"My question is this: Zunshine notes that Woolf assumes that we will automatically read a character's body language as indicative of his thoughts and feelings because of our collective past history as readers. How do we know which readings are correct?"
A good question. The short answer is that we don't: Zunshine says explicitly that the fact that we have the ability to mind-read only means that we have the ability to attribute mental states to other people, not that we're right about our attributions.
The long answer is more complicated. These abilities are highly evolved, so they're more than just generalized learning and indeed more than just our "collective past history as readers." For example, look at this:
Which face is happier? According to M. Derec Bownds in _The Biology of Mind_, most people say that the face on the right is happier, despite the fact that they are mirror images. The reason for this, he says, is that the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of the face, is more active during happy emotions, while the right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the face, is more active during negative emotions. A smile on the right side of the face is more likely to be the product of genuine happiness. (This may be the reason for the mysteriousness of the Mona Lisa's smile; she is smiling with the left side of her face.)
If he's right about this, then it suggests that our intuitive feeling about which face is happier is in fact "right," at least for most people. We are hardwired with the equipment to pick up on a clue of this subtlety, process it, and presumably act upon it, without ever being conscious of what exactly we've picked up on or how. It's an impressive feat, I think. If, as seem likely, the ability to mind-read consists of lots and lots of different modules interpreting all kinds of subtle clues like this with this degree of accuracy, then humans have surprisingly good information about what other humans think.
Wes
