Mid-ground Accounts of Action Understanding

Abstract

Abstract Behaviour-reading accounts of action understanding are thoroughly deflationary but worries with the approach have led some theorists to advocate more moderately deflationary alternatives. These come in two varieties: inner state views (where action understanding requires more than behaviour-reading but less than mentalizing) and minimal mentalizing accounts (where action understanding requires genuine mentalizing but not propositional attitude ascription). According to inner state views, subjects need to appreciate the goal of an action and the ways in which internal states can match or fail to match the environment, but these states need not be mental states. Advocates of minimal mentalizing, on the other hand, maintain that action understanding requires attribution of mental states, but the states involved are less demanding than those required by common-sense psychology (CP). This chapter sets out the varieties of approach in each camp and explores how substantive the differences between the two kinds of approach are.