Shaun Gallagher

We argue that progress in our scientific understanding of the ‘social mind’ is hampered by a number of unfounded assumptions. We single out the widely shared assumption that social behavior depends solely on the capacities of an individual agent. In contrast, both developmental and phenomenological studies suggest that the personal-level capacity for detached ‘social cognition’ is a secondary achievement that is dependent on more immediate processes of embodied social interaction. We draw on the enactive approach to cognitive science to further clarify this strong notion of ‘social interaction’ in theoretical terms. In addition, we indicate how this interaction theory could eventually be formalized with the help of a dynamical systems perspective on the interaction process, especially by making use of evolutionary robotics modeling. We conclude that bringing together the methods and insights of developmental, phenomenological, enactive and dynamical approaches to social interaction can provide a promising framework for future research. Keywords: theory of mind; cognitive science; phenomenology; embodied cognition; dynamical systems theory; enactive approach; social cognition; interaction theory; evolutionary robotics.

Social robots are robots designed to interact with humans or with each other in ways that approximate human social interaction. It seems clear that one question relevant to the project of designing such robots concerns how humans themselves interact to achieve social understanding. If we turn to psychology, philosophy, or the cognitive sciences in general, we find two models of social cognition vying for dominance under the heading of theory of mind: theory theory and simulation theory. It is therefore natural and interesting to ask how a TT design for a social robot would differ from the ST version. I think that a much more critical question is whether either TT or ST provide an adequate explanation of social cognition. There is a growing although still minority consensus that, despite their dominance in the debate about social cognition, neither TT nor ST, nor some hybrid version of these theories, offers an acceptable account of how we encounter and interact with one another. In this paper I will give a brief review of the theory of mind debate, outline an alternative theory of social cognition based on an embodied interactive approach, and then try to draw out a few implications about social robotics.

W sytuacjach, gdy powinniśmy mieć do czynienia ze wzajemnym oświecaniem, w rzeczywistości często spotykamy się z obopólnym oporem między kognitywistyką a fenomenologią, gdzie ta druga rozumiana jest jako podejście metodologiczne, po raz pierwszy zarysowane przez Husserla. Filozofowie umysłu, z pierwszych szeregów kognitywistów, niejednokrotnie czynią lekceważące gesty w stosunku do fenomenologii, oparte na myleniu fenomenologii z niewykwalifikoną introspekcją psychologiczną (np. Dennett, 1991). Z kolei wielu fenomenologów podlega mylnemu wrażeniu, że kognitywistyce nie udało się wyjść poza tradycyjne modele komputacyjne (DSSI – „dobra staromodna sztuczna inteligencja” (GOFAI - „good old fashioned artificial inteligence”)). Odrzucają oni kognitywistykę, zarzucając jej nadmierny redukcjonizm, uniemożliwiający wyjaśnienie doświadczenia czy świadomości. O ile taki opór nie dziwi w przypadku tych, którzy znają i bronią antynaturalistycznego stanowiska Husserla, o tyle jest niezwykle zaskakujący w przypadku tych, którzy znają dzieła Merleau-Ponty’ego. Badania tego ostatniego łączyły bowiem analizy fenomenologiczne z rozważaniami pochodzącymi z nauk empirycznych, takich jak psychologia i neurologia, i to na długo, zanim kognitywistyka została skonstruowana jako model do uwzględniania tylko tych aspektów psychologii i neurologii, które skupiają się na doświadczeniu poznawczym. Zostawiając przykład Merleau-Ponty’ego, filozofowie po obu stronach stopniowo zdali sobie sprawę, że fenomenologia może być bezpośrednio przydatna do naukowego zrozumienia poznania. Wcześniej niejednokrotnie nawet sami naukowcy empiryczni dochodzili do tego wniosku i to pomimo filozofów. Dobry przykład stanowią tutaj badania Franisco Vareli z neurofenomenologii (Varela, 1996).

Some philosophers argue that Descartes was wrong when he characterized animals as purely physical automata – robots devoid of consciousness. It seems to them obvious that animals (tigers, lions, and bears, as well as chimps, dogs, and dolphins, and so forth) are conscious. There are other philosophers who argue that it is not beyond the realm of possibilities that robots and other artificial agents may someday be conscious – and it is certainly practical to take the intentional stance toward them (the robots as well as the philosophers) even now. I'm not sure that there are philosophers who would deny consciousness to animals but affirm the possibility of consciousness in robots. In any case, and in whatever way these various philosophers define consciousness, the majority of them do attribute consciousness to humans. Amongst this group, however, there are philosophers and scientists who want to reaffirm the idea, explicated by Shadworth Holloway Hodgson in 1870, that in regard to action the presence of consciousness does not matter since it plays no causal role. Hodgson's brain generated the following thought: neural events form an autonomous causal chain that is independent of any accompanying conscious mental states. Consciousness is epiphenomenal, incapable of having any effect on the nervous system. James (1890, 130) summarizes the situation

The term phenomenology can be used in a generic sense to cover a variety of areas related to the problem of consciousness. In this sense it is a title that ranges over issues pertaining to first-person or subjective experience, qualia, and what has become known as "the hard problem" (Chalmers 1995). The term is sometimes used even more generally to signify a variety of approaches to studying such issues, including contemplative, meditative, and mystical studies, and transpersonal psychology.(1) Within the disciplines of philosophy and psychology, however, phenomenology has a more specialized meaning. In this case it refers to the methodology and philosophy initiated by the philosopher Edmund Husserl at the beginning of the twentieth-century and developed in various ways by theorists such as Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Schutz. I restrict the scope of this review to phenomenology in this more specialized sense. In the light of several recent publications, the general questions I address are: What is and what ought to be the relationship between phenomenology and cognitive science? and What, if any, recent contributions has phenomenology made to the science of consciousness?

ArgumentA number of theorists have proposed simulation theories of empathy. A review of these theories shows that, despite the fact that one version of the simulation theory can avoid a number of problems associated with such approaches, there are further reasons to doubt whether simulation actually explains empathy. A high-level simulation account of empathy, distinguished from the simulation theory of mindreading, can avoid problems associated with low-level (neural) simulationist accounts; but it fails to adequately address two other problems: the diversity problem and the starting problem. It is argued that a narrative approach to empathy obviates all these problems and offers a more parsimonious account.

I propose a distinction between two closely related problems: the problem of social cognition and the problem of participatory sense-making. One problem focuses on how we understand others; the other problem focuses on how, with others, we make sense out of the world. Both understanding others and making sense out of the world involve social interaction. The importance of participatory sense-making is highlighted by reviewing some recent accounts of perception that are philosophically autistic -- i.e., accounts that ignore the involvement of others in our perception of the world