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Philosophy of Cognitive Science :: Folk Psychology and Theory of Mind :: The Nature of Folk Psychology

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Andrews, Kristin (online). It's in your nature: A pluralistic folk psychology.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: I suggest a pluralistic account of folk psychology according to which not all predictions or explanations rely on the attribution of mental states, and not all intentional actions are explained by mental states. This view of folk psychology is supported by research in developmental and social psychology. It is well known that people use personality traits to predict behavior. I argue that trait attribution is not shorthand for mental state attributions, since traits are not identical to beliefs or desires, and an understanding of belief or desire is not necessary for using trait attributions. In addition, we sometimes predict and explain behavior through appeal to personality traits that the target wouldn’t endorse, and so could not serve as the target’s reasons. I conclude by suggesting that our folk psychology includes the notion that some behavior is explained by personality traits–who the person is–rather than by beliefs and desires–what the person thinks. Consequences of this view for the debate between simulation theory and theory theory, as well as the debate on chimpanzee theory of mind are discussed
Andrews, Kristin (online). The functions of folk psychology.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: The debates about the form of folk psychology and the potential eliminability of folk psychology rest on a particular view about how humans understand other minds. That is, though folk psychology is described as “our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena” (Churchland 1981, p. 67), there have been implicit assumptions regarding the nature of that commonsense conception. It has been assumed that folk psychology involves two practices, the prediction and explanation of behavior. And it has been assumed that one cognitive mechanism subsumes both these practices
Baker, Lynne Rudder (1999). Folk psychology. In Rob Wilson & Frank Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. MIT Press.   (Cited by 4 | Google | Edit)
Abstract: In recent years, folk psychology has become a topic of debate not just among philosophers, but among development psychologists and primatologists as well
Baker, Lynne Rudder (1999). What is this thing called 'commonsense psychology'? Philosophical Explorations 2 (1):3-19.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: What is this thing called ‘Commonsense Psychology’? The first matter to settle is what the issue is here. By ‘commonsense psychology,’ I mean primarily the systems of describing, explaining and predicting human thought and action in terms of beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, expectations, intentions and other so-called propositional attitudes. Although commonsense psychology encompasses more than propositional attitudes--e.g., emotions, traits and abilities are also within its purview--belief-desire reasoning forms the core of commonsense psychology. Commonsense psychology is what we use to explain intentional action as ordinarily described--e.g., Jack went to the store because he wanted some ice cream. Commonsense psychology also is used to explain mental states--e.g., Jill feared that she would be late because she thought that the meeting began at 4:00. Commonsense psychology is the province of everyone; we all use it all the time
Barker, John A. (2002). Computer modeling and the fate of folk psychology. Metaphilosophy 33 (1-2):30-48.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Bennett, Jonathan (1991). Folk-psychological explanations. In John D. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 5 | Annotation | Google | Edit)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (2003). The domain of folk psychology. In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 4 | Google | Edit)
Blackburn, Simon W. (1992). Theory, observation, and drama. Mind and Language 7 (1-2):187-203.   (Cited by 14 | Google | Edit)
Bogdan, Radu J. (1997). Interpreting Minds: The Evolution of a Practice. MIT Press/Bradford Books.   (Cited by 44 | Google | More links | Edit)
Bogdan, Radu J. (ed.) (1991). Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Commonsense Psychology. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links | Edit)
Bogdan, Radu J. (2003). Minding Minds: Evolving a Reflexive Mind by Interpreting Others. MIT Press.   (Cited by 36 | Google | More links | Edit)
Bogdan, Radu J. (1993). The architectural nonchalance of commonsense psychology. Mind and Language 8 (2):189-205.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Eliminativism assumes that commonsense psychology describes and explains the mind in terms of the internal design and operation of the mind. If this assumption is invalidated, so is eliminativism. The same conditional is true of intentional realism. Elsewhere (Bogdan 1991) I have argued against this 'folk- theory-theory' assumption by showing that commonsense psychology is not an empirical prototheory of the mind but a biosocially motivated practice of coding, utilizing, and sharing information from and about conspecifics. Here, without presupposing a specific analysis of commonsense psychology, I want to challenge a key implication of the 'folk-theory-theory' assumption to the effect that commonsense psychology is committed to a definite architecture of the mind
Botterill, George (1996). Folk psychology and theoretical status. In Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 12 | Google | Edit)
