Single Idea 2074

[catalogued under 18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology]

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.

Gist of Idea

Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology?

Source

Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], p.7)

Book Reference

Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], 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.

Related Ideas

Idea 2987 Folk psychology works badly for alien cultures [Lyons]

Idea 7519 Many mental phenomena are totally unexplained by folk psychology [Churchland,PM]