The Theory of Mind and Narrative - Ashwin

Ashwin Dev
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
2 December 2018
The Theory of Mind and Narrative Article
This article begins with a philosopher named Alex Rosenberg who, in short, says that historical narratives are a threat to people being able to understand history if theory of mind is applied. I'm not sure as to why the philosopher in the article assumes most people apply theory of mind to historical narratives. As long as the reader knows it's a historical and non-fictional narrative, I don't see why one would even begin to apply theory of mind in the first place. You can't really apply theory of mind to a historical narrative mainly because the information in a historical narrative is factual. Even if you did go on to apply theory of mind to a historical narrative, it would most likely be wrong. You can definitely do this with a fictional narrative because the narrative wouldn't be real anyway.

The end of the article asks the philosopher whether or not narratives have a positive effect, he answers by saying that they are more harmful than positive. He then goes on to say that instead of depending on narratives for information, to look for sources other than narratives that guide and inform information about events that have occurred. There's no point in disagreeing with looking for sources other than narratives, so I can agree with him on that, however, I still think it's fine to trust the information from a historical narrative and only the historical narrative because if you got the information from somewhere else, it most likely has been effected by theory of mind.

Obviously I don't know as much about historical narratives or narratives in general as the philosopher does and I'm sure if I read his book my thoughts would probably change. But, from my point of view, I still think it's fine to trust information from narratives because if it's information from anywhere else, then... it's not information from the narrative.

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