Botterill, George (1989). Human nature and folk psychology in the person and the human mind: Issues. In Ancient and Modern Philosophy. New York: Clarendon Press.   (Google | Edit)
Braddon-Mitchell, David (2004). Folk theories of the third kind. Ratio 17 (3):277-293.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Braddon-Mitchell, David (1998). Metarepresentation. Mind and Language 13 (1):29-34.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Breheny, Richard (2006). Communication and folk psychology. Mind and Language 21 (1):74-107.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Prominent accounts of language use (those of Grice, Lewis, Stalnaker, Sperber and Wilson among others) have viewed basic communicative acts as essentially involving the attitudes of the participating agents. Developmental data poses a dilemma for these accounts, since it suggests children below age four are competent communicators but would lack the ability to conceptualise communication if philosophers and linguists are right about what communication is. This paper argues that this dilemma is quite serious and that these prominent accounts would be undermined if an adequate more minimal alternative were available. Just such a minimalist account of communication is offered, drawing on ideas from relevance theory and situation theory
Cantwell Smith, Brian (1996). Does science underwrite our folk psychology? In W. O'Donahue & Richard F. Kitchener (eds.), The Philosophy of Psychology. Sage Publications.   (Google | Edit)
Chater, Nick & Pickering, Martin J. (2003). Two realms of mental life: The non-overlap of belief ascription and the scientific study of mind and behavior. Facta Philosophica 5 (2):335-353.   (Google | Edit)
Churchland, Paul M. (1988). Folk psychology and the explanation of human behavior. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 62:209-21.   (Cited by 36 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Clark, Andy (1987). From folk psychology to naive psychology. Cognitive Science 11:139-54.   (Cited by 20 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Clark, Andy (1995). Is 'mind' a scientific kind? In Mind and Cognition. Taipei: Inst Euro-Amer Stud.   (Google | Edit)
Collins, John M. (2000). Theory of mind, logical form and eliminativism. Philosophical Psychology 13 (4):465-490.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: I argue for a cognitive architecture in which folk psychology is supported by an interface of a ToM module and the language faculty, the latter providing the former with interpreted LF structures which form the content representations of ToM states. I show that LF structures satisfy a range of key features asked of contents. I confront this account of ToM with eliminativism and diagnose and combat the thought that "success" and innateness are inconsistent with the falsity of folk psychology. I show that, while my ensemble account of ToM and language refutes the culturalist presuppositions that tend to underlie eliminativist arguments, the falsity of folk psychology is consistent with the account
de bij Weg, Henk (2001). The commonsense conception and its relation to scientific theory. Philosophical Explorations 1 (1):17-30.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: In studying what people do two points of view can be distinguished: We can choose the perspective of the actors themselves (the actor’s perspective), or we can look at what is going on from the outside, from a distance (the researcher’s perspective). Regarding the relation between both points of view three standpoints have been defended
Dennett, Daniel C. (1991). Two contrasts: Folk craft vs folk science and belief vs opinion. In John D. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Let us begin with what all of us here agree on: folk psychology is not immune to revision. It has a certain vulnerability in principle. Any particular part of it might be overthrown and replaced by some other doctrine. Yet we disagree about how likely it is that that vulnerability in principle will turn into the actual demise of large portions--or all--of folk psychology. I am of the view that folk psychology is here for the long haul, and for some very good reasons. But I am not going to concentrate on that in my remarks. What nobody has bothered saying here yet, but is probably worth saying, is that for all of its blemishes, warts and perplexities, folk psychology is an extraordinarily powerful source of prediction. It is not just prodigiously powerful but remarkably easy for human beings to use. We are virtuoso exploiters of not so much a theory as a craft. That is, we might better call it a folk craft rather than a folk theory. The theory of folk psychology is the ideology about the craft, and there is lots of room, as anthropologists will remind us, for false ideology
Fletcher, G. (1995). The Scientific Credibility of Folk Psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum.   (Cited by 36 | Google | More links | Edit)
Fletcher, G. (1995). Two uses of folk psychology: Implications for psychological science. Philosophical Psychology 8 (3):375-88.   (Cited by 4 | Google | Edit)
Godfrey-Smith, Peter (1981). Folk psychology as a model. Philosopher's Imprint 5 (6):1-16.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. One sense of "model" 3. Folk psychology as a model 4. Versions and construals 5. Folk psychology in cognitive science and analytic philosophy
Godfrey-Smith, Peter (2004). On folk psychology and mental representation. In Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind. Elsevier.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: into the old view of the mind as a kind of “ghost inside the machine.”
