ABSTRACT
A plausible account of mindreading ought to provide satisfying answers to the following two sets of questions. First, what is the function of mindreading? What advantages does it confer, and why might it have evolved? Second, how could we tell whether a subject is mindreading? These two questions are closely related, for to answer either one, we must give an account of which behaviors we should expect from a mindreader that we would not expect from a subject that does not reason about the mental states of others. In addition, to answer either requires an investigation of alternative cognitive processes that a subject may be utilizing. Finally, both questions require us to say what mindreading is so that we investigate what it does and where it can be found.
