developmental account of our mind-reading abilities provided by Gold-
man (1993) and some other simulationists. The claim is that we have
introspective access to some of our own mental states, which we can then
use to generate simulations of the mental activity of other people, hence
arriving at potentially useful predictions or explanations of their behav-
iour.
The main diYculty for this proposal (quite apart from the implausibility
of simulationist accounts of our mind-reading ability, that is – see chapter
4 above) is to understand how the initial development of ‘inner sense’, and
its use in simulation, could ever have got going, in the absence of some
mentalconcepts, and so in the absence of a capacity for HOTs. There is a
stark contrast here with outer sense, where it is easy to see how simple
forms of sensory discrimination could begin to develop in the absence of
conceptualisation and thought. An organism with a light-sensitive patch of
skin, for example (the veryWrst stages in the evolution of the eye), might
become wired up, or might learn, to move towards, or away from, sources
of light; and one can imagine circumstances in which this might have
conferred some beneWt on the organisms in question. But the initial stages
in the development of inner sense would, on the present hypothesis, have
required a capacity to simulate the mental life of another being. And
simulation seems to require at least some degree of conceptualisation of its
inputs and outputs.
Suppose, in the simplest case, that I am to simulate someone else’s
experiences as they look at the world from their particular point of view. It
is hard to see what could even get me started on such a process, except a
desireto know what that personsees. And this of course requires me to
possess a concept ofseeing. Similarly at the end of a process of simulation,
which concludes with a simulated intention to perform some actionA.Itis
hard to see how I could get from here, to the prediction that the person
being simulated will doA, unless I can conceptualise my resultasan
intention to doA, and unless I know that what people intend, they
generally do. But then all this presupposes that mental concepts (and so a
capacity for HOTs) would have had to be in placebefore(or at least
coincident with) the capacity for HOEs (inner sense) and for mental
simulation.
3.7 Actualist versus dispositionalist HOT-theoriesHaving argued for the superiority of higher-order thought (HOT) theories
over higher-order experience (HOE) theories, we come now to choice-
point (5) inWgure 9.2. Our choice is betweenactualistforms of HOT-
theory – which maintain that phenomenal consciousness requires the
262 Consciousness: theWnal frontier?