Shannon Spaulding

author of "How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition"

January 11, 2019

Shannon Spaulding is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. Her general philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology and the philosophy of science.

The principal goal of her research is to construct a philosophically and empirically plausible account of social cognition. She also has research interests in imagination, pretense and action theory. She recently published a book on social cognition called “How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition.”

Mindreading is the ability to understand a person’s behavior in terms of the psychological states that caused that behavior. Spaulding argues that mindreading is central to our ability to understand and interact with others but that most contemporary views of mindreading vastly underrepresent the diversity and complexity of mindreading.

She articulates a new theory of mindreading that takes into account cutting edge philosophical and empirical research on in-group/out-group dynamics, social biases, and how our goals and the situational context influence how we interpret others’ behavior.

Spaulding's resulting theory of mindreading provides a more accurate, comprehensive, and perhaps pessimistic view of our abilities to understand others, with important epistemological and ethical implications. Deciding who is trustworthy, knowledgeable, and competent are epistemically and ethically fraught judgments: her new theory of mindreading sheds light on how these judgments are made and the conditions under which they are unreliable.  

URL: https://library-dep.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2019-honorees/shannon-spaulding

Last Updated: 19 January 2021