Goldman, A. (1993). The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:15-28 .   (Cited by 135 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomena, so it must study folk psychology, the common understanding of mental states. This subfield of scientific psychology is what I mean by the phrase 'the psychology of folk psychology'
Gordon, Robert M. (online). Reason explanations and counterfactuals.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: In evaluating conditionals concerning what a person would have done in counterfactual circumstances, we suppose the counterfactual antecedent to be true, just as in what I loosely term the standard "Ramsey" procedure; but then we follow a different path--a simulative path--in evaluating the consequent. The simulative path imposes an implicit restriction on possible worlds, a procedural guarantee that the individual simulated is aware of or knows about the counterfactual condition. This difference makes clear the way in which reason explanations are implicitly cognitive and psychological
Graham, George & Horgan, Terence E. (1988). How to be realistic about folk psychology. Philosophical Psychology 1:69-81.   (Cited by 9 | Google | Edit)
Graham, George (1987). The origins of folk psychology. Inquiry 30 (December):357-79.   (Cited by 4 | Google | Edit)
Greenwood, John D. (ed.) (1991). The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 31 | Google | More links | Edit)
Gruene-Yanoff, Till (online). Folk psychological realism without representational commitments - the measurement- theoretic account revisited.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: Standardly, mental properties like beliefs, desires, fears, etc. are analysed as relations between the agent, to whom the predicate is ascribed, and a proposition, which is the intentional content of this property. According to this relational analysis, having a thought implies having its content present to the mind. This has wide-ranging philosophical implications, e.g. for the possibility of children and animals having intentional mental properties, or for the problem of knowing one’s own thoughts. Further, according to the relational analysis, the causal efficacy of mental properties must be in virtue of their content. This implies that folk-psychological explanations acquire a special status, for they employ mental properties as the explanans of behaviour. Mental properties can be conceived of as causally efficacious, and hence like standard scientific explanans, only if a satisfactory account is provided how they are causally efficacious in virtue of their semantic content. A successful account of this sort, I submit, does not exist as of yet; hence it seems, on the relational account, that folk psychological explanations are non-scientific, if they are explanations at all
Haldane, John J. (1988). Folk psychology and the explanation of human behaviour: Understanding folk. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 223:223-254.   (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)
Heal, Jane (2005). Joint Attention and Understanding the Mind. In N. Elian, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack & Johannes Roessler (eds.), Oxford University PressJoint Attention: Communication and Other Minds. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)
Heyes, Cecilia M. & Dickinson, Anthony (1995). Folk psychology won't go away: Response to Allen and Bekoff. Mind and Language 10 (4):329-332.   (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)
Hodgson, David (1994). Neuroscience and folk psychology: An overview. Journal of Consciousness Studies 1 (2):205-216.   (Cited by 5 | Google | Edit)
Horgan, Terence E. (1992). From cognitive science to folk psychology: Computation, mental representation, and belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (2):449-484.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)
Hutto, Daniel D. (1993). A tactical defense of folk psychology. Inside/Out.   (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)
Abstract: Folk psychology is under threat - that is to say - our everyday conception that human beings are agents who experience the world in terms of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings and who deliberate, make plans, and generally execute actions on the basis of their beliefs, needs and wants - is under threat. This threat is evidenced in intellectual circles by the growing attitude amongst some cognitive scientists that our common sense categories are in competition with connectionist theories and modern neuroscience. It is often thought that either folk psychology or modern cognitive science must go. It is in these terms that the battle lines of today’s philosophy of mind are drawn
Hutto, Daniel D. (2004). The limits of spectatorial folk psychology. Mind and Language 19 (5):548-73.   (Cited by 22 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   It is almost universally agreed that the main business of commonsense psychology is that of providing generally reliable predictions and explanations of the actions of others. In line with this, it is also generally assumed that we are normally at theoretical remove from others such that we are always ascribing causally efficacious mental states to them for the purpose of prediction, explanation and control. Building on the work of those who regard our primary intersubjective interactions as a form of 'embodied practice', I defend a secondpersonal approach in this paper
Jackson, Frank (2000). Hornsby and Baker on the physicalist orthodoxy. Philosophical Explorations 3 (2):188-192.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Knobe, Joshua (2007). Reason explanation in folk psychology. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):90–106.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Consider the following explanation: (1) George took his umbrella because it was just about to rain. This is an explanation of a quite distinctive sort. It is profoundly different from the sort of explanation we might use to explain, say, the movements of a bouncing ball or the gradual rise of the tide on a beach. Unlike these other types of explanations, it explains an agent’s behavior by describing the agent’s own _reasons_ for performing that behavior. Explanations that work in this way have a number of distinctive and important properties, and we will refer to them here as _reason explanations_. Looking at the use of reason explanations with a philosophical eye, one is apt to experience a certain puzzlement. One wants to know precisely what makes a given reason explanation true or false. So, for example, the explanation given above seems to be saying that George’s reason for taking his umbrella was that it was just about to rain. But what exactly makes it the case that this is George’s reason? Does he have to actually be
