Participants in the debate about the nature of folk psychology tend to share one fundamental assumption: that its primary purpose consists in the prediction and explanation of another person's behavior. The following essay will evaluate recent challenges to this assumption by philosophers such as Joshua Knobe who insist that folk psychology and its concepts are intimately linked to our ethical concerns. I will show how conceiving of folk psychology in an engaged manner enables one to account for the evidence cited (...) in favor of an ethical interpretation of folk psychology, without undermining the claim that it is primarily an explanatory practice. Nevertheless, I will suggest that the basic cognitive stance of folk psychology has ethical implications that have been insufficiently noted in the contemporary context. (shrink)

One issue within conspiracy theory theory is whether, or to what extent, our central concept – – should map on to the common, lay sense of the term. Some conspiracy theory theorists insist that we use the term as everyday people use it. So, for example, if the term has a pejorative connotation in everyday parlance, then academic work on the concept should reflect that. Other conspiracy theory theorists take a more revisionist approach, arguing instead that while their use of (...) the theoretical concept should bear some relation to its use in natural language, it need not follow it subserviently. I argue that elements of this debate mirror related debates that were prominent in the philosophy of mind in the 1980s over folk psychology and eliminative materialism (debates that continue today, such as within the philosophy of perception and theories over how to individuate the senses). Then, there was a debate over whether the concepts of commonsense psychology, such as or, should be treated as theoretical posits, and hence open to significant revision or elimination, or whether they were instead the targets of explanation. I will argue that an eliminativist approach to has significant merit. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between common-sense psychology (CSP) and scientific psychology (SP) — which we could call the mind-mind problem. CSP has come under much attack recently, most of which is thought to be unjust or misguided. This paper's first section examines the many differences between the aims, interests, explananda, explanantia, methodology, conceptual frameworks, and relationships to the neurosciences, that divide CSP and SP. Each of the two is valid within its own territory, and there is no competition between (...) them — primarily because CSP is not, and has no interest in being, a scientific theory. In the second section some implications are drawn. First, neither CSP nor SP has the mind-body problem in its familiar form. Second, CSP, for excellent reasons, is not equipped to handle irrational or non-rational behaviour; there are some grounds for believing that this can and should be the task of SP. Third, philosophical psychology, or armchair theories of action, perception, etc., are doomed to failure. And, fourth, the realm of the psychological is so heterogeneous that no single model for either CSP or SP is likely to succeed. (shrink)

This article finds little to disagree with in Neurophilosophy The sole area of disagreement is with Professor Churchland's attitude to common?sense psychology. Unfortunately, though, the author has already attempted to describe what should be the proper view of common?sense psychology in an earlier article in this very journal. Therefore the present article tries to build on the earlier one, advocating an instrumentalist constraal of many ordinary?language mental terms ? a construal with which Professor Churchland is unlikely to agree, but which, (...) if she did agree, would give her further ammunition with which to beat her opponents. The other main strand of this article suggests that Aristotle has anticipated Professor Churchland (and also most other theoreticians of psychology and physiology), and so, willy?nilly, we are ? correctly ? returning to an Aristotelian picture of human capacity and activity. (shrink)

Eliminativism has been a major focus of discussion in the philosophy of mind for the last two decades. According to eliminativists, beliefs and other intentional states are the posits of a folk theory of mind standardly called "folk psychology". That theory, they claim, is radically false and hence beliefs and other intentional states do not exist. We argue that the expression "folk psychology" is ambiguous in an important way. On the one hand, "folk psychology" is used by many philosophers and (...) cognitive scientists to refer to an internally represented theory of human psychology exploited in the prediction of behavior. On the other hand, "folk psychology" is used to refer to the theory of mind implicit in our everyday talk about mental states. We then argue that sorting out the conceptual and terminological confusion surrounding "folk psychology" has major consequences for the eliminativism debate. In particular, if certain models of cognition turn out to be true, then on some readings of "folk psychology" the arguments for eliminativism collapse. (shrink)

Three arguments are proposed against the idea that ordinary talk about the mind constitutes a folk psychology, a sort of prescientific theory which explains human behaviour and which is ripe for replacement by a neurological or computational theory with better scientific credentials. First, not all talk of the mind is introduced to explain in the way assumed by those who think that mental talk hypothesizes inner processes to explain behaviour. Second, the individuation of the behaviour which is explained by the (...) inner processes itself requires reference to ?mental? states such as intentions or desires. Consequently the project is circular. Finally, scientific theory is a practice with a history which may be matched in the case of ordinary talk of the mind. Certainly ordinary talk of motives, intentions, and thoughts may be infected by the theorizing of economists and sociologists et al., but it is impossible that all talk of the mind should be theoretical in this way. (shrink)

One foundation of Eliminative Materialism is the claim that the totality of our ordinary resources for explaining and predicting behaviour, ?Folk Psychology?, constitutes a theoretical scheme, potentially in conflict with other theories of behaviour. Recent attacks upon this claim, as well as the defence by Paul Churchland, are examined and found to be lacking in a suitably realistic conception of theory. By finding such a conception, and by correctly identifying the level of conceptual structures within which Folk Psychology is located, (...) the original claim is reinforced. (shrink)

