Beyond Theory of Mind in Robotics

ArXi:2604.09612v1 Announce Type: new Theory of Mind, the capacity to explain and predict behavior by inferring hidden mental states, has become the dominant paradigm for social interaction in robotics. Yet ToM rests on three assumptions that poorly capture how most social interaction actually unfolds: that meaning travels inside-out from hidden states to observable behavior; that understanding requires detached inference rather than participation; and that the meaning of behavior is fixed and available to a passive observer.