Emotion Review 2012 Stueber 55 63

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Karsten R. StueberDebate

Varieties of Empathy, Neuroscience and the Narrativist Challenge to the Contemporary Theory of Mind

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These are exciting times for empathy. About 100 years after its conceptual birth, an interdisciplinary community of researchers consisting of philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, biol-ogists, anthropologists, and literary and film theorists has redis-covered it as a topic of widespread attention. In this article, I will address the controversial topic of empathy by defending its epistemic importance for social cognition and more specifically for our understanding of individual agency within the concep-tual framework of folk psychology. I will proceed by first clari-fying my use of the concept of empathy. Second, I will explicate my own favorite way of thinking about our folk psychological capacities in terms of the distinction between basic and reenac-tive empathy, situating it also within the emerging consensus in the theory of mind literature that one should differentiate between two developmentally distinguishable components in our capacity for social cognition. Rather than arguing against theory theory (see Stueber, 2006, in this respect), here I am particularly interested in articulating my defense of empathy in contrast to a philosophical position that emphasizes narrative competence (Gallagher & Hutto, 2008) for our understanding of other agents and that conceives of itself as an alternative to both simulation and theory theory.

The Concept of EmpathySince the history of the concept of empathy has been character-ized by a rather shameful disregard for conceptual clarity, I will start my article by indicating briefly how I understand it and what aspects of empathy-related phenomena I am particularly interested in (for a survey of the concept of empathy, see Batson, 2009; Stueber, 2008a). One commonly distinguishes between cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. As I am talking about empathy in the context of our knowledge of other minds, it should be obvious that I will focus primarily on empa-thy in a cognitive sense. As a philosopher, I feel also obliged to situate my conception of empathy in the context of its original philosophical discussion. For that purpose, it is useful to remind ourselves of how Theodor Lipps conceived of empathy, since he has been responsible for defining it as a central category in thinking about our knowledge of other minds at the start of the 20th century (Stueber, 2006, 2008b). For Lipps, empathy is a resonance phenomenon or a form of inner or mental imitation activated in the perceptual encounter with another person and his activities. By nature, we are wired to mirror the mental activities or experiences of another person based on the observation of his bodily activities, facial expressions, and other activities

Varieties of Empathy, Neuroscience and the Narrativist Challenge to the Contemporary Theory of Mind Debate

Karsten R. StueberDepartment of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, USA

Abstract

This article will defend the centrality of empathy and simulation for our understanding of individual agency within the conceptual framework of folk psychology. It will situate this defense in the context of recent developments in the theory of mind debate. Moreover, the article will critically discuss narrativist conceptions of social cognition that conceive of themselves as alternatives to both simulation and theory theory.

Keywordsempathy, folk psychology, mirror neurons, narrativism, theory of mind

Corresponding author: Karsten Stueber, Department of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01566, USA. Email: [email protected]

421380 EMRXXX10.1177/1754073911421380StueberEmotion Review

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56 Emotion Review Vol. 4 No. 1

expressing human effort. Moreover, inner resonance in those perceptual encounters automatically gives rise to projecting my own mental experience onto you since I am in some sense aware of the fact that I have certain experiences due to the fact that I am resonating with you and that it is not me that is really experiencing pain, anger, and so on.

Lipps also claims that the mentioned mechanisms of reso-nance and projection constitute the cognitive basis for gaining knowledge of other minds. For him, the inference of analogy, the only proposal that he regards as a prima facie plausible alternative to accounting for such knowledge, is riddled with contradictions. Inferring the existence of another persons mental states in an analogical manner means to infer their exist-ence from the observation of another persons bodily move-ments, with the help of knowledge of which mental states we are in when we manifest similar bodily characteristics and the assumption that human beings are constituted in a psychologi-cally similar manner. For Lipps, such an inference involves the contradictory attempt of conceiving of mental states, on the one hand, as something that only I can experience and, at the same time, as the experiences of another person and thus as some-thing that I will never be able to experience (Lipps, 1907).

