Site: Stephen Butterfill's Personal Academic Website Author: Stephen Butterfill Generated: 2026-02-20T14:26:07.370Z Items: 152 --- Title: How to Construct a Minimal Theory of Mind Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/cuny_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-10-12 Place: CUNY Graduate Center, New York Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Talking About and Seeing Blue Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/dubrovnik_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-04-10 Event: Colour and Sensory Knowledge, IUC Philosophy of Science Conference Place: Dubrovnik Summary: Categorical perception is a pervasive and useful feature of human experience much neglected by philosophers despite illuminating psychological research on this topic. --- Title: Intention and Motor Representation in Action Explanation Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/glasgow_2012/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-04-15 Place: School of Psychology, University of Glasgow Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Mindreading and Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/heidelberg_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-05-18 Event: Das Gehirn - ein Beziehungsorgan Place: University of Heidelberg Summary: In this talk I present some research on minimal theory of mind, on joint action and on relations between the two. --- Title: How to Construct Cooperative Agents Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/how_to_construct_cooperative_agents/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-04-07 Event: Cooperation: Why, How and With Whom? Place: University of Aarhus Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Intention and Motor Representation in Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/intention_and_motor_representation_cambridge/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-03-12 Event: Pre-Reflective and Reflective Processing in Social Interaction Place: University of Cambridge Summary: On the assumption that social motor representation plays a role in explaining how effective joint action is possible, is there also a role for motor representation in explaining what joint action is? --- Title: Intention and Motor Representation in Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/intention_and_motor_representation_paris/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-03-09 Place: Institut Jean-Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Interacting Mindreaders Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/interacting_mindreaders/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-09-04 Place: Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action and the Emergence of Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/joint_action_and_the_emergence_of_mindreading/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-05-01 Event: Origins of Social Cognition Lecture Series Place: University of Antwerp Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Intention and Motor Representation in Explaining Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/lyon_2012/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-03-23 Event: Reconceptions of Action Place: Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action: Conceptual Tools for Scientific Research Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/milan_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-02-15 Place: Department of Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Milano Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Minimal Theory of Mind: How to Measure Mental States Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/minimal_theory_of_mind_cambridge/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-04-29 Place: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Motor Representation and Shared Intention Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/motor_representation_shared_intention/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-08-27 Event: Collective Intentionality VII Place: University of Manchester Summary: On the assumption that motor representation plays a role in explaining how effective joint action is possible, do we also need motor representation to explain what joint action is? --- Title: Joint Action and Knowing Others' Minds Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/nijmegen_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-01-28 Event: Mindreading Place: Radbound University Nijmegen Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action and the Emergence of Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/paris_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-11-03 Event: Developmental Aspects of Joint Intentions and Actions Place: Institut Jean-Nicod, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris Summary:

How can we explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated forms of theory of mind cognition? One conjecture is that their emergence somehow involves joint action (Knoblich & Sebanz, 2006; Hughes & Leekam, 2004; Moll & Tomasello, 2007). This raises two questions. --- Title: The Problem of Other Minds Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/science_festival_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-09-11 Event: The British Science Festival Place: Bradford Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Shared Agency and Motor Representation Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/shared_agency_and_motor_representation/ Year: 2012 Date: 2012-11-20 Place: Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest Summary: Shared agency is paradigmatically involved when two or more people paint a house together, tidy the toys away together, or lift a two-handled basket together. To characterise shared agency, some philosophers have