Simulation Theory

« Mets-toi à ma place! » Si souvent, nous croyons y parvenir; si souvent nous devons reconnaître qu’on n’y arrive pas. « Empathie » est le terme qui décrit cet effort, ce désir, cette victoire et cet échec.
Ce livre raconte l’histoire complexe et fascinance de cette idée, parcourant le temps depuis les philosophes grecs jusqu’aux androïdes, et croisant les disciplines comme la philosophie et la psychologie, l’anthropologie et l’hsitoire, l’esthétique et l’éthique, les études culturelles et les neurosciences.

The philosophical and interdisciplinary debate about the nature of social cognition, and the processes involved, has important implicationsfor  psychiatry.  On  one  account,  mindreading  depends  on  making  theoretical  inferences  about  another  person’s  mental  states  based  on knowledge of folk psychology, the so-called “theory theory” (TT). On a different account, “simulation theory” (ST), mindreading depends on simulating the other’s mental states within one’s own mental or motor system. A third approach, “interaction theory” (IT), looks to embodied processes  (involving  movement,  gesture,  facial  expression,  vocal  intonation,  etc.)  and  the  dynamics  of  intersubjective  interactions  (joint attention, joint action, and processes not confined to an individual system) in highly contextualized situations to explain social cognition,and disruptions of these processes in some psychopathological conditions. In this paper, we present a brief summary of these three theoretical  frameworks  (TT,  ST,  IT).  We  then focus  on  impaired  social  abilities  in  autism  and  schizophrenia  from  the  perspective of  the  three approaches. We discuss the limitations of such approaches in the scientific studies of these and other pathologies, and we close with a short reflection on the future of the field. In this regard we argue that, to the extent that TT, ST and IT offer explanations that capture different(limited) aspects of social cognition, a pluralist approach might be best.

Merleau-Ponty’s seminal work Phenomenology of Perception outlines his arguments against idealist and empiricist theories of perception before building on Husserl’s phenomenological work (amongst the work of others) to arrive at a theory of embodied subjectivity.  Although concentrating quite heavily on the personal subjective experience, in the latter chapters of the book he works with Sartre’s conceptions of self, others, and objects, Scheler’s work on the relationship between self and other, and Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditations to outline his own position on an embodied intersubjective relationship between the self and other.  Similar to Scheler and Husserl, Merleau-Ponty rejects the argument from analogy as a possible explanation of how we know others.  Although rejected so long ago by so many thinkers, the argument from analogy still enjoys much interest in philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science today in its new guise as the Simulation Theory of other minds.  Simulation Theorists often refer to their theory as putting oneself in another’s shoes and it continues to be highly influential in theories of empathy and mindreading.  In the first half of this paper I will look at Merleau-Ponty’s position on the other, the two supports he uses to defend our knowledge and certainty of the other’s existence and his dismissal of the argument from analogy.  Exploring the argument from analogy in knowledge of other minds theory, I will outline what is assumed in the modern debate to be contained in the argument from analogy or Simulation Theory as respects our knowledge of others. 

Although not necessarily imperative for the plausibility of his thesis, which is that we are situated goal-directed beings in the world, Merleau-Ponty still chooses to make strong use of the pathological case of the brain-damaged war veteran Schneider (as studied by Geld and Goldstein) throughout his work to support his position.  Schneider, a man who suffers with deficits in his own proprioceptive awareness and kinaesthetic abilities, struggles most when asked to perform actions out of context as opposed to within habitual processes.  In the second half of this paper I will outline how Merleau-Ponty discusses the case of Schneider, what he believes is going wrong for Schneider and where the impairment comes from.  Within his analysis of Schneider, however, I will then make the argument that Merleau-Ponty is guilty of undermining his own dismissal of the argument from analogy and in effect starts to do some shoe swapping.  Following on from this exposition, I will posit some ideas as to why he might do this, whilst being himself unaware, and the difficulties that come with the argument from analogy in analysing our intersubjective world.

The simulation theory is an account of our everyday ability to attribute mental states and predict and explain human behavior. It has been developed as both an empirical hypothesis in cognitive science and an account of mental concepts in the philosophy of mind.

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them.

In this paper, I compare the three main theories that are debated in the literature of empathy and mind-reading. I review evidence and debates to suggest that simulation theory has explanatory advantages when considering psychopathologies of empathy, mainly autism. I draw on psychiatric literature to show parallels between defects of simulation and conditions such as alexithymia. I conclude that access to own mind and emotions is needed for healthy affective empathetic experience.

This paper will deal specifically with the concept of extending some of the contentions and theories of John Archibald Wheeler into a more complete description of reality, supported in part by physical experiments. The subjects that will be dealt with are well known from quantum theory, and now lately-Nick Bostrom's simulation theory, but will be seen through a new reinterpretation that connects seamlessly, prior positions of Wheeler into a self-consistent model that defines the nature of the physical universe through the convergence of information universe models and the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis. Hints will be given, as to how the reported desires of so-called Silicon Valley billionaires to leave the simulated universe, can be fulfilled using on-the-horizon technology to accomplish time travel through the manipulation of the information based fabric underpinning reality. In whole, the following will be major points discussed: 1. J.A. Wheeler posited that even the greatest mathematical equation in the universe is missing something, the principle by which it can become real. He also said, "no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. " 2. Wheeler developed his theory of "it from bit", explaining that the physical world was based upon information at a fundamental level 3. Seth Lloyd, taking that thought further, said that the universe acts like a giant computer processing the information contained therein. 4. Nick Bostrom posited that, in fact, our universe is a computer simulation created by our post-human descendants in the distant future. 5. Philip K. Dick science fiction writer and visionary, in his 1977 public statements mentioned, that due to to events in the past being "reprogrammed", things in the present could be changed so that an alternate universe splits off. 6. The universe is participatory, not just with humans, but everything else. *Just as various events cause a variety of phenomena, in the extreme cases, the universe responds in the extreme by producing alternate universes. This process resolves many of the issues related to quantum phenomena, parallel universes and time travel* 7. The detection of a simulated universe and escape therefrom is similar but not the same as doing so with an information universe. Escape from a simulated universe is impossible just as its detection may be. However, in this paper, a series of experiments will be presented that for the first time ever, establish such a possible detection as well as the method of ultimate escape from our information based universe.

«Нео-Ноосфера в «Пространстве Козырева-Казначеева» посвященных 95-летию академика В.П. Казначеева, 30-летию создания в Арктике первых в мире «Зеркал Козырева» и 25-летию МНИИКА им. Академика В.П. Казначеева, которые будут проводиться 01-02 июня 2019 года в г. Москве, в Музее Космонавтики Abstract: Presented here an overview into research and development of new energy technologies, fundamentally based on new physics phenomena of energy and information transfer, problems of increasing human energy and visions of future noospheric development of civilization as per implementation of new technology of energetics. We investigate the applications of Wireless Energy Transmission towards the creation of a Global Resonant Network and how this technology development is related to the notion of time as memory, extrasensory perception and energy medicine. Furthermore, insights are given on how the experimentally observed free energy phenomena relate to life-force-matter evolution on a cosmological level towards noospheric cosmo-planetary integration.

Having found several erroneities, chimerae, lacunae, malaphors and their sequalae, or (at least generally considered) 'sub-literate' comments and notations in the work of renowned SuperPhysicist Albert Einstein, I have concluded that it is incumbent upon me as a sentient witness, thereof, that I convey and expose the flaws of Mr. Einstein's mildly eccentric ideas to those who are willing to listen and learn.

Mereological nihilism is the philosophical position that there are no items that have parts. If there are no items with parts then the only items that exist are partless fundamental particles, such as the true atoms (also called philosophical atoms) theorized to exist by some ancient philosophers, some contemporary physicists , and some contemporary philosophers. With several novel arguments I show that mereological nihilism is the correct theory of reality. I will also discuss strong similarities that mereological nihilism has with empirical results in quantum physics. And I will discuss how mereological nihilism vindicates a few other theories, such as a very specific theory of philosophical atomism, which I will call quantum abstract atomism. I will show that mereological nihilism also is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that avoids the problems of other interpretations, such as the widely known, metaphysically generated, quantum paradoxes of quantum physics, which ironically are typically accepted as facts about reality. I will also show why it is very surprising that mereological nihilism is not a widely held theory, and not the premier theory in philosophy.

