Conventional minds: An interactivist perspective on social cognition and its enculturation

We argue that the traditional theory of mind models of social cognition face in-principle problems in accounting for enculturation of social cognition, and offer an alternative model advanced within the interactivist framework. In the critical section, we argue that theory of mind accounts’ encodingist model of mental representation renders them unable to account for enculturation. We focus on the three problems: (1) the copy problem and impossibility of internalization; (2) foundationalism and the impossibility of acquisition of culturally specific content; and (3) the frame problems and the inadequacy of mental-state attribution as a way of coordinating social interaction among (encultured) individuals. The positive section begins with a brief sketch of the theoretical basics of interactivism, followed by a more focused presentation of the interactivist model of social cognition, and concludes with a discussion of a number of issues most widely debated in the social cognition literature.