This book is a significant contribution to philosophy and psychology. Daniel Hutto has made an original and compelling contribution to debates about the human capacity to understand others.
Ian Ravenscroft, Philosophy Department, Flinders University
This is a fresh, timely, and thought-provoking book. Daniel Hutto has succeeded admirably in laying out a comprehensive alternative to 'theory of mind' approaches to psychological understanding.
Peter Hobson, Tavistock Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, University of London
A refreshing expansion of the logical space surrounding debates about the nature of human social cognition... Hutto usefully brings long ignored assumptions to the surface, and persuasively undermines them... a stimulating and engaging read... the debate about human social cognition should forever be transformed in its wake.
Philosophical Investigations
A substantial and compelling theory... provides thorough and convincing criticisms of nativist theories of mind and opens up new lines of empirical research... should be read by all psychologists and philosophers interested in a theory of mind.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Cogently argued, thoroughly documented and stylishly written... suggests... the potential for research on stories to bring together scholars from across the arts and sciences.
Style
Daniel Hutto completely changes the terms of this debate... [He is] to be commended for his radical and challenging thesis.
Times Literary Supplement
highly original and admirably wide ranging... Hutto tackles head on the really hard questions about the role in mental life of symbolization, representation and rationality.
Language and Cognition
Hutto succeeds in telling a compelling developmental and evolutionary story that integrates the available empirical evidence from vastly different areas of research such as developmental psychology, comparative cognition, neuroscience, cognitive archaeology, and evolutionary psychology into a coherent and sound narrative about the origins and application of folk psychology... he adds substantially to the efforts to bring meaning back into the study of mind.
Human Development
succeeds at striking a balance between the constructive and the critical.... [Hutto's] challenge to the theory of mind tradition is formidable... [and] offers the field a promising basis from which to reorient itself.
Science
This book is enjoyable to read. They style is, well, narrative, witty, and anything else but boring.... It makes some important contributions to the debate and provides a variety of new insights. Most of all, it forces the opposition (on various fronts) back to the drawing board.
Grazer Philosophische Studien, International Journal for Analytic Philosophy
This is an important book... an instant classic in this important and relatively young field of study.
Metapsychology