How is human social intelligence engaged in the course of ordinary conversation? Standard
models of conversation hold that language production and comprehension are guided by …

This goal of this thesis in the philosophy of nature is to move us closer towards a true
biological science of consciousness in which the evolutionary origin, function, and …

Mature social evaluations privilege agents' intentions over the outcomes of their actions, but
young children often privilege outcomes over intentions in verbal tasks probing their social …

How do people learn about things that they have never perceived or inferred–like
molecules, miracles or Marie‐Antoinette? For many thinkers, trust is the answer. Humans …

It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than
knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that …

Efficient communication requires the interplay of linguistic, cognitive and social skills,
including the ability to make contextual inferences and to understand others' intentions and …

Human social life requires an understanding of the mental states of one's social partners.
Two people who look at the same objects often experience them differently, as a twinkling …

In this article, we postulate that belief understanding unfolds in two steps over ontogenetic
time. We propose that belief understanding begins in interactive scenarios in which infants …

No present theory explains the inferences people draw about the real world when reasoning
about “bouletic” relations, that is, predicates that express desires, such as want in “Lee …

This paper investigates the cognitive mechanisms supporting humans' interpretation of
requests for information. Learners can only search for a piece of information if they know that …