Knowles, Jonathan (2001). Does intentional psychology need vindicating by cognitive science? Minds and Machines 11 (3):347-377.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   I argue that intentional psychology does not stand in need of vindication by a lower-level implementation theory from cognitive science, in particular the representational theory of mind (RTM), as most famously Jerry Fodor has argued. The stance of the paper is novel in that I claim this holds even if one, in line with Fodor, views intentional psychology as an empirical theory, and its theoretical posits as as real as those of other sciences. I consider four metaphysical arguments for the idea that intentional psychological states, such as beliefs, must be seen as requiring in-the-head mental representations for us to be able to understand their characteristic causal powers and argue that none of them validly generate their desired conclusions. I go on to argue that RTM, or some computational version thereof, is not motivated by appeal to the nature of cognitive science research either. I conclude that intentional psychology, though an empirical theory, is autonomous from details of lower level mechanism in a way that renders RTM unwarranted
Knowles, Jonathan (2002). Is folk psychology different? Erkenntnis 57 (2):199-230.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   In this paper, I seek to refute arguments for the idea that folk psychological explanation, i.e., the explanation of actions, beliefs and desires in terms of one another, should be understood as being of a different character than ordinary scientific explanations, a view defended most prominently in analytical philosophy by Donald Davidson and John McDowell. My strategy involves arguing both against the extant arguments for the idea that FP must be construed as giving such explanations, and also against the very notion of such a different kind of explanation. I argue first that the in some sense a priori and conceptual nature of folk psychological principles does not support the idea that these are other than empirical generalisations, by appeal to recent nativist ideas in cognitive science and to Lewis's conception of the meaning of theoretical terms. Second, I argue that there is no coherent sense in which folk psychological explanations can be seen as normative. Thirdly, I examine the putatively holistic character of the mental and conclude that that too fails to provide any cogent reasons for viewing folk psychological explanations as different from other kinds of explanation
Landy, David (2005). Inside doubt: On the non-identity of the theory of mind and propositional attitude psychology. Minds and Machines 15 (3-4):399-414.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Eliminative materialism is a popular view of the mind which holds that propositional attitudes, the typical units of our traditional understanding, are unsupported by modern connectionist psychology and neuroscience, and consequently that propositional attitudes are a poor scientific postulate, and do not exist. Since our traditional folk psychology employs propositional attitudes, the usual argument runs, it too represents a poor theory, and may in the future be replaced by a more successful neurologically grounded theory, resulting in a drastic improvement in our interpersonal relationships. I contend that these eliminativist arguments typically run together two distinct capacities: the folk psychological mechanisms which we use to understand one another, and scientific and philosophical guesses about the structure of those understandings. Both capacities are ontologically committed and therefore empirical. However, the commitments whose prospects look so dismal to the eliminativist, in particular the causal and logical image of propositional attitudes, belong to the guesses, and not necessarily to the underlying mechanisms. It is the commitments of traditional philosophical perspectives about the operation of our folk psychology which are contradicted by␣new evidence and modeling methods in connectionist psychology. Our actual folk psychology was not clearly committed to causal, sentential propositional attitudes, and thus is not directly threatened by connectionist psychology
Leon, Mark . (1998). The unnaturalness of the mental: The status of folk psychology. Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (3):367-92.   (Google | Edit)
Luis Bermúdez, José (2001). The domain of folk psychology. In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons. Cambridge University Press.   (Google | Edit)
Lycan, William G. (1997). Folk psychology and its liabilities. In Martin Carrier & Peter K. Machamer (eds.), Mindscapes: Philosophy, Science, and the Mind. Pittsburgh University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)
Macdonald, C. (2002). Theories of mind and 'the commonsense view'. Mind and Language 17 (5):467-488.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Machery, Edouard (2006). The folk concept of intentional action: Philosophical and experimental issues. Mind and Language.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Thanks for helpful comments to Gregory Currie, Josh Knobe, Ron Mallon, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Shaun Nichols, Steve Stich, Liane Young, the readers of the blog Experimental Philosophy (http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/) as well as two anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to my research assistant on this project, Julie Sokolow, for her help and her comments
Malle, Bertram F. (2004).