folk psychology in one sense, a putative network of principles constituting a commonsense theory that allegedly underlies everyday explanations of human behavior; the theory assigns a central role to mental states like belief, desire, and intention. Consider an example of an everyday commonsense psychological explanation: Jane went to the refrigerator because she wanted a beer and she believed there was beer in the refrigerator. Like many such explanations, this adverts to a so-called propositional attitude – a mental state, expressed by a verb (‘believe’) plus a that-clause, whose intentional content is propositional. It also adverts to a mental state, expressed by a verb (‘want’) plus a direct-object phrase, whose intentional content appears not to be propositional. In another, related sense, folk psychology is a network of social practices that includes ascribing such mental states to ourselves and others, and proffering explanations of human behavior that advert to these states. The two senses need distinguishing because some philosophers who acknowledge the existence of folk psychology in the second sense hold that commonsense psychological explanations do not employ empirical generalizations, and hence that there is no such theory as folk psychology. (Henceforth, ‘FP’ will abbreviate ‘folk psychology’ in the first sense; the unabbreviated phrase will be used in the second sense.)
Eliminativism in philosophy of mind asserts that FP is an empirical theory; that FP is therefore subject to potential scientific falsification; and that mature science very probably will establish that FP is so radically false that humans simply do not undergo mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions. One kind of eliminativist argument first sets forth certain methodological strictures about how FP would have to integrate with mature science in order to be true (e.g., being smoothly reducible to neuroscience, or being absorbed into mature cognitive science), and then contends that these strictures are unlikely to be met. Another kind of argument first claims that FP embodies certain strong empirical commitments (e.g., to mental representations with languagelike syntactic structure), and then contends that such empirical presuppositions are likely to turn out false.
One influential version of folk psychological realism largely agrees with eliminativism about what is required to vindicate folk psychology, but also holds that mature science is likely to provide such vindication. Realists of this persuasion typically argue, for instance, that mature cognitive science will very likely incorporate FP, and also will very likely treat beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes as states with languagelike syntactic structure. Other versions of folkpsychological realism take issue, in one way or another, with either (i) the eliminativists’ claims about FP’s empirical commitments, or (ii) the eliminativists’ strictures about how FP must mesh with mature science in order to be true, or both. Concerning (i), for instance, some philosophers maintain that FP per se is not committed to the existence of languagelike mental representations. If mature cognitive science turns out not to posit a ‘language of thought,’ they contend, this would not necessarily show that FP is radically false; instead it might only show that propositional attitudes are subserved in some other way than via languagelike representational structures.
Concerning (ii), some philosophers hold that FP can be true without being as tightly connected to mature scientific theories as the eliminativists require. For instance, the demand that the special sciences be smoothly reducible to the fundamental natural sciences is widely considered an excessively stringent criterion of intertheoretic compatibility; so perhaps FP could be true without being smoothly reducible to neuroscience. Similarly, the demand that FP be directly absorbable into empirical cognitive science is sometimes considered too stringent as a criterion either of FP’s truth, or of the soundness of its ontology of beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes, or of the legitimacy of FP-based explanations of behavior. Perhaps FP is a true theory, and explanatorily legitimate, even if it is not destined to become a part of science. Even if FP’s ontological categories are not scientific natural kinds, perhaps its generalizations are like generalizations about clothing: true, explanatorily usable, and ontologically sound. (No one doubts the existence of hats, coats, or scarves. No one doubts the truth or explanatory utility of generalizations like ‘Coats made of heavy material tend to keep the body warm in cold weather’, even though these generalizations are not laws of any science.) Yet another approach to folk psychology, often wedded to realism about beliefs and desires (although sometimes wedded to instrumentalism), maintains that folk psychology does not employ empirical generalizations, and hence is not a theory at all. One variant denies that folk psychology employs any generalizations, empirical or otherwise. Another variant concedes that there are folk-psychological generalizations, but denies that they are empirical; instead they are held to be analytic truths, or norms of rationality, or both at once. Advocates of non-theory views typically regard folk psychology as a hermeneutic, or interpretive, enterprise. They often claim too that the attribution of propositional attitudes, and also the proffering and grasping of folk-psychological explanations, is a matter of imaginatively projecting oneself into another person’s situation, and then experiencing a kind of empathic understanding, or Verstehen, of the person’s actions and the motives behind them. A more recent, hi-tech, formulation of this idea is that the interpreter ‘runs a cognitive simulation’ of the person whose actions are to be explained. Philosophers who defend folk-psychological realism, in one or another of the ways just canvassed, also sometimes employ arguments based on the allegedly self-stultifying nature of eliminativism. One such argument begins from the premise that the notion of action is folk-psychological – that a behavioral event counts as an action only if it is caused by propositional attitudes that rationalize it (under some suitable actdescription). If so, and if humans never really undergo propositional attitudes, then they never really act either. In particular, they never really assert anything, or argue for anything (since asserting and arguing are species of action). So if eliminativism is true, the argument concludes, then eliminativists can neither assert it nor argue for it – an allegedly intolerable pragmatic paradox. Eliminativists generally react to such arguments with breathtaking equanimity. A typical reply is that although our present concept of action might well be folk-psychological, this does not preclude the possibility of a future successor concept, purged of any commitment to beliefs and desires, that could inherit much of the role of our current, folk-psychologically tainted, concept of action.
See also COGNITIVE SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND , REDUCTION , SIMULATION THEOR.
T.E.H.