Paul Churchland has become famous for holding three controversial and interrelated doctrines which he put forward in early papers and in his first book. Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979): eliminative materialism, the doctrine of the plasticity of perception, and a general network theory of language. In his latest book, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul (1995), Churchland aims to make some results of connectionist neuroscience available to the general public and explores the philosophical and (...) social consequences that neuroscience is likely to have. I argue that these results of neuroscience refute the three doctrines that Churchland advocated in his earlier works. Yet youthful dreams do not die easily and Churchland is reluctant to relinquish his early views. (shrink)

Paul Churchland's philosophical work enjoys an increasing popularity. His imaginative papers on cognitive science and the philosophy of psychology are widely discussed. Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979), his major book, is an important contribution to the debate on realism. Churchland provides us with the intellectual tools for constructing a unified scientific Weltanschauung. His network theory of language implies a provocative view of the relation between science and common sense. This paper contains a critical examination of Churchland's network (...) theory of language, which is the foundation of his philosophy. It is argued that the network theory should be seen as deriving its point from traditional empiricism. The network theory enables the empiricist to resist the phenomenalistic temptations inherent in his position, and to build a realist philosophy on the basis of the representative theory of perception. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the representative theory is presupposed by Churchland's main argument in favour of the network view. Churchland tends to conceive of himself as a naturalistic epistemologist. But the philosophical faction to which Churchland belongs is rather that of modern neo?Kantianism. (shrink)

A Socio-Linguistic Approach to the Development of Folk Psychology One of the most interesting issues central to folk psychology is how it develops in humans. Over the past few decades, two distinct theories have emerged known as the Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory. Theory-theory supporters argue that children construct theories to explain behavior, while simulation theorists extol the virtues of empathy—putting yourself in another person's shoes. I argue that each position falls short of an adequate account of how folk psychology develops. (...) Instead, explaining behavior is a matter of acquiring folk psychological concepts within a culture and then learning how to deploy such terms with competence. (shrink)

Naturalism concerning the mental is the belief that the tools and concepts of natural science are necessary to achieve an understanding of the mind. After briefly setting the stage of naturalism and the mind, I pose the question of naturalism about the mind in its historical context, comparing the development of naturalist approaches to philosophy of mind to Russell's “hiving off” model of the history of Western philosophy, in which parts of philosophy have split away from the field as we (...) have developed new ways to answer questions once central to philosophy. Next, after distinguishing ontological from methodological senses of naturalism, I explore a number of different 20th‐century naturalist approaches to studying the mind, ending with a discussion of eliminative materialism and its stress on the continuity of scientific (naturalist) and commonsense understandings of the mind. (shrink)

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and ...

Recent work in the methodology of connectionist explanation has I'ocrrsccl on the notion of levels of explanation. Specific issucs in conncctionisrn hcrc intersect with rvider areas of debate in the philosophy of psychology and thc philosophy of science generally. The issues I raise in this chapter, then, are not unique to cognitive science; but they arise in new and important contexts when connectionism is taken seriously as a model of cognition. The general questions are the relation between levels and the (...) status of levels which have no obvious relation to others. In speaking of levels, what is the connection, if there is one, between explanation and ontology? Which, if any, conccpt of reduction is applicable to connectionist systems? What kind of legitinrtcy can the constructs of common sense psychology, or of that vclsion ol intentional realism represented by classical symbol-systems n I, hirvc irr ir full-scale connectionist theory of mind? (shrink)

This thesis evaluates a variety of important modern approaches to the study of the mind/brain in the light of recent developments in the debate about how evidence should be used to support a theory and its constituent hypotheses. Although all these approaches are ostensibly based upon the principles of scientific realism, this evaluation will demonstrate that all of them fall well short of these requirements. Consequently, the more modern, co-evolutionary theories of the mind/brain do not constitute the significant advance upon (...) more traditional theories that their authors take them to be. There are two fundamental elements within my discussion of the relationship between evidence and the constituent hypotheses of a theory. Firstly, I shall demonstrate that the traditional veil-of-perception issue has a wider relevance than that which has historically been attributed to it, since it is the paradigm case of an attempt to construct a two level theory on the basis of evidence tha~ does not adequately support either hypothesis. This interpretation of the issue can be represented by constructing a semantically inconsistent tetrad. It is shown that similar tetrads can be constructed for each of the theories of the mind/brain discussed in this thesis. Secondly, I shall argue that the theories discussed all employ a variety of the bootstrap strategy. This strategy is a relatively recent development in the philosophy of science, which suggests a way in which the same evidence can be used to generate both a general and a specific hypothesis within a theory without violating the constraints of scientific realism. However, I contend that recent use of this strategy in the investigation of mind is largely unsatisfactory as a result of a neglect of structural as well as more informal influences upon the kinds of evidence employed to support the hypotheses contained in the theories. The thesis is divided into three major sections. The first (Section A) discusses the influence of the motivations of the individual theorists upon their arguments and provides a critical discussion of the issues of the veil-of-perception and bootstrapping. The second section (Section B) comprises a detailed examination of a range of modern theories of the mind/brain and critically analyses their success. The final section (Section C) draws together general conclusions and methodological consequences of the detailed analysis of the nature of realism and evidence in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)