I evaluate several attempts to integrate standard theories of social cognition, either theory theory or simulation theory, with aspects of interaction theory, and especially with the concept of direct social perception. I refer to these as new hybrid theories of social cogni-tion. One of the new hybrids accomplishes the integration only by weakening the concept of mindreading or by understanding mindreading as targeting the shared situation rather than the other's mental states. Hybrids that attempt to accommodate the idea of direct perception of mental states grant a phenomenological directness only by maintaining tacit (theory-based) inferences on the subpersonal level. If such inferential processes are thought to be extra-perceptual, then perception is neither sufficient nor direct for an understanding of intentions and emotions. Moreover, insistence on top-down inferential processes trades off against the possibility of plasticity in the perceptual system itself. I suggest that a better model than a hybrid theory would be a pluralist one. A pluralist approach to social cognition would treat theoretical inference, simulation, direct perception , interactive skills, etc. as different strategies. The real challenge is to work out a plu-ralist account of subpersonal processes.

Modern sonrası bilim ve teknolojinin etkisi ile ortaya çıkan çürüme/decadence durumu, aydınlanma aklının ön plana çıkardığı üst anlatıların meşruiyetinin sorgulanmasına sebep olmuştur. Kuvvetli modern yapıların ve kurumların gözden düşmesi, postmodern dönemin ortaya çıkmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Postmodern bilgi anlayışı, esnek, karmaşık ve heterojen bir yapıya sahiptir. Bu yapının en büyük sorunu ise filozoflar tarafından anlamın yadsınması/buharlaşması olarak görülmüştür.
Anlamın kaybını gerçeklik ve görünüş üzerinden ele alan Jean Baudrillard, yapay ve sahte olanın gerçeğin yerini aldığını ve içinde yaşadığımız bu çağın simülasyon çağı olduğunu vurgulamıştır.
Bu tezde Antik Yunan’dan bugüne dek tartışılagelmiş gerçeklik-görünüş diyalektiği üzerinden simülasyon kuramını temellendiren Baudrillard’ın düşüncesine yer verilecektir. Baudrillard’ın gerçeğin imaja dönüştüğünü temellendiren simülasyon kuramına dair kullandığı kavramlar ele alınarak, gerçekliğin hangi alanlarda hipergerçekliğe dönüştüğü incelenecek, bu doğrultuda simüle edilen nesne ve olguların gündelik hayatta hangi şekiller üstünden karşımıza çıktığı irdelenecektir.

Bu çalışma, Baudrillard’ın, insanlıkça gelinen son noktayı anlama ve yorumlama çabasının ürünlerinden biri olan Simülakrlar ve Simülasyon1 isimli eseri üzerine bir incelemedir.2 Eser, yazarının entelektüel gerçekliğinde bütünlüklü bir kurama imkan veren simülasyon kavramının etrafında genişleyen bir dizi sosyolojik ve felsefi okumalar yumağıdır; kendi bağlamında anlamlı hale gelerek birbiriyle bağlantılanan olay ve olgulardan hareketle, yaşamın karmaşık süreçleri boyunca yapılanan insan benliğinin ve toplumsallığının geldiği nihai noktayı anlama çabasını içermektedir.

Wittgenstein teaches us that, contrary to current philosophical and scientific trends, the understanding of others is not to be achieved though some kind of emotional tool providing an access-pass to otherwise hidden 'mental contents'. This insight goes against the popular grain of empathy as a form of informational 'mindreading', founded upon John Locke's assumption that understanding another is a matter of obtaining and decoding the stored in their mind. We would do best to replace this radically distorted account of what it takes to understand others with a stance which places priority on sharing aspects of our lives. Only then can we even begin to try and tackle our moral, cultural, religious, and socio-political differences. Prologue In his book of interviews with the documentary maker Nick Broomfield, Jason Woods describes the flowing scene from Broomfield's 1975 film Juvenile Liaison, a case study of the questionable 'no-nonsense' methods employed by the officers of a unit in Blackburn, Lancashire (UK) focused on young offenders from 'impoverished working-class backgrounds': There's a sequence with a young Asian girl who is accused of stealing pencils, and what becomes all too apparent from the reaction of her teachers and from the female police officer who visits the girl's parents is that there is absolutely 1 In De la Colina & Turrent (1986:160). 2 Jung (2009:317-318).