appealed to a special kind of intention or structure of intention, knowledge or commitment often called shared intention'. --- Title: Shared Agency with Parallel Planning Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/shared_agency_with_parallel_planning/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-04-01 Event: Collective Intentionality Place: Center for interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Minimal Theory of Mind and Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/stirling_2012/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-11-17 Place: University of Stirling Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Which Joint Actions Ground Social Cognition Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2012/tuebingen_2011/ Year: 2011 Date: 2011-06-05 Event: Rational Agency Place: Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen Summary:

Several researchers have conjectured that joint action partially explains how sophisticated forms of cognition emerge in development or evolution (for example, Knoblich & Sebanz 2006; Moll & Tomasello 2007). If any such conjecture is correct, what could joint action be? --- Title: Collective Agency and Knowledge of Others’ Minds Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/collective_agency_oxford/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-08-05 Event: Aristotelian and Contemporary Perspectives on the Mind Place: University of Oxford Summary: When friends walk together, they typically exercise collective agency. By contrast, two strangers walking side by side exercise parallel but merely individual agency. This and other contrasts invite the question, What distinguishes collective agency from parallel but merely individual agency? --- Title: Collective Intentionality and Social Intelligence Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/collective_intentionality_vienna/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-12-12 Place: University of Vienna, Austria Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Monitoring and Controlling the Mental States of Others Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Ian A. Apperly Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/metacognition_and_mindreading/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-01-24 Event: All Souls Metacognition Seminars Place: University of Oxford Summary: The success of infants and nonhuman animals on some belief reasoning tasks may be best explained by a cognitively efficient but inflexible capacity for tracking belief-like states. In humans, this capacity persists in parallel with a later-developing, more flexible but more cognitively demanding theory-of-mind abilities. --- Title: Motor Representation in Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/motor_representation_in_joint_action/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-10-28 Event: Vision, Action and Concepts Place: University of Lille, France Summary: What do recent findings about mechanisms for interpersonal coordination reveal about the nature of joint action? Joint action paradigmatically occurs when two or more people paint a house together, tidy the toys away together, or lift a two-handled basket. --- Title: Not Just Wide but Shared: Joint Action Is a Core Form of Social Intelligence Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/not_just_wide_but_shared/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-08-18 Event: Wide Cognition and Social Intelligence Place: Kazimierz Dolny, Poland Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Perceiving Anger and Sharing Smiles: The Roles of Perception and Social Interaction in Acquiring Knowledge of Others’ Mental States Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/perceiving_anger_and_sharing_smiles/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-09-12 Event: Emotion and Social Cognition Place: University of Manchester Summary: How could we come to know that another is angry about an obstacle she has encountered, or that she is happy about an outcome? Some such knowledge is uncontroversially acquired by inference. However, some philosophers have recently defended the hypothesis that knowledge of others' anger or joy might be acquired by perceiving it (e. g. --- Title: Planning for Collective Agency Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/planning_for_collective_agency_stuttgart/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-07-21 Event: Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems Place: University of Stuttgart, Germany Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Planning for Collective Agency Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/planning_for_collective_agency_tuebingen/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-07-23 Place: University of Tuebingen, Germany Summary: What does exercising collective agency require when our acting collectively is intentional? On the leading, best developed account, Michael Bratman's, intentional collective agency requires shared intention and shared intention is explained in terms of interconnected planning. --- Title: Two Systems and Two Theories of Mind Authors: Ian Apperly and Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/two_systems_two_theories/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-01-29 Event: Theory of Mind, Simulation and Meta-Cognition: Laureate's Colloquium with Josef Perner Place: Center for interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University Summary: We argue that mindreading involves not only multiple systems but also multiple models (or theories) of the mind. The argument turns on three questions. First, how could mindreading be both flexible and efficient? We suggest that, in a sense it can't. --- Title: Varieties of Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2013/varieties_of_joint_action/ Year: 2013 Date: 2013-12-02 Event: Varieties of Shared Intentionality Place: Institute of Philosophy, London Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2014/joint_action_warwick/ Year: 2014 Date: 2014-02-28 Place: Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action without Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2014/joint_action_without_mindreading/ Year: 2014 Date: 2014-04-22 Place: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany Summary: Joint action is a familiar feature of everyday life. Paradigmatic joint actions include things like painting a house together, walking together and playing a piano duet. On leading accounts of joint action, engaging in joint action presupposes mindreading abilities. But are there forms of joint action engaging in which would not require mindreading? --- Title: Minimal Models of the Physical and of the Mental: Processes, Representations and Signature Limits Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2014/minimal_models_magdeburg/ Year: 2014 Date: 2014-11-07 Event: Minimal Mindreading Place: University of Magdeburg, Germany Summary: This talk introduces a series of hypotheses and claims about the systems and models involved in mindreading (or ‘theory of mind’), explains how they generate predictions by drawing a parallel with cognition of physical properties like momentum, and highlights some recent evidence indicating that some of the hypotheses may be correct. --- Title: Naturalising Joint Actions Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2014/naturalising_joint_actions/ Year: 2014 Date: 2014-12-13 Event: Naturalising Action Place: University of Tuebingen, Germany Summary: Joint action is a familiar feature of everyday life. Paradigmatic cases include moving objects together, walking together and playing piano duets. --- Title: Shared Agency Involves Changing Perspective Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2014/shared_agency_involves_changing_perspective_manchester/ Year: 2014 Date: 2014-02-19 Place: Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Acting Together & Acting as One Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/antwerp_2015/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-09-22 Event: Desire and Action Place: University of Antwerp Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Only Phenomenal Expectations Connect Core Knowledge of Objects to Thought Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/berlin_2015_core_knowledge/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-06-17 Event: The Nature and Origins of Human Cognition Place: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany Summary: Infants have core knowledge of objects, causes, numbers, actions and much else besides (Spelke, 2003; Carey, 2009). But what is core knowledge? There are challenges which apply to the leading theoretical accounts (compare Butterfill, 2007; Keren and Schul, 2009; Adolphs, 2010). --- Title: Acting Together: Motor Representation and Cooperation Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/bochum_2015/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-11-11 Event: Kolloquium des Instituts für Philosophie II Place: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Commentary on Wolfgang Prinz and Michael Graziano Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/bupdapest_moseo/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-05-18 Event: Modelling Self on Other Place: Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Acting Together and Acting As One Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/copenhagen_2015/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-05-21 Event: Empathy, Group Membership and We-Intentionality Place: Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: How Do Mindreaders Model Minds? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/mindreading_espp/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-07-14 Event: Mindreading, an invited symposium at the European Soceity for Philosophy and Psychology (ESPP) Place: University of Tartu, Estonia Summary: "What it is to be a mindreader? Mindreading involves identifying mental states; this requires having some model of the mental, much as identifying physical states requires having some model of the physical. --- Title: Systems, Models and Signature Limits Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/mindreading_srcd/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-03-20 Event: Signature limits in implicit theory of mind: Evidence for two systems of mindreading? Workshop at the Society for Research in Child Development Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Summary: "Two puzzles about mindreading, and in particular the nature of belief ascription, require resolution. Can infants ascribe false beliefs in their first or second year of life? Some measures indicate that they can, others that they cannot. Is belief ascription automatic? Some findings suggest that it is, others that it is not. --- Title: Introduction to the Workshop on Practical Reasoning and Motor Representation Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Corrado Sinigaglia Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/practical_reasoning_motor_representation_intro/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-05-31 Event: Practical Reasoning and Motor Representation Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Purposive Action from Motor Representation to Intention Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2015/purposive_action_and_intention/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-11-12 Event: How much mind do we need for responsibility? Place: Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University, Germany Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: How to Distinguish Two (Or More) Systems for Social