"Mind Reading": How and for what?

Abstract

This paper tries to explain: How we tend to automatically ascribe mental representations to social actors on the basis of scripts, roles, categories and prejudices, norms, and several heuristics; or by default; how scripts and roles should be filled in with the actors' mental attitudes; how social interaction systematically requires assumptions about the other's mind; how those mental attitudes can be the non-intended or non-understood function of our behavior/role. What really matters is that we assume that those beliefs and goals are there, and we act 'as if' it were so. A further claim of this work is that this mechanism of mind ascription while reading another's behavior or its traces (stigmergy), is the basis for a fundamental form of communication: Behavioral Implicit Communication (or BIC), which works without words or special protocols. An efficient coordination-in humans but also in artificial agents-exploits (or should exploit) not only the mere 'observation' of such agents, but more precisely this form of silent communication (which should not be confused with non-verbal or expressive communication). The message-sending paradigm dominating CSCW, MAS, HCI, and H-Robot-I, is here criticized; necessity and advantages of BIC for coordination and cooperation are presented.