Shannon Spaulding, “How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition” (Routledge, 2018))
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What is social cognition and why does it matter?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps, so I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the Best Education Podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast online.
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Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Shannon Spaulding, assistant professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University. Her new book, How We Understand Others, Philosophy and Social Cognition, is just out from Routledge. Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence our interactions with other people.
The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition, the theory theory and the simulation theory, have provided focused accounts of mind reading, the practice of ascribing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others in order to predict and explain their behavior. In her new book, Spalding draws on social, psychological, developmental, and experimental psychological research and kindred spirits in philosophy to argue for an expansion of this traditional focus. In her theory, which she calls model theory, my reading includes other methods we use to understand others, such as stereotypes and scripts. and other goals of these practices, besides prediction and explanation, such as strengthening our in-group social relationships.
She also explores some of the implications of her view for understanding issues in epistemology and ethics, in particular, the issue of epistemic injustice. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Shannon Spaulding. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy. Hi, Carrie. Thanks for having me. Your new book, How We Understand Others, Philosophy and Social Cognition, kind of gives a nice, very nice overview of the state of play in terms of the mind reading literature and also puts it forward, I think, a bit in terms of incorporating a lot of the new insights in recent years into a particular new version, I guess, of the theory theory as you describe it. Mm-hmm. Before we get into the details of the book, maybe you can say a bit about your background in philosophy and then how you came to write this book.
Yeah, sure. So I started out interested in social cognition when I was a master's student at the University of Arkansas, but that was just nothing new. that I had the space to explore. So I read Shawn Nichols and Steven Stitch's book, Mind Reading, just sort of on my own, and found it really, really interesting. But I had to wait until I got to my dissertation stage at the University of Wisconsin to actually explore it in more detail, which was many, many years later.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is social cognition and why does it matter?
0:00–9:25
2
How did Shannon Spaulding become interested in philosophy and social cognition?
9:25–17:42
3
What are the theory‑theory and simulation‑theory approaches to mind‑reading?
17:42–25:24
4
What is Spaulding’s Model Theory and how does it expand mind‑reading?
25:24–33:04
5
How do stereotypes, scripts, and in‑group goals shape our understanding of others?
33:04–41:56
6
What are the epistemic and ethical implications of mind‑reading, such as epistemic injustice?
41:56–48:58
7
How are mental‑state models created, used, and updated in real‑time interactions?
48:58–58:44
8
What future research projects is Spaulding pursuing after the book?
58:44–1:05:14
Speakers
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Daniel Cohnitz and Jussi Haukioja, "Foundations for Metasemantics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Philippe Huneman, "When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism" (Routledge, 2026)
Rivka Weinberg, "The Meaning of It All: Ultimate Meaning, Everyday Meaning, Cosmic Meaning, Death, and Time" (Oxford UP, 2026)
PJ DiPietro, "Sideways Selves Travesti and Jotería, "Struggles Across the Américas" (U Texas Press, 2025)