ABSTRACT
Pure behaviour reading is the process of tracking others' behaviours, including their future behaviours, independently of any knowledge, or beliefs about, their mental states. The view that tracking mental states involves representing them leaves too many options open, as J. Call and M. Tomasello's nuanced discussion shows. Consider a related hypothesis about nonhuman animals: abilities to track mental states in some nonhumans are underpinned by capacities to represent mental states which involve a minimal model of the mental. Constructing models of the mental enables us to identify theoretically coherent, empirically motivated and readily testable hypotheses on which representations of mental states underpin abilities to track them. The hypothesis that abilities to track mental states in some nonhumans, including great apes and corvids, are underpinned by capacities to represent mental states which involve a minimal model of the mental, has three things going for it.
