Mirror Neurons And The Problem Of Other Minds

We often guess and infer others' mental state in daily life.The problem that how do we achieve it is the problem of other minds which has been brought into focus for a long time and has become one of the most important issues in contemporary philosophy of mind.There are mainly two kinds of responses about this problem:Theory Theory and Simulation Theory.Theory Theory believes that we attribute other's mental state according to the theory of folk psychology.Under the explanation of Theory Theory,folk psychology is a theoretical system in which knowledge is linked with each other due to the casual relationship.Thus,we use this theory which has casual laws to make theoretical inference to attribute other minds.While the proponents of Simulation Theory believe that we know other's mental state according to our own mechanism to simulate other people.Firstly,attributer needs to imagine himself in the same shoes with the target;secondly,he should input the target's state into his mechanism and output the result;at last,he could attribute the outputs of mental state to the target to finish the whole process of attribution.However,Theory Theory and Simulation Theory are just conjectures of the problem of other minds and didn't achieve realistic basis until people had found mirror neurons in cognitive science in recent years.Mirror neuron is one kind of neuron distributed on the cerebral cortex which could be activated when we do one action and when we watch others do the same action.After analyzing the characteristic of mirror neurons,the supporters of Simulation Theory believe that the finding of mirror neuron actually support the Simulation theory because during our observation of others the activation of mirror neuron is actually a kind of simulation.While the proponents of Theory Theory try to explain the attribution of other minds by some theory knowledge,thus they can't account for the phenomenon of the accordance of mirror neurons between attributer and target.As a result,the supporters of Simulation Theory believe their viewpoint is the most reasonable response of the problem of other minds.But after careful scrutiny,we found that the activation of mirror neuron was not a kind of simulation.At first,the activity of mirror neuron is not a necessary condition of simulation,because we can't achieve a simulation only depend on the analogy of mirror neurons between the attributer and the target.Secondly,mirror neurons do not meet the requirement of "off-line" of Simulation Theory.Thirdly,the activation of mirror neurons of attributer is not the alternative of the mental state of the target.At last,it is not reasonable to assert that the mental states of attributer and target are same only depend on the accordance of mirror neurons.So Simulation Theory cannot rely on the discovery of mirror neurons to claim that it is the best explanation of the problem of other minds.Since neither Theory Theory nor Simulation Theory could explain the activities of mirror neurons reasonably,we need to look for a new solution to answer the problem of other minds.This paper actually endorses a new view,Model Theory Theory.The Model Theory Theory is stemmed from partly inheriting the traditional Theory Theory and Simulation Theory.Model Theory Theory divides the process of mindreading into two parts:low-level mindreading and high-level mindreading.The low-level mindreading grasp other minds initially with the help of low-level mechanisms,such as mirror neurons.This process turn out to be simple,primitive and under the consciousness.The high-level mindreading concludes two steps:acquiring the complex background knowledge and inputting all knowledge mentioned above into the high-level mechanisms to output the final attribution.The high-level mechanism we depend on during the second process of high-level mindreading is the folk psychology which exists as a model.By using the model of folk psychology,we could match all the states of the target with the similar model to predict the mental state of target successfullyIn addition,the explanation of Model Theory Theory can also give a reasonable explanation to the activity of mirror neurons.Because under the interpretation of Model Theory Theory,mirror neurons play a role in the attribution of other minds,while it's not the only mechanism involved in the process of mind reading.Thus,this explanation is also consistent with the latest research in cognitive science.The conclusion of this paper is that neither Theory Theory nor Simulation Theory could solve the problem of other minds because they couldn't satisfy the characteristics of the activity of mirror neurons.Only Model Theory Theory could give a reasonable explanation with the mirror neurons,so Model Theory Theory is the best solution to the problem of other minds at present.