Abstract
What is distinctive about understanding and interacting with other people? Our social relations are diverse in nature; people are encountered as strangers, the holders of certain social roles and statuses, neighbours, competitors, lovers, friends or family. And we interact with each other in all sorts of ways. Negotiating one’s way along a busy shopping street alongside several hundred others, with the occasional exchange of nods, smiles or frowns, is very different from a free-flowing conversation with a good friend about assorted trivia. Playing a well-matched and familiar opponent at chess is far removed from answering a request for directions from a stranger. And, despite the diversity of social life, it seems that all our relations with people are somehow different in character from our interactions with inanimate objects. We do not ordinarily experience, understand and interact with each other in the same way that we do rocks, artefacts or (most) non-human animals.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Copyright information
© 2007 Matthew Ratcliffe
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ratcliffe, M. (2007). Commonsense Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation. In: Rethinking Commonsense Psychology. New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-62529-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-62529-7_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-22120-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62529-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)