That’s the point. philh opens by saying that blankfaceness is hard-to-impossible to identify accurately when all you get to see is external behaviour. He describes this situation, makes clear that his inner motivation wouldn’t have been what SA describes as that of a blankface, but points out that what he was doing would from the outside look just like blankfacing. It’s an example of how you can’t tell from the outside.
I’m sure it’s enough for you, hearing philh’s description of the situation, to tell that his internal state wasn’t that of the classic blankface.
I’m not so sure it would be enough for you if you were on the receiving end, when most likely you wouldn’t share the putative blankface’s opinion that what you’d been doing deserved punishment.
That’s the point. philh opens by saying that blankfaceness is hard-to-impossible to identify accurately when all you get to see is external behaviour. He describes this situation, makes clear that his inner motivation wouldn’t have been what SA describes as that of a blankface, but points out that what he was doing would from the outside look just like blankfacing. It’s an example of how you can’t tell from the outside.
I think it’s enough for me to hear a description of the situation to infer that internal state without knowing about his internal state.
I’m sure it’s enough for you, hearing philh’s description of the situation, to tell that his internal state wasn’t that of the classic blankface.
I’m not so sure it would be enough for you if you were on the receiving end, when most likely you wouldn’t share the putative blankface’s opinion that what you’d been doing deserved punishment.