This is an encyclopaedia article purporting to be a survey of the state of play in the developmental literature on the development of mindreading. It also argues against the idea that fMRI evidence supports the idea that the TPJ is the site of a mindreading module and against simulationist views of mindreading.

The idea that dreaming is a simulation of the waking world is currently becoming a far more widely shared and accepted view among dream researchers. Several philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have recently characterized dreaming in terms of virtual reality, immersive spatiotemporal simulation, or realistic and useful world simulation. Thus, the conception of dreaming as a simulated world now unifies definitions of the basic nature of dreaming within dream and consciousness research. This novel concept of dreaming has consequently led to the idea that social interactions in dreams, known to be a universal and abundant feature of human dream content, can best be characterized as a simulation of human social reality, simulating the social skills, bonds, interactions, and networks that we engage in during our waking lives. Yet this tempting idea has never before been formulated into a clear and empirically testable theory of dreaming. Here we show that a testable Social Simulation Theory (SST) of dreaming can be formulated, from which empirical predictions can be derived. Some of the predictions can gain initial support by relying on already existing data in the literature, but many more remain to be tested by further research. We argue that the SST should be tested by directly contrasting its predictions with the major competing theories on the nature and function of dreaming, such as the Continuity Hypothesis (CH) and the Threat Simulation Theory (TST). These three major theories of dreaming make differing predictions as to the quality and the quantity of social simulations in dreams. We will outline the first steps towards a theory-and-hypothesis-driven research program in dream research that treats dreaming as a simulated world in general and as a social simulation in particular. By following this research program it will be possible to find out whether dreaming is a relatively unselective and thus probably non-functional simulation of the waking world (CH), a simulation primarily specialized in the simulation of dangerous and threatening events that present important challenges for our survival and prosperity (TST), or whether it is a simulation primarily specialized in training the social skills and bonds most important for us humans as a social species (SST). Whatever the evidence for or against the specific theories turn out to be, in any case the conception of dreaming as a simulated world has already proved to be a fruitful theoretical approach to understanding the nature of dreaming and consciousness.

Being able to put oneself in someone else's shoes is widely considered as one of the central element of a healthy organized society. We need this basic skill to cooperate with one another and build complex societies, create associations or even families and personal relationships with other human beings. Not being able to empathize with others, or being less proficient at it, hinders a person's ability to find his or her place
in society and, more generally, to simply enjoy social interactions in a real or fictional context. In this paper, I would like to focus on fictional enjoyment in films or television
programs, and how empathic abilities are crucial in the process of fictional involvement which is itself linked to enjoyment. I would like to do so through a neurological point
of view by introducing firstly the findings on the mirror neuron system and by secondly linking them to the theories afiliated with the human empathic experience, and the
brain structures which show activity during said experience. I will later on turn to fictional involvement and review some of the literature associated with the personality disorder known as alexithymia, where patients display a sub-normal ability to describe and identify their own emotions, and how this trait can affect character identification and film enjoyment.

A strategy for adaptive control and energetic optimization of aerobic fermentors was implemented, with both air flow and agitation speed as manipulated variables. This strategy is separable in its components: control, optimization, estimation. We optimized parameter’s estimation (from the usual KLa correlation) using sinusoidal excitation of air flow and agitation speed. We have implemented parameter’s estimation trough recursive least squares algorithm with forgetting factor. We carried separate essays on control, optimization and estimation algorithms. We carried our essays using an original computational simulation environment, with noise and delay generating facilities for data sampling and filtering.

Our results show the convergence and robustness of the estimation algorithm used, improved with use of both forgetting factor and KLa dead-band facilities. Control algorithm used in our work compares favorably with PID using the integrated area criteria for deviation between oxygen molarity and critical molarity (set point). Optimization algorithm clearly reduces energetic consumption, respecting critical molarity. Integration of control, optimization and adaptive algorithms was implemented, but future work is needed for stability. Methods were defined and implemented for stability improvement. We have implemented data acquisition and computer manipulation of air flow and agitation speed for actual fermentors.

Among the most pressing challenges for dream science is the difficulty of establishing theoretical unification between the various theories, ideas, and findings that have been presented in the literature to answer the question of how it is possible to construct a solid scientific theory with predictive and explanatory power in dream science. We suggest that the concept of “world-simulation” serves as the core concept for a theoretically unified paradigm to describe and explain dreaming. From this general concept, more specific theories of the function of dreaming can be derived, such as the Threat Simulation Theory (TST) and the Social Simulation Theory (SST), as we argued in our target article. We agree with Dresler that these two functions may not be the only functions of dreaming, but we still have grounds to believe that they are the strongest contenders. In our reply we first clarify why the functions of sleep should be considered separately from the functions of dreaming. Second, we outline what a good scientific theory of dreaming should be like and what it should be capable of. Furthermore, we evaluate the current state of simulation theories within this context. To conclude, we propose that instead of a general multifunctional theory of sleep and dreaming, where no hypothesis is excluded, the future progress of dream science will benefit more from opposing, competing and mutually exclusive theories about the specific functions of dreaming. This, however, demands that the opposing theories and their predictions must be risky, clearly formulated, and empirically testable.

This article provides an overview of Edmund Husserl's lesser known account of high-level imaginative empathy. The author discusses Husserl's solution to what we might call the 'generalizability problem'; if empathy is conceived as a relation whereby the understanding I have of my own mind allows me to understand your mind (as some versions of simulation theory and Husserl contend), then how does empathy account for potential differences between us? The author also discusses some features that make empathy more generalizable than might be initially thought, as well as its limits. A second major aim is to use this exegesis of Husserl to show a variety of overlaps between his theory and high-level simulation theory. The author also shows how Husserl's phenomenological theory provides a compelling response to critiques of high-level simulation from authors that utilize a hybrid cognitive science/phenom-enological approach (i.e. Gallagher and Zahavi).

Abstract: Four distinct models of the functional contribution of mirror neurons to social cognition can be distinguished: direct matching, inverse modeling, response-modeling and predictive coding. Each entails a different way in which an agent’s own capacities for action and affective experience contribute to understanding and/or predicting others’ actions and affective experience. In this paper, the four models and their theoretical frameworks are elucidated, empirical data and theoretical arguments bearing upon each are reviewed, and falsifiable predictions that could help to distinguish empirically among the models are proposed.

In this article, I show that Husserl's account of empathy supports embodied simulation theory. Both Husserl and embodied simulation accounts of intersubjectivity face the difficulty of accounting for the relations of similarity and difference between self and other, but there is ample neurological data available to the simulationist to establish the relations of similarity and difference, and Husserlian concepts provide a useful interpretive framework for this data. I then respond to the criticism that the theory of embodied simulation involves imitation and is therefore indirect and nonperceptual. Yet, some extra process must distinguish perceptual intersubjectivity from nonsocial perception, and the most direct additional process possible is the interbodily resonances of the kinaesthetic system endorsed by both simulationists and Husserl. Husserl gives an account of kinaesthetic sensations amounting to a phenomenological description of embodied simulation. This article exemplifies phenomenological correlationism whereby cognitive science and phenomenology serve to enlighten one another. Keywords direct social perception, embodied simulation, kinaesthesis, mirror neurons, phenomenology and cognitive science an exact web, every line of direction miraculously the same, but the one worsted, the other silk.-Coleridge, The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Vol. 2 [AQ: 1] Phenomenology is the first-person study of the structures of conscious experience, whilst contemporary psychology is the third-person, empirical study of the mind. There is a long history of interaction between the two ranging from hostility to cooperation. The relation between cognitive science and phenomenology has been in question since the early 1980s (Dreyfus & Hall, 1982). More recently, spearheaded by works such as The

"It is often claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons supports simulation theory (ST). There has been much controversy about this, however, as there are various competing models of the functional contribution of mirror systems, only some of which characterize mirroring as simulation in the sense required by ST. But a brief review of these models reveals that they all include simulation in some sense. In this paper, I propose that the broader conception of simulation articulated by neo-
empiricist theories of concepts can subsume the more specific conceptions of simu- lation presented by ST and by these other models, thereby offering a framework in which each of these models may play a role. According to neo-empiricism, conceptual thought in general involves simulation in the sense that it is grounded in sensory, motor, and other embodied systems (Barsalou, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 577–609, 1999, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological Scien- ces, 364, 1281–1289, 2009; Barsalou et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(2), 84–
91, 2003; Prinz 2002, Mind & Language, 25(5), 612–621, 2010; Glenberg and Robertson, Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 379–401, 2000). Crucially, the term “simulation” here refers not to simulations of a target agent’s experience in the sense endorsed by simulation theory but to the activation of sensory, motor, affective, and introspective representations. This difference does not entail that neo-empiricism must be in competition with ST—indeed, I will propose that ST can be embedded as a special case within neo-empiricism."

Theory theory and simulation theory share the assumption that mental states are unobservable, such that mental state attribution requires an extra psychological step beyond perception. Phenomenologists deny this, contending that we can directly perceive people's mental states. Here I evaluate objections to theory theory and simulation theory as accounts of everyday social perception offered by Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher. I agree that their phenomenological claims have bite at the personal level, distinguishing direct social perception from conscious theorizing and simulation. Their appeals to phenomenology and other arguments do not, however, rule out theory theory or simulation theory as accounts of the sub-personal processes underlying social perception. While I here remain uncommitted about the plausibility of sub-personal theorizing and simulation, I argue that phenomenologists must do more in order to reject these accounts.

Airports, influenced by postindustrial social change, carry the mark of global culture of consumption-based characteristics instead of the local culture their home countries or cities. Correspondingly, these places are hyper real as a part of simulakr (simulated reality) universe in a chain of signs that has no relation with reality. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the developmental process of airport terminals as hyper real places and focus on the existence problem of local and global cultural characteristics at airports. With this in mind, the study analyzed the
web pages of two airports (Hong Kong International Airport and Singapore Changi Airport) that are ranked as the first two best performing airports in the world, based on the outputs of SKYTRAX research. The study employed semiotic approach in analyzing visual materials. Study results indicate that as a part of Asian culture, both airports have the consumption-based reflections of global culture and local culture as a part of hyper real universe and simulakr in their positioning strategies.

In recent years, some simulation theorists have claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the position that mind reading is, at some basic level, simulation. The purpose of this essay is to question that claim. I begin by providing brief context for the current mind reading debate and then developing an influential simulationist account of mind reading. I then draw on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to develop an alternative, phenomenological account. In conclusion, I offer multiple objections against simulation theory and argue that the empirical evidence mirror neurons offer us does not necessarily support the view that empathy is simulation.

Burns, T. “Empathy, Simulation, and Neuroscience: A Phenomenological Case Against Simulation Theory.” Phenomenology and Mind 12 (2017): 208-216.

In this paper, I will focus on a theory about language comprehension, which has recently emerged in the research framework of Embodied Cognition. According to this theory, understanding a linguistic expression involves the unconscious recreation of previous experiences, using brain structures dedicated to perception and action. Therefore, understanding an utterance entails performing mental simulation of its content. We can call this the “simulation-theory of language comprehension”. One of the issues that emerges from the simulation-theory is the following: are concepts composed exclusively of sensory-motor representations, or do they instead contain amodal and propositional representations? Focusing on the specific case of negation and negative sentences, I will try to make some relevant observations in favour of a “dual” approach.

Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have recently argued against a simulationist interpretation of neural resonance. Recognizing intentions and emo- tions in the facial expressions and gestures of others may be subserved by e.g. mirror neuron activity, but this does not mean that we first experience an intention or emotion and then project it onto the other. Mirror neurons subserve social cognition, according to Gallagher and Zahavi, by being integral parts of processes of enactive social perception. I argue that the notion of enactive social perception does not yet explain why social perception is subserved by mirroring. I also argue that this problem cannot be avoided by means of an appeal to multiple realization. Instead, I propose a holistic model of neural resonance-based social cognition that does give an explanatory role to mirroring by allowing for a partial experiential overlap between experiencing and recognizing emotions and intentions. This account avoids the simulationist step-wise conception of social cognition and recognizes the qualitative difference between first- and third-person emotion and intention attribution. It does capture too much of the simulationist intuitions, however, to warrant the label ‘social perception’.

When a computer-animated human character looks eerily realistic, viewers report a loss of empathy; they have difficulty taking the character's perspective. To explain this perspective-taking impairment, known as the uncanny valley, a novel theory is proposed: The more human or less eerie a character looks, the more it interferes with level 1 visual perspective taking when the character's perspective differs from that of the human observer (e.g., because the character competitively activates shared circuits in the observer's brain). The proposed theory is evaluated in three experiments involving a dot-counting task in which participants either assumed or ignored the perspective of characters varying in their human photorealism and eeriness. Although response times and error rates were lower when the number of dots faced by the observer and character were the same (congruent condition) than when they were different (incongruent condition), no consistent pattern emerged between the human photorealism or eeriness of the characters and participants' response times and error rates. Thus, the proposed theory is unsupported for level 1 visual perspective taking. As the effects of the uncanny valley on empathy have not previously been investigated systematically, these results provide evidence to eliminate one possible explanation.

I introduce the implantation argument, a new argument for the existence of God. Spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind, composing an external physical reality, cannot be composed of either atomlessness (infinite divisibility, atomless gunk), or of Democritean atoms (extended simples), and therefore the inner experience of an external reality containing spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind does not represent the external reality (inner mind does not represent external, mind-independent, reality), the mind is a mere cinematic-like mindscreen (a mindscreen simulation), implanted into the mind by a creator-God. It will be shown that only a creator-God can be the implanting creator of the mindscreen simulation (the creator of reality), and other simulation theories, such as Bostrom’s famous account, that do not involve a creator-God as the mindscreen simulation creator, involve a reification fallacy.

Die Geste der Berührung begleitet eine gewisse Vorstellung von Relationalität – denn wer/was berührt wen/was? Inwiefern konstituieren sich Beziehungen erst durch haptischen Austausch und was fühlen wir dabei? Der Essay widmet sich der fotografischen Serie "Hands (Für mich)" (2014-2016) der Künstlerin Josephine Pryde und fokussiert diejenigen Fotografien, welche die spezifische Verbindung zwischen Fingerspitzen und berührungssensiblen Technologien zeigen. Die Berührung wird darin als Mittlerin des Kontakts verstanden – sie lässt Dichotomien zwischen Subjekt und Objekt, zwischen Körperlichkeit und Virtualität, zwischen Abstoßen und Affizieren fluide werden.

Touch as a gesture is associated with a certain conception of relationality—for, who/what touches whom/what? To what extent can relationships be said to be constituted only through a haptic exchange and what do we feel when this is the case? The essay is devoted to the artist Josephine Pryde’s series of photographs "Hands (Für mich)" (2014–2016), focusing on those photographs that depict the specific connection between fingertips and touch-sensitive technologies. Touch is understood in these photographs as being a mediator of contact—thus making dichotomies between subject and object, the physical and virtual, repulsion and affection, to become fluid.

What would be an adequate theory of social understanding? In the last decade, the philosophical debate has focused on Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and Interaction Theory as the three possible candidates. In the following, we look carefully at each of these and describe its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on this critical analysis, we formulate the need for a new account of social understanding. We propose the Person Model Theory as an independent new account which has greater explanatory power compared to the existing theories.

Mit welchem Recht betrachten wir andere eigentlich als Personen im moralischen Sinne des Wortes, also als Subjekte, die zumindest für einige ihrer Handlungen verantwortlich sind – und dementsprechend moralisch beurteilt werden dürfen? Antwort: Erst die intersubjektive Erfahrung, d.h. die bewußte mentale Simulation unter dem Gesichtspunkt der metavolitionalen Struktur des Wunschsystems eines fremden Subjekts, rechtfertigt mich in der Annahme, daß es sich bei diesem Subjekt um eine Person im moralischen Sinne handelt.

Abstract: David Hume endorses three statements that are difficult to reconcile: (1) sympathy with those in distress is sufficient to produce compassion toward their plight, (2) adopting the moral point of view often requires us to sympathize with the pain and suffering of distant strangers, but (3) our care and concern is limited to those in our close circle. Hume manages to resolve this tension, however, by distinguishing two types of sympathy. We feel compassion toward those we perceive to be in distress because associative sympathy leads us to mirror their emotions, but our ability to enter into the afflictions of distant strangers involves cognitive sympathy and merely requires us to reflect on how we would feel in their shoes. This hybrid theory of sympathy receives a good deal of support from recent work on affective mirroring and cognitive pretense. Hume’s account should appeal to contemporary researchers, therefore, who are interested in the nature of moral imagination.