ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by distinguishing two models of a nontheoretical approach to interpretation. It argues that the hermeneutic model of dialogical perspective taking provides us ultimately with a richer and more promising replacement of the theoretical and formal-rational models than simulation theory. The chapter suggests that simulation theory, due to its psychologism, fails to give an adequate account for how interpretation in the human and social sciences is grounded in the everyday cognitive and interpretive capabilities of human agents. Simulation theorists rightly oppose the exaggerated and artificial claims of mainstream philosophy of mind, which assumes that "folk psychological" theories or formal rationality assumptions implicitly guide social understanding. With the conception of a symbolically mediated self, we can connect everyday understandings of agents to the reflexive interpretations in the human and social sciences. Since the hermeneutic conception conceives of the self and its mental states as intrinsically shaped by the cultural and social environment, no such access via immediate meaning is possible.
