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Mindreading as Asynchronous Coordination

In thinking about categorical colour perception as a model for mindreading we have arrived at the idea that mindreading is asynchronous coordination.
This is where I think the background assumptions in mindreading come from.

Mindreading as asynchronous coordination

background assumptions

are ‘the intuitions and principles with which groups of mindreaders will tend to agree, and to which individuals hold themselves in order to be considered rational and reasonable’

(Apperly, Devine, & Butterfill, 2026)

This needs one qualification: I think it makes the background assumptions sound more like things people actually know. (Come to this later in norm-like patterns.)
If we think of mindreading on the model of categorical colour perception, we immediately face a disanalogy: Some mindreaders’ attributions are better than others’.
The attributions are better in the sense that they predict independent ratings of social competence.
We therefore need a standard of correctness for mindreading.
I don’t think there is anything comparable in the catgeorical colour case.
You cannot really say this about categorical colour perception. I mean it might be true but mindreading differences have social significance. Let me explain ...

disanalogy: Some mindreaders are better than others.

You can see that some mindreaders’ attributions are better than others’ both by looking around and from the research on individual differences.

disanalogy: Some mindreaders are better than others.

Silent Films (Devine & Hughes, 2013)

“Why do you think the driver locks Harold in the van?”

“Why do you think the driver locks Harold in the van?”
wrong answers include to kidnap.
fully correct answers require saying the driver did not know Harold was in the van.

-> predicts independently rated peer social competence

(Devine, Kovatchev, Grumley Traynor, Smith, & Lee, 2023)

Birmingham Advanced Mindreading Stories

interpret stories, measure alignment the authors

-> convergent validity, long-term stability

Lee et al. (2026)

disanalogy: Some mindreaders are better than others.

The fact that some mindreading attributions are better than others means that we need a standard of correctness for mindreading.

What is the practical standard of correctness?

I suggested that we take inspiration from how researchers are operationalising correctness in mindreading tasks, especially those where performance predicts social competence. If we do that ...

proposal

‘an individual is successful at mindreading if they ascribe states, predict behaviours, assign responsibility, and so on in just the way that would occur if they were involved in a joint mindreading activity with others around them’

(Apperly et al., 2026)

The Mindreading as Coordination hypothesis (MAC) hypothesis includes some proposals about mechanisms but here I’m just focussing on the theoretical parts.
(^think am I right to be framing the question as where mindreading standards come from? Maybe it's more about what kind of thing they are?)
So where are we with respect to explaining the thing to be explained?
Immediate task was to explain where background assumptions come from.
So where do those background assumptions come from? The Mindreading as Coordination hypothesis suggests that they arise from coordination with others on attributions, which aligns us on principles.
By analogy with categorical colour perception, you can see that there may also be a role for non-social—or even innate—constraints.

confident local agreement

+

variation between groups and experts

for

- agency attributions

- mental state attributions

How to explain both agreement and variation?

- need to ask where background assumptions come from

- Mindreading as coordination: local agreement results from coordination; variation from different interaction histories

The MAC hypothesis was not supposed to explain this pattern, but I think it does provide a partial explanation.
∞todo: state explanatory aims of MAC note that this does not include my explananadum (local agreement and variation)

limits: long-term standards; unknown principles; normativity

I think there are two limits.
(i) the appeal to coordination in MAC is well-suited to short-term, small-scale aligment but does not offer a story about long-term or more widespread agreement.
(ii) MAC does not directly why there is apparently a normative aspect to attributions.
To illustrate normativity missing, return to the catgeorical colour analogy
in that case there are standards but perhaps not norms in any interesting sense (although people do sometime get quite cross if you don't agree on the colours of things).
But let me take a step back. I want to explain why, and in what sense, mindreading attributions involve norms. next step is to get from standards to norms ...