In diagnosing the self-contradictory nature of the inference of analogy, Lipps presupposes a Cartesian conception of the mind; that is, he presupposes that our access to mental states proceeds essentially from the first-person perspective. Cartesians assume that we can define our mental concepts and can understand the nature of mental states only in respect of our own introspectively accessible experiences. Lipps is certainly right that historically the inference of analogy was proposed as a solution to the other mind problem in the context of a Cartesian conception of the mind. Yet, surprisingly, Lipps, in contrast to Wittgenstein later on, does not understand the aforementioned critique as pointing towards a fatal flaw in Cartesianism. Indeed, Lipps seems to remain committed to the Cartesian perspective in that he gives priority to the first-person perspective and conceives of our understanding of mental concepts and mental phenomena as being constituted within this perspective. Consequently, it is hard to understand how Lippss conception of empathy as the basic means for gaining knowledge of other minds can escape his penetrating critique of the inference of analogy. If empathy is a mere projection of my conscious experiences and thoughts onto you, then it is difficult to see how it can ever be a reliable means for gaining knowledge of other minds within a Cartesian conception of the mind.

For these reasons, philosophers in the phenomenological tradition such as Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Max Scheler very much agreed with Lipps critique of the inference of anal-ogy, but rejected what they regarded as problematic features of Lippss account of empathy, that is, resonance and projection. Alternatively, they conceived of empathy in analogy to a per-ceptual act as Fremdwahrnehmung, that is, as the perception of the other person as a minded creature. They conceived of empathy as a nontheoretical, noninferential, sui generis experi-ential act allowing us to directly grasp another persons experi-ences as belonging to him, without requiring that we ourselves

have similar experiences as those of the other person (see Zahavi, 2010).

Contemporary philosophers within the phenomenological tradition have tended to use very similar arguments in order to criticize Alvin Goldman (2006), whose version of simulation theory also adopts a neo-Cartesian account of mental concepts and conceives of simulation explicitly as a form of projection (Gallagher, 2007; Zahavi, 2007). It has to be pointed out, how-ever, that the phenomenological critique of Lipps was justified only because Lipps held on to Cartesianism. In addition, it is of utmost importance to keep in mind that a simulation theorist qua simulation theorist is not committed to any specific account of mental-state concepts. Simulation theory is compatible with a variety of accounts of mental-state concepts (including a func-tionalist one), as Goldman himself observed in one of his very first articles on simulation theory (Goldman, 1995, p. 94).1

Admittedly, in embracing Cartesianism, Goldman seems to be closest to the position developed by Theodor Lipps more than 100 years ago, and criticizing him for that reason seems to be more than appropriate. Yet, as my account of empathy is closely linked to contemporary simulation theory, I want to make it clear from the outset that my use of the empathy concept is in no way tied to a Cartesian conception of the mind or to a problematic projective account of understanding other agents. My defense of empathy is characterized in large part by my attempt to separate the thesis that empathy is central for our understanding of other agents from its historically contingent association with Cartesianism. Nevertheless, I pay special tribute to Theodor Lipps in conceiving of empathy because I think he was right in maintaining that our grasp of other persons as minded creatures involves resonance phenomena at various different levels of complexity; mirror neurons on the neurobio-logical level and reenactment of thoughts at the more developed stage of full-blown folk psychology.

Folk Psychology and the Contemporary Theory of Mind DebateLet me also explicate my thesis that empathy is epistemically central for our folk psychological abilities in the context of contemporary theory of mind, a debate that was originally char-acterized by a strict polarization between proponents of simula-tion and theory theory. Broadly understood, theory theorists argue that our ability to make sense of other agents within folk psychology causally depends on knowledge-rich mechanisms, whereas simulation theorists deny that very thesis. Within this context, I have aligned my thesis about the epistemic centrality of empathy with simulation theory in opposition to theory theory (Stueber, 2006).

Yet it is important, particularly for our discussion of the narrativist challenge to the contemporary theory of mind debate later on, to understand precisely what the denial of the involvement of knowledge-rich mechanisms by simulation theorists exactly entails. The original theory of mind debate focused primarily on trying to understand our mature folk


Stueber Varieties of Empathy 57

psychological abilities according to which agents act because of their pro-attitudes (i.e., desires) towards the world and their subjective representation of states of affairs in the world (i.e., beliefs). It is therefore not surprising that researchers were par-ticularly impressed by a childs ability to pass the false-belief task. Given this focus, simulation theorists conceived of mind-reading as the ability to model another persons subjective outlook onto the world by using our own cognitive and delib-erative capacities in an imaginative and off-line manner. Such imaginative modeling minimally requires that I am sensitive to the relevant differences between the person whom I try to understand, and myself. It requires that I have the ability to feed my own cognitive system with so-called pretend-beliefs and pretend-desires, that is, beliefs and desires that I normally do not share with the other agent. Moreover, it presupposes the ability to quarantine the imaginative use of my cognitive resources from beliefs and desires that I actually do have but that the other person does not share with me. Only in this man-ner does the imaginative use of my cognitive processes enable me to simulate another persons mental processes. Simulation theorists thus conceive of simulation as implicitly consisting of the following three distinct phases:

1. A matching phase in which I imaginatively adopt your perspective of the world by entertaining your beliefs and desires and by quarantining my beliefs and desires that we do not share.

2. The simulation phase during which I think, deliberate, and entertain reasons for possible actions from your perspective.

3. The attribution phase. After ceasing to entertain your perspective, I base my folk psychological interpretation of your action on my knowledge of what happened during the simulation phase.

Notice, however, that simulation theorists do not need to assume that simulation of other people only proceeds on the conscious level. More importantly, in denying that our grasp of other peoples mind and behavior is knowledge-poor, simula-tion theorists do not need to deny that propositional knowledge of some form is involved in the first and the third phase. Certainly, our sensitivity to relevant differences between us and other agents, especially if they are members of a different culture or historical time, is mediated by propositional knowl-edge about the mores and habits of those different cultures or times. Simulation theorists only need to assert that such infor-mation is not sufficient for understanding the action of the other person. That is, such information does not make the need for the simulation phase epistemically superfluous (for an interesting discussion, see Henderson, 2011).

One should also note that the debate about folk psychology has evolved in rather interesting directions. First, in the last decade, the polarization between simulation theory and theory theory has been ameliorated by the development of a number of hybrid positions, normally emphasizing theory theory or simu-lation theory, but making some concession to its competitors.

Second, the discovery of mirror neurons has refocused the debate by suggesting that we need to acknowledge more explic-itly the existence of basic mechanisms for making sense of another persons behavior; that is, mechanisms that exist prior to our ability to attribute fully conceptualized propositional attitudes. Accordingly, participants in this debate have started to distinguish between two psychological systems for under-standing other people as minded agents: (a) an elementary and developmentally very early system and (b) a cognitively more complex perspective on other minds, which develops later on (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Gallagher & Hutto, 2008; Goldman, 2006; Nichols & Stich, 2003; Singer, 2006; Stueber, 2006).

One also needs to acknowledge a third trend in the theory of mind debate. Various authors claim that simulation and theory theory fundamentally mischaracterize our ability to make sense of other agents within the social realm. They suggest that interpersonal understanding is primarily based on embodied and nonconceptual skills of intersubjective engagement and later on depends on what they call narrative competence (see the article by, e.g., Gallagher & Hutto, 2008). In the next sec-tion, I will discuss various attempts of characterizing the first stage of our ability to relate to minded creatures. I will pay particular attention to the question of whether mirror neuron activity at this stage should be characterized as a form of sim-ulation and explain my reasons for understanding our relation to other minded creatures mediated by mirror neuron activity as basic empathy. In the section afterwards, I will defend my claim that reenactive empathy (as a form of simulation) is epistemically essential for our major folk psychological abil-ities by critically discussing the narrativist account of our mature abilities for social cognition.

Mirror Neurons, Simulation, and Basic EmpathyMuch of contemporary philosophy of mind assumes that folk psychology is a theoretical practice that, like the natural sci-ences, has been adopted from the detached third-person per-spective. In contrast, I view folk psychology as an explanatory practice that has been adopted from the engaged perspective, a perspective that only creatures that share our psychology can adopt (Stueber, 2006). First, the perceptual basis of encounter-ing other humans is different from our perceptual encounter with mere physical objects. Our perceptual encounter with the world is not one-dimensional in that we do not primarily per-ceive the world as one big class of entities that differ only in their physical characteristics and in the complexity of behavior that they show, a rather common assumption among philoso-phers committed to very different conceptions of the mind. Human beings do not encounter the world in this manner and infer only indirectly that some physical things also have minds because of the complexity of their observed behavior. We per-ceptually encounter the world already distinguishing between creatures that are more like us and other objects that are mere physical objects (Meltzoff, 2007; Meltzoff & Brooks, 2001).



More importantly, I understand research on so-called mirror neurons as providing evidence for this assertion and as establish-ing that our perception of the observation of other humans engages very different neurobiological systems than the obser-vations of inanimate objects. In observing the bodily movements of other people, or their facial expressions associated with specific emotions, there is a significant overlap between the activation of neurons that are activated when we execute a certain bodily movement intentionally or when we feel a certain emotion, such as disgust, fear, or pain (Goldman, 2006; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2008). From the neurobiological perspective, the perceptual encounter of other humansinsofar as it is causally mediated by mirror neuron systemshas to be understood as an inner resonance phenomenon, as a form of inner imitation. In light of Theodor Lippss view of empathy as a form of inner imitation, I refer to those resonance mechanisms as mechanisms of basic empathy.

After the original discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys was enthusiastically hailed, lately, a cautionary attitude towards mirror neuron research has manifested itself, particularly in two respects. First, some researchers have become a bit more careful about claims that the existence of mirror neurons in humans has been conclusively established, since it is difficult to compare the single-cell studies conducted with monkeys with more indirect means used on human subjects (see Turella, Pierno, Tubaldi, & Castiello, 2009). Second, skepticism has also been voiced about the plausibility of the predominant interpretation of the function of mirror neurons as mainly contributing to social cognition and action understanding, which has been championed by the mem-bers of the Italian research group around Rizzolatti and Gallese (Csibra, 2007; Hickok, 2008; Jacob, 2008).

I will leave the first question for neuroscientists to decide. Yet one should note that authors use the term mirror neuron in a narrow and a broad sense. More narrowly defined, mirror neu-rons are those neurons that are activated in the execution and perception of actions and that are located in areas of the human brain that are homologous to areas in the macaque monkeys brain where mirror neurons have been found. In his critique of mirror neuron research, Decety (2010, 2011) seems to under-stand the term mirror neuron in this narrower sense and distin-guishes mirror neurons from shared neural substrates, which he continues to believe form one basis of empathy. In the broad sense, authors use the term mirror neurons to refer to any neu-ronal resonance phenomenon, or any significant overlap in the excitation of neurons associated with both the execution and the observation of a behavior or expressed emotion (Goldman, 2006, 2009). My understanding of basic empathy refers to this broader conception of mirror neurons.

In the rest of the section, I will be only concerned with the question of how to best conceive of the function of mirror neurons and whether we could conceive of them as contribut-ing to our understanding of other agents. Particularly, I will be concerned with the question of whether mirror neuron activity can be understood as simulation and as a form of mindreading (Goldman, 2006), or whether mirror neurons are better under-stood as constituting perceptual systems conceived of in an

enactive manner (Gallagher, 2007, in press). Everyone in this debate agrees that the mirror neuron activity cannot be con-ceived of as simulation consisting of the previously mentioned three-step procedure as envisioned by simulation theorists when they focused on more developed folk psychological abil-ities. It certainly does not involve feeding ones own cognitive system with pretend-beliefs and pretend-desires. Goldman also agrees that the mere existence of resonance or mirroring phe-nomena on the neurobiological level cannot automatically be understood as a form of mindreading. Accordingly, it does not constitute simulation in the manner in which simulation theo-rists have traditionally conceived of it, that is, as simulation-for-mindreading (Goldman, 2006, pp. 132133).2 Goldman thus understands simulation-for-mindreading not merely as the claim that mindreading involves a significant overlap in neuro-biological mechanisms of the target and of the observer or interpreter. Rather, simulation-as-mindreading is best under-stood as a process whereby psychological processes mirroring the psychological processes of the target are causally involved in bringing about a mental-state attribution to that very same target (Goldman, 2009).

Similarly, one agrees that the content represented by mirror neurons cannot be characterized by mental concepts. My stim-ulation of the amygdale realizes the feeling of fear, but that stimulation does not self-reflectively involve the realization that this is also a state of fear (Goldman, 2009, particularly p. 238; Jacob, 2008). Consequently, the substantial issue involved in the question of whether mirror neuron activity should be seen as simulation-for-mindreading is whether such mirror neuron activity causally brings about mental-state attribution. Only then can we understand mirror neurons as constituting knowledge of other minds in the standard sense of the term knowledge. Minimally, that requires that we can be confi-dent that the subject possesses the relevant mental-state con-cepts. Concerning adults, we can normally be confident in this respect. Moreover, Goldman persuasively points to evidence that is suggestive in claiming that an inability to feel a certain emotion such as fear, because of a certain brain lesion, is asso-ciated with a deficit in attributing that emotion to others when observing their facial expressions. In adults then, mirror neuron activity might be related to mindreading in the men-tioned sense and constitute simulation-for-mindreading. I am, however, much more skeptical about whether infants and very young children already possess the required conceptual com-petence. We do not even possess a persuasive philosophical account of concepts that would allow us to discuss this issue in a sensible manner. It is thus doubtful of whether mirror neuron activity in infants and young children (assuming that it exists) constitutes simulation-for-mindreading in the previously mentioned sense.

Nonetheless, the discovery of mirror neurons shows that human beings, by nature, never occupy the stance towards each other that philosophers involved in discussing the problem of other minds assumed they take up. In infants, I am inclined to conceive of mirror neurons as implementing perceptual mecha-nisms that allow the infant to track in a nonconceptual manner



specific aspects of the mindedness of other persons, namely emotional reactivity (at least to a limited degree) and the direct-edness of human agency towards external goals. Accordingly, I tend to view the range of understanding provided by mirror neurons to be very restricted. It only provides the infant with a nonconceptual grasp of the external goal directedness of basic action (such as the grasping of this object) and not with an understanding of action sequences and prior intentions such as the intention to drink tea rather than wash the dishes (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2008; for a critique, see Jacob, 2008). Yet, in tracking those restricted features in others through internal mirroring, the infant tracks them as something that it also could do or feel. Mirror neurons provide us with what I like to call a sense of like-me familiarity. The emotional expressions and goal-directed movements of the other appear familiar in a per-ceptual encounter with the other person analogous to the man-ner in which my own bodily movements and emotions are familiar to myself (for a more extensive discussion, see Stueber, in press). It is for that reason that I find my choice of the term basic empathy for characterizing such resonance phenomena particularly appropriate, because it reminds us that mechanisms of basic empathy track mindedness as a form of like-mindedness. It is exactly in this respect that I distinguish my account of basic empathy from phenomenologically inspired accounts of Gallagher (2007) and Zahavi (2007).3

Reenactive Empathy and the Narrativist ChallengeHow exactly should we then characterize the mature adult stage of our folk psychological abilities? The fact that reso-nance phenomena are involved in our perceptual encounter with others does not settle this question, even though it does show that the manner in which the other mind problem has been traditionally discussed is misconceived. Moreover, mech-anisms of basic empathy are fully integrated with our develop-mentally later capacities. Yet in contrast to the earlier stages we are now able to recognize agents not merely as agents whose movements are directed towards external goals and as possessing what I would call de re intentionality, but as agents whose actions manifest de dicto intentionality. They are agents who are subjectively rational since their actions have to be under-stood as means to ends as they conceive of that relation from their perspective. We acquire such understanding of agency through our ability to attribute propositional attitudes like beliefs and desires to other persons.

The neurobiological evidence clearly shows that understand-ing agents in terms of propositional attitudes involves very dif-ferent areas of the brain than the ones that are involved in processes of basic empathy (Goldman, 2006; Singer, 2006). In particular, it involves the temporal poles, the posterior superior temporal sulcus, and the medial prefrontal lobe. Accordingly, a distinction between two systems of interpersonal understanding can be easily validated from the neurobiological perspective. Yet neurobiology alone cannot answer the question of how

exactly we have to characterize the structure of the information processing in those areas and whether we should think about the information processes on the model of theory theory, simulation theory, or some kind of narrative competence. To answer such questions involves centrally philosophical reflection on the structure and nature of agency.

I have argued extensively elsewhere (Stueber, 2006) that I regard a theory theory position as an inadequate analysis of our ability to provide an explanatory account of another persons actions. I align myself in this respect broadly with simulation theory, but use the term reenactive empathy to refer to the required simulative capacities because, in contrast to Goldman, for example, I see the notion of rational agency to be at the center of our folk psychological practices. Accordingly, I will highlight only those features of my defense of reenactive empathy that are important for defending it against the recent narrativist challenge to the theory of mind debate.

Rational agents are not merely creatures who act because something is happening inside them. Rather, they are able to take a reflective stance towards their own agency and to take ownership of their action in terms of their reasons for acting. Being able to do this, I maintain, requires that ones agency is potentially intelligible to oneself in terms of ones understanding of the world, ones long-term plans, and the standards and rules of conduct that one is committed to (see also Stueber, 2011).

Rational agency, however, occurs in very specific contexts. It requires, on the part of the agent, the ability to consider the appropriate thoughts and rules that are relevant to consider in a particular situation. It is, however, very unlikely that agents themselves consult a general theory of how to negotiate specific situations in this manner. Such a theory would have to tell us in general terms how to decide which of our many thoughts and norms we are committed to are relevant to consider in a specific context. Yet as the persistence of the frame-problem in the cog-nitive sciences suggests, no such theory seems to exist (Heal, 2003, Chapter 4; Stueber, 2006, Chapter 4). A second considera-tion is also important: Normative standards that agents are com-mitted to are formulated on a very general level. To apply them to the situation at hand and to negotiate between what might be prima facie opposing normative demands requires an agents practical know-how. Moreover, it is not to be expected, as par-ticularly Aristotle and Wittgenstein have emphasized, that we can rely on a general theory telling us how to apply general standards to the particular case, as such a theory would again have to be formulated on a general level. It is up to the agent and his practical or phronetic skills to grasp the salient features of a situation in which he finds himself in order to respond rationally to its demands.

For that very reason, it is equally unlikely that each of us implicitly has a theory for understanding how other persons thoughts, desires, and valuesthat is, mental states that we attribute to him in order to make sense of his action in the folk psychological contextcan function as his reasons for acting in a given context. Our only option is to activate what I refer to as our capacity for reenactive empathy: We grasp another persons action as a rationally compelling one because we can grasp his



thoughts as reasons for acting by putting ourselves in his shoes, by imagining the situation that he faces, and trying to reenact his thought processes in our mind. This fact does not just concern thoughts and beliefs, but also considerations about which of ones many desires one should act on; which one of those desires one can best identify within light of ones value and longer-term desires and so on. It is precisely because of the epistemic cen-trality of reenactive empathy for understanding other agents that I regard folk psychology as an epistemically unique explanatory practice.

Yet narrativists such as Shaun Gallagher and Dan Hutto have articulated strong reservations about simulation theory (and less interesting for our purposes, against theory theory). As I see it, the genuine contribution that narrativists have made to our understanding of social cognition is to point to information that is presupposed in the interpretive context of folk psychology, but that has not been sufficiently acknowledged in the original context of the theory of mind debate. Nevertheless, I do not think that this additional information makes simulation or reenactive empathy epistemically superfluous for understand-ing rational agency. Certainly, we need further information about relevant differences between the interpretee and us in order to be able to grasp their reasons for action. Indeed, I have argued that it is one of the functions of, for example, historical narratives to provide us with the required background informa-tion in this respect (see Stueber, 2008b, pp. 4142). Nevertheless, the information provided concerns only what we, in previous lines, have characterized as the matching phase of the simula-tion procedure. A simulation theorist can happily concede that some propositional knowledge might be necessary for that phase, contrary to what, for example, Hutto asserts (2008, p. 17). The required information at this stage does not infect, nor does it make the simulation phase superfluous, since reenactive empathy is still necessary for recognizing that the beliefs and desires of the agent constitute his reasons for acting within the context of these different background assumptions.

As far as I can see, in the literature there are three additional arguments that narrativists could appeal to in order to show that simulation is superfluous for understanding agency in the social realm.

First, critics of the contemporary debate challenge the implicit assumption of the ubiquity of the conceptual frame-work of folk psychology for our everyday dealing with other persons. Certainly, we are able to make sense of another per-sons actions without necessarily appealing to his beliefs and desires. We can rely, for example, on knowledge of his charac-ter traits or of the role that he is playing within various social contexts (Andrews, 2008; Maibom, 2007). Students can thus expect that teachers will hand out exam papers, because teachers generally tend to have such nasty habits.

I have no problem admitting that there are, in addition to folk psychology, other explanatory or predictive strategies applica-ble to human behavior. It is a characteristic of complex organ-isms that a wide range of explanatory strategies applies to them. I merely claim that empathy is epistemically central when using the folk psychological framework for making sense of rational

agency. To make that point with the help of an example: Students can expect from their teacher that he or she will grade their papers. Yet in order to understand the specific grade that they were assigned they need to understand what their teacher thought about their paper. They thus have to understand their teachers behavior in terms of his or her mental state as his reasons for acting.

Second, if I understand the narrativist position correctly, narrativists make an even stronger claim than the one I just dis-cussed. They do not merely claim that there are other strategies available for making sense of other agents. Rather, they claim that folk psychological explications of another person in terms of their mental state are the exceptions to the rule, that is, they are appealed to only when normal modes of understanding break down. Normally, understanding another persons action is accomplished by our ability to fit that action into a larger con-text in light of shared cultural-background assumptions. It is exactly this ability of fitting actions into a larger presupposed background that narrative competence is supposed to consist in. Theory or simulation would normally have no role to play in our understanding other agents except when such understanding breaks down. Particularly, Shaun Gallagher has first argued in this manner (but see also Hutto, 2008, p. 7). I think that Gallagher (in press) does make an important point here. Yet his observations do not entail that folk psychology is merely mar-ginal for acquiring an explanatory understanding of individual and rational agency. To draw this conclusion reveals merely that one insufficiently distinguishes between the question of whether it is pragmatically appropriate to request a folk psychological explanation, and the question of whether such an explanation is objectively true in accounting for the behavior of an agent. Consider the following situation: I am sitting at the airport watching people walk by and everybody acts according to the way I expect them to interact and behave at an airport. In a way, I understand their behavior quite well and I would normally not ask why the person in front of me came to the airport, is buying his ticket, and so on. Indeed, I could not care less. Yet at the same time, we should acknowledge, as I have argued before, that all of these individuals are reflective and deliberative agents, who are able to express their reasons for being at the airport if prompted to do so. Otherwise, there seems to be some-thing fundamentally wrong with their agency. If this is true of agents from the first-person perspective, how exactly should we think about our understanding of other agents? In my opinion, we should think of it in a similar manner; that is, our under-standing of other agents consists in the ability to say something on their behalf in terms of their reasons for acting; at least if prompted to do so. This involves, if my previous considerations are correct, reenactive empathy. I can say something on their behalf only if I understand how I could say something on my own behalf in their situation. Yet I might not be interested in providing such explanation, it just would be too cumbersome. For that reason, we do treat agents quite often in a stereotypical manner. Yet I would maintain that in those circumstances we do not really understand them as individual agents; we understand them on a more abstract level. More importantly, even though I



might not be interested in a folk psychological explanation, this does not imply that such a folk psychological account does not provide a true (and more comprehensive) explanation of a per-sons action.

Third, be that as it may, a narrativist like Dan Hutto could respond by suggesting that I and other simulation theorists are still fundamentally mistaken because we overlook that our understanding of agents who act for reasons does not merely require some minimal competence in propositional attitude concepts such as beliefs and desires. Like me, Hutto insists that within the folk psychological context beliefs and desires are attributed to other agents in order to articulate their reasons for acting (see Hutto, 2004, 2008, Chapter 2; Stueber, 2006, 2008b). In contrast to me, Hutto does not seem to think that such under-standing depends on reenactive empathy or simulation. Rather it is through the exposure of narratives, and by developing compe-tence in understanding and constructing narratives about the actions and interactions of persons in a temporal sequence, that we develop the ability to account for actions in terms of reasons. In this manner, a basic competence with basic propositional attitude concepts is transformed into an understanding of an agents reasons. According to Hutto, the child learns through exposure to narrative principles of how the various proposi-tional attitudes interact in specific contexts and how character, history and other commitments impinge on why the person acts as they do (Hutto, 2008, p. 29).

I have already acknowledged one important function that narratives play by providing information about relevant dif-ferences between the interpreter and interpretee. Yet none of this shows that having this information makes reenactment superfluous. It is exactly in this respect that I part company with Huttos position and his claim that our understanding of how agents act for reasons is independent of what I have called reenactive empathy.4

Hutto admits that our understanding of narratives depends on our capacity for imaginative perspective taking (Hutto, 2008, pp. 136ff.) and he even admits that our ability to follow rational thought processes requires what Jane Heal (2003, Chapter 6) refers to as cocognition (and what I understand to be a central part of reenactive empathy). That is, Hutto acknowledges that understanding narratives rests on the use of our imaginative capacities that simulation theorists have traditionally empha-sized in their arguments against the theory theorists.5 Yet Hutto insists that such use of our imaginative capacities does not amount to our understanding of reasons for acting because that would minimally require the manipulation of propositional beliefs and desires, and not just thoughts (2008, p. 141).

