Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding Other Minds (Oxford Cognitive Science Series) - Hardcover

This book is Nichols and Stichs long-awaited monograph on the theory of mind debate. The wait has been well worth it. Their discussion is integrative, innovative, extremely well informed, and crystal clear. Moreover, their own theories are for the most part carefully thought through and have been worked out in far greater detail than those of their competitors. This book sets a new benchmark for quality in discussions of human mind-reading abilities, and deserves to be highly influential in the field. . . . This is an excellent book, which anyone interested in naturalistic accounts of our abilities to pretend and to ascribe mental states to ourselves and to others needs to read. (Peter Carruthers, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

The everyday capacity to understand the mind, or "mindreading", plays an enormous role in our ordinary lives. Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich provide a detailed and integrated account of the intricate web of mental components underlying this fascinating and multifarious skill. The imagination, they argue, is essential to understanding others, and there are special cognitive mechanisms for understanding oneself. The account that emerges has broad implications for longstanding philosophical debates over the status of folk psychology.