Intentional Relations: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article by: John Barresi & Chris Moore on: INTENTIONAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to: bbs(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ INTENTIONAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING John Barresi and Chris Moore Department of Psychology Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada. jbarresi(a)ac.dal.ca moorec(a)ac.dal.ca ABSTRACT Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities cab be called "intentional relations." We present a four-level framework for social understanding which organizes the ways in which social organisms represent their own intentional relations those of other agents. The information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents' intentional relations (or third person information). Through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals are at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Among nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations to mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals may result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.barresi). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.barresi When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit These files can also be retrieved using gopher, archie, veronica, etc. URL: ftp//ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.barresi http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/1ftp%3aprinceton.edu%40/pub/harnad/BBS ---------- Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers: ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com and bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet that will do the transfer for you. To one or the other of them, send the following one line message: help for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or bitftp will then execute for you). JANET users without ftp can instead utilise the file transfer facilities at sites uk.ac.ft-relay or uk.ac.nsf.sun. Full details are available on request. -------------------------------------------------------------