La comprensione dell’altro tra spiegazioni mentalistiche e pratiche situate

This essay presents current criticisms against a “mentalistic” interpretation of the practice of understanding others as providing some reasons for a redefinition of the structure of the problem rather than for its deconstruction. More specifically, I hypothesize that the problem of reconciling the practical status of our understanding with the reflective stance needed to understand and assess apparently “out of context” behavior is a legitimate one, and that the analysis of the normative structure of cooperative interaction provided by John Searle and Paul Grice can provide us with the tools to deal with this problem.