We share, therefore we think

Abstract

Elsewhere in this volume one can find telling critiques of contemporary accounts of the nature and scope of interpersonal understanding. Therefore, apart from a few unsubtle but I believe important introductory points to provide some initial orientation to my own approach, I shall not attempt to present or analyze views about human beings' knowledge of other people with which I am in disagreement. Rather, I shall consider some things about our ways of knowing others, and more specifically, our ways of coming to know about other people with minds, that might re-frame and perhaps restructure current theories in this domain. Here is the direction from which I shall be coming. A principal concern of my research as an experimental psychologist has been to investigate the nature of impairments in interpersonal relations, communication and self-awareness among children and adolescents with autism. Colleagues and myself have also studied related issues among congenitally blind children, as well as aspects of social functioning among typically developing infants (sometimes infants of troubled mothers). So it seems fitting that I should draw upon some findings from this research programme, insofar as they may highlight what might otherwise be neglected in abstract theorizing about interpersonal relations and understanding. Of course empirical investigations are no substitute for conceptual analysis of the things we need to explain. Yet one motive that gives impetus to our research is an interest in genetic epistemology (Piaget 1972) as this applies to a particular topic, namely, the developmental conditions that make the acquisition of knowledge about human minds possible. More specifically, we have been concerned that attempts not only to explain the syndrome of autism, but also to account for early stages of cognitive development in typically developing young children, are often distorted by a failure to appreciate the formative influence of mutual, affectively patterned interpersonal relations on human psychological growth. © 2007 Springer.