Three Approaches To Mindreading And Their Combination

In this article, I first describe the phenomenon of mindreading, then review several approaches to the studies of this topic in different fields. I date back to its epistemic origin in philosophy, and introduce three approaches to it, give each of them a detailed description and analyse the problems which they are facing with.Each approach gives an explanation to mindreading from a different angle. The phenomenon of mindreading is so complicated and full of complexity, which means that it couldn't been explained by just one approach. These approaches combine with each other into improvement.For the theory-theory, it is hard to explain the empathy which is such a common competence of human understanding. As to the simulation theory, the problem is that it can't explain away the omnipresent knowledge when a person read someone else's mind. As we all know, to do a good mindreading in everyday life, one must have the good ability to simulate the fine changes of the others'expressions or behaviors on the one hand, and have some theories acquired from many valuable experiences when interacting with many different people on the other hand. If the two approaches could combine to each other very well, one would do mindreading much better. The modularity theory focuses on the inborn mechanism of mindreading. In this way, the three approaches combine together.Then I review several external viewpoints to the main topic, and grant them as the platform and soil for those three ones to develop and combine.At the end of this article, I support the naturalist stand for studying the topic of mindreading. Maybe we could approach this topic from different angles to get a more and more clear and complete picture on it.