Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

The modern origins of simulation theory rest in two philosophical papers from
the 1980s, one by Gordon (1986) and one by Heal (1986). Gordon (1986) noted that
the starting point for explaining how we predict the behaviour of others should be
investigating our ability to predict our own actions. We can do so with exceedingly
high accuracy because “our declarations of immediate intention are causally tied to
some actual precursor of behavior: perhaps tapping into the brain’s updated behavioral
‘plans’ or into ‘executive commands’ that are about to guide the relevant motor
sequences” (p. 159).
For Gordon (1986), our ability to accurately predict our own behaviour was a
kind of practical reasoning. He proceeded to argue that such reasoning could also
be used in attempts to predict others. We could predict others, or predict our own
future behaviour in hypothetical situations, by simulating practical reasoning.
To simulate the appropriate practical reasoning I can engage in a kind of pretendplay:
pretend that the indicated conditions actually obtain, with all other conditions
remaining (so far as is logically possible and physically probable) as they presently
stand; then continuing the make-believe try to ’make up my mind’ what to do
given these (modified) conditions. (Gordon, 1986, p. 160)
A key element of such “pretend play” is that behavioural output is taken offline.
Gordon’s proposal causes simulation theory to depart from the other two theories
of mind reading by reducing its reliance on ascribed mental contents. For
Gordon (1986, p. 162), when someone simulates practical reasoning to make predictions
about someone else, “they are ‘putting themselves in the other’s shoes’ in one
sense of that expression: that is, they project themselves into the other’s situation,
but without any attempt to project themselves into, as we say, the other’s ‘mind.’”
Heal (1986) proposed a similar approach, which she called replication.
A number of different variations of simulation theory have emerged (Davies
& Stone, 1995a, 1995b), making a definitive statement of its fundamental characteristics
problematic (Heal, 1996). Some versions of simulation theory remain very
classical in nature. For instance, simulation could proceed by setting the values of
a number of variables to define a situation of interest. These values could then be
provided to a classical reasoning system, which would use these represented values
to make plausible predictions.
Suppose I am interested in predicting someone’s action. . . . I place myself in what
I take to be his initial state by imagining the world as it would appear from his
point of view and I then deliberate, reason and reflect to see what decision emerges.
(Heal, 1996, p. 137)
Some critics of simulation theory argue that it is just as Cartesian as other mind
reading theories (Gallagher, 2005). For instance, Heal’s (1986) notion of replication
exploits shared mental abilities. For her, mind reading requires only the assumption
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