A virtue epistemology of the knowledge of persons

One can often discern what another person is thinking, feeling, or attending to. This process has come to be called "mindreading" in an interdisciplinary literature that encompasses philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology. Concomitantly, an account of mindreading must address considerations that are philosophical, but it must also explain empirical findings having to do with the psychopathology of autism, the function of mirror neurons, and the development of joint attention.;The two dominant accounts of mindreading are those of theory theory and simulation theory. Theory theory claims that human beings posit unobservable mental states based on observations of others in a manner analogous to the way a physicist might posit the existence of a quark. In contrast, simulation theory claims that one uses mental models of others by feeding faux inputs into one's working model of another person's mind.;This dissertation argues that both theory theory and simulation theory are insufficient as accounts of mindreading. Rather, we perceive other people and some of their mental states. We do this by tuning in the mental states of others in the pattern of their behaviour. What we might call "the perceptual tuning" account of mindreading does a better job of doing the conceptual work one wants a theory of mindreading to do. It provides the best explanation of the role of mirror neurons in mindreading and of the nature of the social impairment in autism.;Providing a normative analysis of mindreading with the application of virtue epistemology allows us to gain a better understanding of what it means to know another person. Knowledge of persons is acquired by gradually developing a more insightful and useful map of who another person is, and developing this map requires virtues of both the mind and the will.;An account of the knowledge of person allows one to make progress in the epistemologies of testimony and prejudice. The virtues of social interaction play a key evidential function in testimonial encounters with others, and understanding the virtues of relating to others helps one makes sense of vicious ways of relating to others, as when prejudice is present.