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18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology

[is the truth about minds found in normal speech?]

19 ideas
Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The desire that grips Fodor, as it once gripped me, is the desire to make belief-desire psychology "scientific" by simply identifying it outright with computational psychology.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], p.7)
     A reaction: An "outright" identification looks very implausible. It seems that we should accept that belief-desire psychology is a very good guide to normal brain events, but a bad guide to unusual brain events. See Ideas 2987 and 7519.
We don't postulate folk psychology, we experience it [Searle]
     Full Idea: We do not postulate beliefs and desires to account for anything; we simply experience conscious beliefs and desires.
     From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 2 App)
     A reaction: Searle is too fond of reporting what we 'simply' know. Beliefs and desires are pushed forward by a cultural tradition. What I actually experience is a confusion, always laced with emotion.
Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology has a tripartite nature, with input clauses, internal role clauses, and output clauses.
     From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5)
     A reaction: Interesting, particularly that folk psychology refers to internal roles, or attempts to explain what is going on inside the 'black box'. The folk have collectively worked out a standard flow diagram for human thought.
Folk psychology has been remarkably durable [Kim]
     Full Idea: Commonsense psychology seems to have an advantage over scientific psychology: its apparent greater stability. Scientific theories seem to come and go.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.110)
     A reaction: This seems to make the assumption that the folk are in universal long-term agreement about such things, which seems doubtful. See Ideas 2987 and 3410.
A culture without our folk psychology would be quite baffling [Kim]
     Full Idea: A culture that lacked our folk psychology would be unintelligible to us, and its language untranslatable into our own.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.110)
     A reaction: Surely we can manage to discuss the processing life of a robot, without having to resort to anthropomorphic psychology? Its human-style behaviour will fit, but the rest blatantly won't.
Maybe folk psychology is a simulation, not a theory [Kim]
     Full Idea: There is the "theory" theory of commonsense psychology, and also a "simulation" theory, which says it is not a matter of laws, but of simulating the behaviour of others, using ourselves as models.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.123)
     A reaction: Using ourselves as models may be the normal and correct way to relate to people within our own culture, but we have to start theorising when we encounter (e.g.) suicide bombers.
Folk psychology has adapted to Freudianism [Kim]
     Full Idea: Freudian depth psychology has now almost achieved the status of folk psychology of the sophisticates.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.158)
     A reaction: You don't need to be a 'sophisticate' to laugh knowingly when someone makes an embarrassing Freudian slip. Terms like 'neurotic' are commonplace among modern folk.
Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology is a powerful instrument of prediction, …which associates with each mental state a typical causal role.
     From: David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.416)
     A reaction: This seems a good account of why we should take folk psychology very seriously, even if it is sometimes wrong (e.g. about people who are mentally ill).
If folk psychology gives a network of causal laws, that fits neatly with functionalism [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: The portrait of folk psychology as a network of causal laws dovetailed neatly with the emerging philosophy of mind called functionalism.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], II)
     A reaction: And from the lower levels functionalism is supported by the notion that the brain is modular. Note the word 'laws'; this implies an underlying precision in folk psychology, which is then easily attacked. Maybe the network is too complex for simple laws.
Many mental phenomena are totally unexplained by folk psychology [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology fails utterly to explain a considerable variety of central psychological phenomena: mental illness, sleep, creativity, memory, intelligence differences, and many forms of learning, to cite just a few.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III)
     A reaction: If folk psychology is a theory, it will have been developed to predict behaviour, rather than as a full-blown psychological map. The odd thing is that some people seem to be very bad at folk psychology.
Folk psychology never makes any progress, and is marginalised by modern science [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology has not progressed significantly in the last 2500 years; if anything, it has been steadily in retreat during this period; it does not integrate with modern science, and its emerging wallflower status bodes ill for its future.
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III)
     A reaction: [compressed] However, while shares in alchemy and astrology have totally collapsed, folk psychology shows not the slightest sign of going away, and it is unclear how it ever could. See Idea 3177.
Like the 'centre of gravity', desires and beliefs are abstract concepts with no actual existence [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Like such abstracta as centres of gravity and parallelograms of force, the beliefs and desires posited by the highest intentional stance have no independent and concrete existence.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (Daniel Dennett on himself [1994], p.239)
     A reaction: I don't see why we shouldn't one day have a physical account of the distinctive brain events involved in a belief or a desire
You couldn't drive a car without folk psychology [Dennett]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology is indispensable for driving a car, which would be terrifying if we didn't assume there were psychologically normal people behind the wheels.
     From: Daniel C. Dennett (works [1985]), quoted by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind p.133 n35
     A reaction: Nice example. If someone is approaching you from the front on your side of the road, should you assume that they are 'psychologically normal'? Does psychology imply behaviour, or vice versa?
Folk psychology explains behaviour by reference to intentional states like belief and desire [Fodor]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology is primarily intentional explanation; it's the idea that people's behaviour can be explained by reference to the contents of their beliefs and desires.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.292)
     A reaction: Sounds good. To reject folk psychology (as reductivists tend to) is to reject the existence of significant intentional states which have causal properties
Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have [Fodor]
     Full Idea: Commonsense belief/desire psychology explains vastly more of the facts about behaviour than any of the alternative theories available. It could hardly fail to; there are no alternative theories available.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.x)
     A reaction: The alternative view wouldn't expect a clear-cut theory, because it deals with the endless complexity of brain events. The charge is that Fodor and co oversimplify their account, in their desperation for a 'theory'.
Folk psychology works badly for alien cultures [Lyons]
     Full Idea: It is not easy to employ our folk psychology in the understanding of persons in a very different culture.
     From: William Lyons (Approaches to Intentionality [1995], p.241)
     A reaction: This strikes me as a highly significant problem for the friends of folk psychology. It also breaks down in extreme situations, or with mental illness. It seems closer to culture than to brain structure.
Folk psychology and neuroscience are no more competitors than cartography and geology are [Heil]
     Full Idea: Folk psychology and neuroscience are not competitors, any more than cartography and geology are competitors.
     From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5)
     A reaction: This seems true enough, unless someone like Fodor claims that the correct way to do neuroscience is to try to explicate folk psychology categories in terms of brain function. Folk psychology is fine for folk.
Folk psychology is ridiculously dualist in its assumptions [Segal]
     Full Idea: Commonsense psychology is a powerful explanatory theory, and largely correct, but it seems to be profoundly dualist, and treats minds as immaterial spirits which can transmigrate and exist disembodied.
     From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2)
     A reaction: Fans of folk psychology tend to focus on central normal experience, but folk psychology also seems to range from quirky to barking mad. A 'premonition' is a widely accepted mental event.
Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman]
     Full Idea: The three components of essentialism as a folk belief are the idea that certain categories are natural kinds, the idea that some unobservable property causes the way things are, and the idea that words reflect real structures.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims')