Perceiving mental states.
This paper argues that our awareness of the mental states of other agents is often perceptual in character. It draws partly on recent experimental findings concerning perception of animacy and intentionality. But it also emphasizes the unencapsulated nature of perception generally, and argues that concepts (including mental-state concepts) can be bound into the contents of conscious perception. One of the main arguments used in support of this conclusion draws on recent work concerning the nature and contents of working memory.
Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20912, United States. Electronic address: pcarruth@umd.edu.
Peter
P
Carruthers
D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*
Categorical perception; Cognition; Nonconceptual; Perception; Working memory