Theory of Mind in Nonhuman Primates

Social life demands complex strategies for coordinating and competing with others. In humans, these strategies are supported by rich cognitive mechanisms, such as theory of mind. Theory of mind (i.e., mental state attribution, mentalizing, or mindreading) is the ability to track the unobservable mental states, like desires and beliefs, that guide others’ actions. Deeply social animals, like most nonhuman primates, would surely benefit from the adept capacity to interpret and predict others’ behavior that theory of mind affords. Yet, after forty years of investigation, the extent to which nonhuman primates represent the minds of others remains a topic of contentious debate. In the present chapter, we review evidence consistent with the possibility that monkeys and apes are capable of inferring others’ goals, perceptions, and beliefs. We then evaluate the quality of that evidence and point to the most prominent alternative explanations to be addressed by future research. Finally, we take a more broadly phylogenetic perspective, to identify evolutionary modifications to social cognition that have emerged throughout primate evolutionary history and to consider the selective pressures that may have driven those modifications. Taken together, this approach sheds light on the complex mechanisms that define the social minds of humans and other primates.

Reading Minds

The need to understand human social life is basic to human nature and fuels a lifelong quest that began in early childhood. Key is trying to fathom people’s inner mental states—their hopes, plans, wants, thoughts, and emotions. Scientists call this developing a “theory of mind,” and Reading Minds tells the story of our journey to that understanding. Each of us step by step creates a wide-ranging theory of mind used to understand how people work. Failure to learn these steps cripples a child, and ultimately an adult, in areas as diverse as interacting socially, creating a coherent life story, enjoying drama and movies, and living on one’s own. An understanding of these steps allows us to see our shared humanity, to understand our children and our childhood selves, to teach and to learn from others, and to better navigate and make sense of our social world. Theory of mind is basic to why some become religious believers and others atheists, some become novelists and all of us love stories, why some love scary movies and some hate them. Reading Minds shows how theory of mind develops as children and how that defines us as individuals and highlights us as human. Written by a scientist—himself a parent and a grandparent—who pioneered much of the research in this field, Reading Minds fuses insider science with everyday life to cement a whole new view of ourselves, our children, and the mysteries of our social minds.

The “Hyper-Presence” of Cultural Heritage in Shaping Collective Memory

Virtual reality (VR) uses sensorial mimetics to construct collective memory in virtual space. The regeneration of high-definition cultural heritage symbols transforms memory into an immediate experience that is constantly being renewed, strengthens the relationship between cultural heritage and contemporary society, and continually affects the persistent renewal of cultural traditions. Hyper-presence is a networked state of cognitive psychology that lies in links, interactions, and exchanges; it is the result of networked social minds and distributed cognition. In the contemporary moment, cultural heritage takes on three types of progressively developed presence: simulated restoration presence, informationally reproduced presence, and symbolically regenerated presence. Symbolic regeneration belongs to the realm of hyper-presence. Building databases with data collected on cultural heritage is the foundation of building a cognitive agent. As a platform, VR becomes an efficient mode of information dissemination, forming an independent presence for cultural heritage through the reproduction of media and information. In a network society, informatized cultural heritage becomes a source for the production of new cultural symbols, and presence is created through the continuous regeneration and dissemination of symbols. Symbols and regenerated symbols combine to constitute the hyper-presence of informatized cultural heritage; people's understanding of cultural heritage therefore exists in an ever-changing state. Intelligences with presence on the network form a complete system, and VR creates comprehensive cognition for the system through high-definition virtuality. Formed in the coordination between intelligences, collective memory creates its hyper-presence today.