavioral and Brain Sciences target article “How We Know Our Own Minds” will bethe primary focus, since it presents the most developed version of the mindreading priority account.

14. It is puzzling why Bogdan should call mindreading ‘self-consciousness’ at all except insofar as oneis conscious of an other’s self in “extrovert self-consciousness.”

15. Although for compare and contrast between mindshaping—the normative aspect of folk psycho-logical engagement—and mindreading, see Zawidzki 2008; 2013. I agree with Zawidzki thatmindreading is not the “lynchpin” in the evolution of the “human sociocognitive syndrome”(2013, xi). However, our accounts have different points of emphasis in the relationships betweenmindsharing and mindshaping. I would suggest that mindshaping is a normative component ofmindsharing—what I call “norm-receptivity” in acknowledging other minds (Dow 2012)—whichplays an indispensible role in joint engagement in cooperative contexts. Zawidzki (2013) does notdiscuss accounts of joint engagement that inspire my account, except in a discussion of Gilbert’saccount of joint action. Gilbert’s account, however, is a cognitive account of shared intentional-ity. A compare and contrast between our accounts of joint engagement in the development of folkpsychology will have to remain a promissory note.

16. I use the term ‘joint engagement’ for a few reasons. First, effectively characterizing the activitiesbetween individuals that constitute jointness in interaction is most central in accounting for thephenomena of joint attention, joint action, and joint affection. A related point is made byVasudevi Reddy (2005, 104), suggesting that “attention is conceived here as attending …—as theprocess through which organisms attend to the world (including their own bodies), rather thanas a ‘purely’ mental state that is both discrete and unavailable in action and interaction.” Second,there are conceptual reasons to minimize the attributions to episodes of shared intentionality tocapture exactly what individuals understand when they are engaging in joint perceiving, jointdoing, or joint emoting. One of the most difficult tasks in characterizing joint engagements is cap-turing how the two subjects exploit an understanding of the concept of perception, action, andaffection (Eilan 2005, 6)—this is true of our evolutionary ancestors, human infants, and manymore quotidian adult cases. However, I think it is easier to understand how they both exploit anunderstanding of engagement. Further, experience is never solely visual, auditory, olfactory, gus-tatory, tactile, or bodily, but instead, that the phenomenology of perceptual experience is multi-modal. It is for this reason that ‘joint attention’ also seems too restrictive. In addition, experienceis never solely perceptual, but also includes action and affection.

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17. The evolution of human cooperation is considered in Raimo Tuomela’s (1993, 2000, 2007)account of the philosophy of sociality. In that account, cooperative engagement plays a centralrole. According to most accounts of the evolution of cooperation, mindreading is required for itsemergence. However, I would argue that the mainstream account of the evolution of cooperationbased in mindreading is deeply problematic, because mindreading would have been too compu-tationally intractable for our evolutionary ancestors (Zawidzki 2013, 99–136).

18. For a discussion of the emergence of perspective-taking out of joint engagement, see Moll andTomasello (2006) and Moll and Meltzoff (2011a, 2011b).

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