Date on Senior Honors Thesis

12-2025

Document Type

Senior Honors Thesis

Committee Chair

Guy Dove

Committee Member

Andreas Elpidorou

Committee Member

Joseph Turner

Author's Keywords

Mindreading; Embodied Cognition; Mirror Neurons; Theory of Mind; Social Cognition; Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

This paper examines the question: how do we figure out what other people are thinking and why they act as they do, or put differently, how is it that we can read minds in daily life? For decades, the dominant view held that we explain and predict other people’s behavior by attributing to them mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, represented symbolically in the brain. The embodied simulation model challenges this view, proposing that understanding others primarily relies on mirror neurons that activate both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing it. This thesis reconstructs and critically evaluates that proposal, arguing that the mirroring approach promises more than the evidence supports. Instead, research in cognitive neuroscience points to a distributed Theory of Mind network as the primary basis for mindreading. The conclusion reached is that while embodiment may play a causal and restricting role, its influence is limited and local. While some forms of social cognition may depend heavily on bodily and sensorimotor processes, mindreading itself draws more on abstract and flexible representational mechanisms.

Lay Summary

This paper examines the question: how do we figure out what other people are thinking and why they act as they do, or put differently, how is it that we can read minds in daily life? For decades, the dominant view held that we explain and predict other people’s behavior by attributing to them mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, represented symbolically in the brain. The embodied simulation model challenges this view, proposing that understanding others primarily relies on mirror neurons that activate both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing it. This thesis reconstructs and critically evaluates that proposal, arguing that the mirroring approach promises more than the evidence supports. Instead, research in cognitive neuroscience points to a distributed Theory of Mind network as the primary basis for mindreading. The conclusion reached is that while embodiment may play a causal and restricting role, its influence is limited and local. While some forms of social cognition may depend heavily on bodily and sensorimotor processes, mindreading itself draws more on abstract and flexible representational mechanisms.

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