ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issue by asking whether the simulation approach abets the two aforementioned claims central to this conception: that understanding is the mode of access to social affairs and that explaining action understands it. It explains the arguments are based on ideas developed from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein averred that understanding human existences does not require delving behind the surface of human life via postulated structures and mechanisms. Proponents of simulation theory agree that it accounts for the explanations that people offer of others' activity that cite mental states. The chapter focuses on a topic that simulation theory has not expressly examined because most social investigators and theorists consider action to be the chief compositional and causal ingredient in social life. The main alternative to simulation theory in the literature is the so-called theory theory. If, consequently, simulation underlies psychological explanation, Robert Gordon must be right that it is subverbal and utterly unknown.
