With my PMT (person model theory), I aim to answer two questions. While the first question asks which epistemic strategy humans use to access the mental states of others and to gather information about them, the second question asks how the information we obtain to understand others is stored and organized. The answer to the second question is the core of the PMT. It states that information about other individuals or types of persons is stored and organized in person models and that these are realized on two levels, i.e. the implicit level of person schemata and the explicit level of person images. It further argues that philosophical theories so far have predominately ignored the fact that we usually understand others relying on rich background information concerning them and their situation.
Lisa Quadt’s commentary focuses on my theory concerning the epistemic strategies humans use to receive information about others’ mental phenomena, and she develops a principle worry about the underlying metaphysical foundations. I am grateful for this challenge, which gives me the opportunity to clarify my background view. The MV (multiplicity view) outlined in the target paper claims that we do not rely on one epistemic strategy alone, as is suggested by most proposals in the literature, but that we rely on a multiplicity of strategies which, for the most part, are implicitly activated on the basis of contextual conditions. These strategies include simulation strategies, theory-based inferences, and direct perception as well as understanding by social interaction and by relying on narratives. Quadt’s main worry is that MV may be based on an incoherent metaphysics and is thus inacceptable as it stands. In the first part of her reply she aims to defend the incoherence claim, while in the second part she offers an alternative metaphysical framework. My reply is structured as follows: In the next paragraph I briefly describe how Quadt defends her claim about the supposed incoherence of my metaphysical background and show that I am not committed to the incoherent framework she attributes to me. In the second section, I make explicit my actual background metaphysics (which was not the focus of my article) and argue that it is coherent, reinforcing that I am not committed to the metaphysics that Quadt attributes to my position. Finally, I argue that the alternative metaphysics suggested by Quadt relies on a distinction between transparency and opacity that cannot carry the weight it is supposed to carry.