title: Continuing debates on direct social perception: Some notes on Gallagher's analysis of "the new hybrids".
abstract: This commentary argues that Gallagher's account of direct social perception has remained underdeveloped in several respects. Gallagher has not provided convincing evidence to support his claim that mindreading is rare in social situations. He and other direct perception theorists have not offered a substantive critique of standard theories of mindreading because they have attacked a much stronger claim about the putative unobservability of mental states than most theories of mindreading imply. To provide a genuine alternative to standard theories of mindreading, the direct perception theorist needs to provide more detailed answers to the following questions: What are the criteria for distinguishing perceptual processes from non-perceptual processes? How exactly does direct social perception function on the subpersonal level? What is the content of direct social perception? How does direct perception theory relate to more recent developments in the mindreading literature?
authors.affiliation: Institute of Philosophy II, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany; Department of Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Electronic address: vivian.bohl@ut.ee.
authors.forename: Vivian
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bohl
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Direct perception; Hybrid theories; Mindreading; Simulation theory; Social cognition; Theory-theory