| 1981 | Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes |
| p.64 | 4988 | Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false | |
| Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true. | |||
| From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9 | |||
| A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory. |
| Intro | p.120 | 4987 | Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced |
| Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced). | |||
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'. |
| 1996 | Folk Psychology |
| II | p.7 | 7518 | If folk psychology gives a network of causal laws, that fits neatly with functionalism |
| 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. |
| III | p.8 | 7520 | Folk psychology never makes any progress, and is marginalised by modern science |
| 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. |
| III | p.8 | 7519 | Many mental phenomena are totally unexplained by folk psychology |
| 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. |