In the end, I am not sure why Hutto thinks that a grasp of such interaction can only be provided by appeal to principles that are somehow acquired with the help of narratives. Neither do I fully understand why simulating in terms of pretend-beliefs and pretend-desires could not do the job. More importantly, as I have indicated, our understanding of desires as an agents reasons is also subject to the relevance problem. We can view an agents desire as part of his reason for acting only as long as we see it integrated into his overall value system, his knowledge of

the consequences of his actions, his relevant long-term desires, and so on. To be told, for example, that a student just shot his professor because he desired to do that, does not allow us to grasp his desire as the reason for his action unless we are somehow told much more about the student, his other beliefs, values, hopes and dreams, and so on. But this requires, as far as I am concerned, the ability to imaginatively reenact his thoughts, desires, and values by taking into account relevant differences between us and the student and by quarantining our own personal beliefs and values from such reenactment.

Finally, Hutto claims that only narrativists acknowledge sufficiently the fact that childrens folk psychological abilities develop in greater complexity even after children pass the false-belief task (Hutto, 2009). Traditionally, researchers in the context of the theory of mind debate did not investigate a childs further developing mindreading capacities after it had acquired the capacity to solve the false-belief task. Hutto is impressed by research that shows that childrens developing capacities of understanding other people seem to be linked to their develop-ing ability to tell stories in a more coherent way and to organize a sequence of actions more consistently around the actions and conflicts of one character (Scalise Sugiyama, 2009).

To express it in the terminology of a narrative theorist like Paul Ricoeur, one is tempted to say that children learn during that time to make sense of larger action sequences by acquiring the ability to emplot them. They learn to represent them as sequences of events that have beginnings, middles, and ends by choosing to use only information relevant for allowing us to understand the events as being somehow directed towards an ending (Ricoeur, 1981, p. 277). This ability does indeed constitute a rather complex information-processing ability. In my opinion, it is best compared to our continuously improving ability to organize complex information into a coherent article. It requires the ability to select the appropriate and relevant information and the ability to mention the relevant information at the right time. But in order for a sequence of events to have a plot, as Aristotle in his Poetics (1984) already realized, we must be able to under-stand how the various elements and more primitive sequences hang together so that we do understand how the beginning of the story is connected to its end (see also Stueber, 2009). Centrally, I would like to claim, it requires an understanding of an agents reasons for acting one way rather than another at various junc-tions of the story. However, if I am right, understanding his rea-sons in those contexts requires the use of reenactive empathy. According to my understanding of the developmental picture, in the years after the child is able to pass the false-belief task, the child becomes more adept at using his simulative capacities in a manner that is more sensitive to an ever-increasing amount of information about relevant differences between agents. Moreover, such simulative capacities are applied in order to understand larger and larger action sequences of various agents.

To conclude the story of empathy argued for in this article: While narrativists in my opinion have enriched the contempo-rary theory of mind debate, they have not shown that the con-temporary theory of mind debate has been completely misguided. More importantly, they have not shown that reenactive empathy



is not central to understanding each other as rational agents within the folk psychological realm.

Notes1 Goldman also adopts his Cartesian account of mental-state concepts

for reasons that are completely independent from his argument for simulation theory (Goldman, 2006, Chapter 10).

2 To a certain extent, this debate tends to be a bit of a verbal dispute. In his 2006 book, Goldman, for example, defines mental simulation as any kind of duplication (in some significant respect) between mental processes, regardless of whether this simulation is used for the purpose of mindreading. Mirroring phenomena can thus be understood as mental simulation, even if they do not constitute mental simulation-for-mindreading (see particularly Goldman, 2006, pp. 3540 and 133).

3 Thus, in infants, mirror neuron activity does not contribute to knowl-edge of other minds in the full-blown sense. In this respect, I would also like to differentiate myself from Lipps. Yet I am inclined to think of the function of mirror neurons as contributing to understanding in the sense of being familiar with. In saying that we are familiar with computers and cars, for example, we normally indicate that we under-stand how they work and that we are not generally puzzled by their existence. For me, this ability constitutes a low-level kind of cognitive achievement.

4 I also share some of Marc Slors concerns that if the primary purpose of narratives consists in providing us with information about principles of how propositional attitudes interact in various types of situations, then Huttos narrativist position would collapse into a version of theory theory (see Slors, 2009).

5 For this reason, simulation theorists can happily admit that narratives do play an important role in the transmission of socially relevant information. Hutto tends to focus predominantly on this aspect of the function of a narrative. Yet, as various authors have pointed out, narra-tives are particularly successful in transmitting such information because reading narratives is an exercise in perspective taking and identification with a narratives characters (see Currie & Ravenscroft, 2002; Harris, 2000; Mar & Oatley, 2008).

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