Theory of Mind

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I'm having trouble understanding what the term "theory of mind" means. Can someone explain it to me? I tried looking it up but I couldn't quite understand the definition.

Theory of mind is basically a term used to explain how people perceive the world the same. It is what a child usually goes through.
Such as, a child may think "It may be that everyone else sees things from their eyes, and I am not the only one."

huh?

Basically saying that others are different than you, but you are all the same in ways.

Theory of mind is the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone else and to understand that people have beliefs different from our own.

Right. Which is to say, it is to understand that other people have minds (therefore feelings, beliefs and opinions) that exist separately from your own - that those around you are not characters you are making up and can justifiably manipulate and push around like puppets. Which of course, is after all, just a theory. You may actually be watching this all take place in a snow globe.

In the context of a discussion about autism (and Asperger) Theory of mind is used by Baron Cohen to mean ability (or inability) to read in the mind of others and to behave correspondingly (in a rather instinctive and prompt way). People in the Autistic spectrum lack this ability.
More generally "theory of mind" may mean theories, hypotheses and speculations about the working of mind. Modularity, the idea that our voluntary actions depend different "softwares", or modules, or organs is central to the most recent "theory of mind". How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker is a fairly readable book about modern theory of mind. Philosophy of mind, cognitivism, artificial intelligence, "intentionality" belong to this area and contribute in different ways.

Essentially, my mind is different than your mind and we might think differently.

If you don't have a "theory of mind" you tend to believe that people think just like you, and are mystified when they don't.

Z

people that can not understand autistic people have feelings, ideas and beliefs do not have a theory of mind

Having become self-aware at the age of 3 (the same time I learned to read) ever since then there's always been these nagging thoughts in my head:

- Why am I ME?
- Why am I looking out at the world through my particular eyes and not someone else's?
- Is everyone else aware of the same?
- What makes me ME?

I never could articulate these questions, but theory of mind comes pretty close. I never once thought I was looking at the world as if it were a snowglobe (or as a main character in some kind of personal movie), but even so, how did I become ME? Why am I n this particular body and not a fish or a tree or something else? Then this all spirals down into the unavoidable question: When I die, do I go on? Do I (my consciousness) then become someone else? Or do I just simply shut off like a candle snuffed in a dark room, staring at the blackness of eternity? I remember I once brought up this same topic in another NT forum and everyone summarily wrote me off as being self-centered. Guess I'd better stop now while I'm ahead. These questions bother me in the middle of the night when I'm laying there, staring at the ceiling. They usually herald an oncoming tsunami of depression.

and what if you are the only sentient being on the planet and everyone else is a product of your own imagination, or what if they are all souless drones that operate like robots, and what if you are just one of those robots...

I had this big drawn out argument on a philosophy forum about whether "p-zombies" are or aren't "coherent". That stuff is painful to think about. It made me depressed.

The weird thing about consciousness is it has this feeling of being a switch, something thats either on or off, something that you either have or don't. Yet living organisms are clearly a continuum. There isn't a firm dividing line between sentience and non-sentience. For all I know I should assume that any physical process could embody a "mind". We humans may just be programmed to think that this "sentience" is unique to us. It may be that everything that surrounds us has some a degree of sentience.

Absolutely. Even trees are in some measure sentient. Every living being (cells also) which reacts to its environment is somehow "sentient". Of course there are quantitative and qualitative differences of great magnitude. And there are great differences also in humans, between genders and between individuals. We still have to deal nontheless with this nonsense that animals are devoid of emotions or minds.

If people on the autistic spectrum are supposed to lack theory of mind, then I must not have AS because I know that others have different beliefs from my own.

I always thought people thought how I did when given the same experience, event or object as me. This is lacking in theory of mind.

People have never felt "real" to me, nor do they still; I know that they're "real", they just don't feel it.

People usually don't understand how I can think differently from them. But they have Theory of Mind. It's just that their theory is that I think the same way they think. I don't have the Theory. I have Theory of Mind too. I have theories about everything. But I'm aware that they are just theories and that I really have no way of knowing what others are thinking or feeling unless they tell me.

I must say I very much prefer my own ToM.