Cognition Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2016/berlin_2016_2systems/ Year: 2016 Date: 2016-03-30 Event: The Nature and Origins of Human Cognition Place: Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany Summary: Suppose you observe two exercises of competence in social cognition and want to know whether the systems underpinning the exercises are the same or distinct. How can you tell? --- Title: Core Knowledge, Phenomenal Expectations and Thought Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2016/milan_2016_core_knowledge/ Year: 2016 Date: 2016-02-18 Event: New Directions in Philosophical Psychlogy Place: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy Summary: How is core knowledge linked to full-blown thought and intentional action? Infants in the first months of life have core knowledge of objects, causes, numbers, actions and much else besides (Spelke, 2003; Carey, 2009). But what is core knowledge? --- Title: Perceiving Mental States Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2016/perceiving_mental_states_tuebingen/ Year: 2015 Date: 2015-12-16 Place: University of Tuebingen, Germany Summary: How could we come to know that another is angry about an insult or happy about an outcome? Some philosophers have defended the hypothesis that knowledge of others' anger or joy is sometimes perceptual (e. g. Smith, 2010, 2015; McNeill, 2012a,b). In this talk I consider two challenges to this hypothesis. --- Title: Motor Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Jason Low Type: Talk URL: /talks/2022/bochum_2022_motor_mindreading/ Year: 2022 Date: 2022-06-07 Place: Ruhr University, Bochum Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Folk Psychologies and Social Cognition Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Bart Geurts Type: Talk URL: /talks/2022/evoprag_2022/ Year: 2022 Date: 2022-05-27 Place: Evolutionary Pragmatics Forum Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Do Infants Represent Objects? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2022/potsdam_2022/ Year: 2022 Date: 2022-05-23 Place: Potsdam, Germany Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: The Myth of Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2022/warwick_2022/ Year: 2022 Date: 2022-02-11 Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Who Is Morally Responsible for Global Poverty? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2022/warwick_2022_open_day/ Year: 2022 Date: 2022-06-18 Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Inferential Isolation Is a Barrier to Understanding Cognitive Development Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2023/goettingen_2023_inferential_isolation/ Year: 2023 Date: 2023-09-11 Place: Goettingen Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Norm-like Patterns in Joint Action: A dual-process theory Authors: John Michael and Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2023/milan_2023/ Year: 2023 Date: 2023-06-06 Place: Milan Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Minimal Virtues: From Mindreading to Ethics via Joint Action (Munich) Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2023/munich_2023/ Year: 2023 Date: 2023-02-08 Place: Munich Center for Neuroscience and the Faculty of Philosophy Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Is There a Role for Metacognitive Feelings in Cognitive Development? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2023/potsdam_2023/ Year: 2023 Date: 2023-05-25 Place: PINA, Potsdam, Germany Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: How do we develop knowledge of physical objects? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2024/colyton_grammar_2024/ Year: 2024 Date: 2024-03-25 Place: Colyton Grammar School, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Getting Started Doing Philosophy Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2024/getting_started_doing_philosophy/ Year: 2024 Date: 2024-09-24 Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Kagan on Moral Knowledge Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2024/kagan_moral_knowledge/ Year: 2024 Date: 2024-09-24 Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Ethical Decoupling Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2024/warwick_2024_evolution/ Year: 2024 Date: 2024-06-27 Place: Warwick Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Joint Action at the Roots of Ethical Cognition Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Talk URL: /talks/2025/ceu_vienna_2025/ Year: 2025 Date: 2025-06-12 Place: CEU (Vienna) Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/central_themes/ Summary: --- title: "Central Themes in Philosophy" url: "https://central-themes. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. Butterfill year: 2019-20 term: Spring place: University of Warwick, UK abstract: | This is an introductory course covering six themes. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/descartes/ Summary: --- title: "Descartes" url: "https://descartes. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. Butterfill year: 2018-2019 term: Spring place: University of Warwick, UK abstract: | This is an unorthodox introduction to Descartes’ Meditations for undergraduates. --- Title: Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action/ Year: 2017-2018 Term: Spring Place: Ruhr-Universität Bochum Summary: is a familiar feature of everyday life: people move tables together, walk together, play piano duets and cooperatively rear babies. For social (and eusocial) animals, effective joint action is necessary for survival. It also arguably explains the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated cognitive capacities. --- Title: Joint Action and the Emergence of Mindreading Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/ Year: 2011-2 Term: Summer Place: Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick Summary: How can we explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of mindreading? Some conjecture that its emergence involves joint action (Knoblich & Sebanz, 2006; Moll & Tomasello, 2007). Reflection on objections to this conjecture reveals mistakes in leading philosophical accounts of both mindreading and joint action. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture01/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture02/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture02b/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture03/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture04/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/joint_action_and_the_emergence/lecture05/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Logic 1 Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/logic_1/ Year: 2015-16 Term: Spring Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: An introduction to first order logic for undergraduate students, concluding with informal proofs of soundness and completeness. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mind_and_reality/ Summary: --- title: "Mind and Reality" url: "https://mind-and-reality. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. --- Title: Mindreading and Joint Action: Philosophical Tools Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/ Year: 2011-2 Term: Autumn Place: Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest Summary: This course will introduce a variety of new and established philosophical ideas that might usefully inform experimental research on mindreading or on joint action (or both) but have so far been neglected or misunderstood by cognitive scientists. Starting from foundational questions like What is a mental state? and Which events are actions? --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture01/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture02/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture03/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture04/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture05/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture06/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture07/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture08/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/mindreading_and_joint_action/lecture09/ Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/moral-psychology/ Summary: --- title: "Moral Psychology: The Science of Good and Evil? " url: "https://moral-psychology. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. --- Title: Origins of Mind Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/origins_of_mind/ Year: 2020-21 Term: Autumn Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: How do humans first come to know about— and to knowingly manipulate—objects, causes, words, numbers, colours, actions and minds? --- Title: Origins of Mind (v2) Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Richard Moore Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/origins_of_mind_with_richard/ Year: 2021-22 Term: Autumn Place: University of Warwick, UK Summary: How do humans first come to know about— and to knowingly manipulate—objects, causes, words, numbers, colours, actions and minds? --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/philosophical_issues_behavioural_science/ Summary: --- title: "Philosophical Issues in Behavioural Science: From Individual to Collaborative Action" url: "https://philosophical-issues-in-behavioural-science. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/philosophical_psychology/ Summary: --- title: "Philosophical Psychology: A Partial Survey of Puzzling Questions about Minds in Action" url: "https://philosophical-psychology-bochum. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. Butterfill year: 2018-2019 term: Spring place: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/social_cognition/ Summary: --- title: "Social Cognition" url: "https://social-cognition. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. Butterfill year: 2017-2018 term: Spring place: University of Warwick, UK abstract: | Social cognition is an umbrella term for the processes involved in discriminating, predicting and understanding others’ thoughts, emotions and actions. --- Title: Are Two Systems Better Than One? Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Corrado Sinigaglia Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/two_systems_corrado/ Year: 2022-22 Term: Autumn Place: University of Milan, Italy Summary: Two systems theories of reasoning are well-known and widely discussed. However less attention has been paid to two systems (or dual process) theories in other domains. What are two systems theories, and in which domains are they defensible? --- Title: Untitled Authors: Unknown Type: Teaching URL: /teaching/words_and_things/ Summary: --- title: "Words and Things" url: "https://words-and-things. butterfill. com/" authors: Stephen A. Butterfill year: 2018-2019 term: Autumn place: University of Warwick, UK abstract: | What links words and thoughts to objects? This is a course on the philosophy of language and mind. --- Title: Mindreading is an Asynchronous Joint Activity: The M-a-J-a Account of Theory of Mind Performance, and Individual Differences Authors: Apperly, Ian and Devine, Rory T. and Butterfill, Stephen A. Type: Publication URL: /writing/apperly2025_mindreading/ Year: 2025 Summary: Research on mindreading has been dominated by questions about the presence, absence or nature of mindreading concepts or structures, and by paradigms designed to create the most favourable circumstances for demonstrating such abilities. This focus on competence has led to a neglect of questions about performance. --- Title: Awareness of Belief Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Publication URL: /writing/awareness_of_belief/ Year: 2001 Summary:

Abstract

Is it possible to appreciate how different people may have beliefs different from one's own (including beliefs which are inconsistent with one's own beliefs) without understanding what it is for beliefs to be true or false? In this paper I argue that it is. --- Title: Towards a Blueprint for a Social Animal Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Elisabeth Pacherie Type: Publication URL: /writing/blueprint_social_animal/ Year: 2020 Summary:

In this chapter, we attempt to answer the question, By what steps could members of a group capable of acting together with a purpose, coordinating flexibly, communicating cooperatively and deceiving competitors be constructed from creatures with minimal social skills and cognitive abilities? --- Title: Interpersonal Functioning in Borderline Personality Disorder Traits: A Social Media Perspective Authors: Jinnie Ooi, John Michael, Sakari Lemola, Stephen A. Butterfill, Cynthia S. Q. Siew & Lukasz Walasek Type: Publication URL: /writing/bpd_social_media/ Year: 2020 Summary: This is the first study to demonstrate interpersonal difficulties associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) features in the domain of social media. --- Title: Coordinating Joint Action Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Publication URL: /writing/butterfill2017_coordinating/ Year: 2017 Summary:

This is a slightly extended version of published chapter. (The pdf is the chapter version. )

Introduction

It is often necessary that agents’ actions are coordinated if they are to successfully exercise shared (or ‘collective’) agency in acting together. --- Title: What Mindreading Reveals about the Mental Lives of Machines Authors: Butterfill, Stephen A. Type: Publication URL: /writing/butterfill2024_machines/ Year: 2024 Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Three strategies for shared intention: plural, aggregate and reductive Authors: Butterfill, Stephen A. Type: Publication URL: /writing/butterfill2025_three/ Year: 2025 Summary: When deciding on a strategy for explicating shared intention, we all face two fundamental questions. First, can an intention or any other mental state have more than one subject? A positive answer to this allows the plural subject strategy: shared intention is a matter of there being one mental state with two or more subjects. --- Title: Coordinated decision-making boosts altruistic motivation—But not trust Authors: Chennells, Matthew and Woźniak, Mateusz and Butterfill, Stephen and Michael, John Type: Publication URL: /writing/chennells2022_coordinated/ Year: 2022 Summary: In the current study, we separately tested whether coordinated decision-making increases altruism and whether it increases trust. To this end, we implemented a paradigm in which participants repeatedly perform a coordinated decision-making task either with the same partner on every trial, or with a different partner on each trial. --- Title: Children’s Selective Learning from Others Authors: Erika Nurmsoo, Elizabeth Robinson, and Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Publication URL: /writing/childrens_selective_learning_from_others/ Year: 2010 Summary: Psychological research into children's sensitivity to testimony has primarily focused on their ability to judge the likely reliability of speakers. However, verbal testimony is only one means by which children learn from others. --- Title: Joint Action Goals Reduce Visuomotor Interference Effects from a Partner’s Incongruent Actions Authors: Sam Clarke, Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, Stephen A. Butterfill and John Michael Type: Publication URL: /writing/clarke2019_joint/ Year: 2019 Summary: Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? --- Title: Cognitive Architecture of Belief Reasoning in Children and Adults: A Primer on the Two-Systems Account Authors: Jason Low, Ian Apperly, Stephen A. Butterfill and Hannes Rakoczy Type: Publication URL: /writing/cognitive_architecture_belief_reasoning/ Year: 2016 Summary: Characterizing the cognitive architecture of human mindreading forces us to address two puzzles in people’s attributions of belief: why children show inconsistent expectations about others’ belief-based actions, and why adults’ belief reasoning is sometimes automatic and sometimes not. --- Title: Towards a Mechanistically Neutral Account of Acting Jointly: The Notion of a Collective Goal Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill and Corrado Sinigaglia Type: Publication URL: /writing/collective_goals/ Year: 2022 Summary: Anyone who has ever walked, cooked or crafted with a friend is in a position to know that acting jointly is not just acting side-by-side. But what distinguishes acting jointly from acting in parallel yet merely individually? Four decades of philosophical research have yielded broad consensus on a strategy for answering this question. --- Title: Cue Competition Effects and Young Children's Causal and Counterfactual Inferences Authors: Teresa McCormack, Stephen A. Butterfill, Christoph Hoerl and Patrick Burns Type: Publication URL: /writing/cue_competition_effects/ Year: 2009 Summary: Summary not available. --- Title: Drawn Together: When Motor Representations Ground Joint Actions Authors: Francesco della Gatta, Francesca Garbarini, Marco Rabuffetti, Luca Viganò, Stephen A. Butterfill and Corrado Sinigaglia Type: Publication URL: /writing/dellagatta2017_drawn/ Year: 2017 Summary: What enables individuals to act together? Recent discoveries suggest that a variety of mechanisms are involved. But something fundamental is yet to be investigated. In joint action, agents represent a collective goal, or so it is often assumed. --- Title: The Developing Mind: A Philosophical Introduction Authors: Stephen A. Butterfill Type: Publication URL: /writing/developing_mind/ Year: 2020 Summary: