Theory-of-mind reasoning in Ancient China

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 2014
Host editors
  • J. Szymanik
  • R. Verbrugge
Book title Proceedings of the Second Workshop Reasoning About Other Minds: Logical and Cognitive Perspectives
Book subtitle co-located with Advances in Modal Logic 2014 ; Groningen, The Netherlands, August 4, 2014
Series CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Event Workshop on Reasoning About Other Minds: Logical and Cognitive Perspectives (RAOM 2014)
Pages (from-to) 6-10
Publisher Aachen: CEUR-WS
Organisations
  • Interfacultary Research - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
Abstract
Ancient Chinese literature on strategic theory goes back to ideas proposed almost 3000 years ago, but which were first written down during the late Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period (around 500 BC). The most famous work is the Art of War from Sun Tzu.
While Sun Tzu extensively recommends to prepare before going to war and to study and exploit the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent, he doesn't explicitly mentions to investigate the possible reasoning of your opponent. There is no visible trace of Theory-of-Mind reasoning in his work.
More recent literature, like the famous classic historic novel Three Kingdoms (believed to have been written during the 14th Century), which describes events during the period 168 to 280 AD, contains instances of Theory-of-Mind reasoning. The question thus arises when the ancient Chinese did invent Theory-of-Mind reasoning as a concept, and why they seem not to have used it in their extensive Strategic theories.
Document type Conference contribution
Language English
Published at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1208/paper2.pdf
Other links http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1208/
Downloads
Theory-of-Mind reasoning in Ancient China (Final published version)
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