 A crucial point here is how trustworthy these pretheoretic intuitions about the minds of animals are.  Call Perceptualism the view that there is direct perception of (at least some) mental states of others. What this means is that, at least sometimes, when we observe another in a mental state (e.g. in joy, or in pain) their mental state is part of the content of our perception — we perceive the mental states of others. In contrast, call inferentialism the view that we perceive ‘mere behavior’ and must infer or reason to conclusions about mental states. An alternative way of framing the issues is in terms of whether or not behavior as we perceive it is laden with mental properties. According to perceptualism, we (at least sometimes) perceive states of mind in behavior — an action (e.g. walking across a room) can be perceivably angry or sad, purposeful or eager or hesitant, etc. Goals, desires, motivations, emotions, pain or pleasure, and many other mental states are manifested in modes of action — though they cannot be reduced to patterns of disposition to behave (this would amount to behaviorism), they are tightly linked to behavior by conceptual, constitutive or causal connections that ground perceptual access.