Folk Psychology Re-Assessed

FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, THEORY OF MIND AND SIMULATION The tasks we face in our day to day social lives are quite heterogeneous but many of them make a common demand upon us. They require us to understand and interact with other people and, in most social encounters, we exhibit a special sensitivity to our fellow human beings that is quite different from the way we respond to inanimate objects and most other species of organism. Social life is dependent, to a considerable degree, on our ability to understand what is distinctive about human behaviour and to successfully apply that understanding in all manner of situations.