It’s plausible that the evolutionary pathway to developing an internal model of other people’s minds involved bootstrapping from one’s awareness of one’s own mind. This would work well to the extent that there was psychological unity of humankind.
Psychological unity is not really needed. Much the same mental apparatus works reasonably well with cats, dogs, and other goal-directed agents, such as chess computers. The apparatus is accustomed to the idea that other agents may not be exactly like you, and accepts parameters to help deal with such cases.
The apparatus is accustomed to the idea that other agents may not be exactly like you, and accepts parameters to help deal with such cases.
Right, but the more similar the other agents are to you the more immediate and intuitive the apparatus is; the more different they are from you, the more crude & error prone the approximation. Hence the relevance of the psychological unity of humankind.
Psychological unity is not really needed. Much the same mental apparatus works reasonably well with cats, dogs, and other goal-directed agents, such as chess computers. The apparatus is accustomed to the idea that other agents may not be exactly like you, and accepts parameters to help deal with such cases.
Right, but the more similar the other agents are to you the more immediate and intuitive the apparatus is; the more different they are from you, the more crude & error prone the approximation. Hence the relevance of the psychological unity of humankind.