From folk psychology to commonsense

Abstract

The term 'folk psychology' is sometimes employed to mean 'our everyday, commonsense understanding of others' but can also be used to refer to the more specific view that everyday interpersonal understanding is enabled by a theory, rather than by simulation. The 'theory' theory is controversial. However, an account of 'commonsense' or 'folk' psychology, in the former sense of the term, is routinely accepted, according to which its central element is the attribution of intentional states, principally beliefs and desires, in order to predict and explain behaviour. For example, Stich and Ravenscroft (1996) observe that "ordinary folk certainly don't take themselves to be invoking a theory when they use intentional terms to explain other people's behaviour" (p. 117) and go on to claim that there are "various possible interpretations of the assumption that beliefs, desires, and other commonsense mental states are posits of a folk theory of the mind" (p. 124). Although such remarks indicate that the 'theory' theory is not part of commonsense, they also imply that the attribution of intentional states to explain behaviour is. Stich and Ravenscroft distinguish two different interpretations of the claim that folk psychology is a 'theory'. It might be an internal structure that facilitates commonsense psychology or, alternatively, an external systematisation of folk psychological platitudes imposed by philosophers and others. So there are at least three different senses of 'folk psychology': (a) everyday talk and thought about beliefs, desires and other mental states, (b) the internal cognitive structure that facilitates it, and (c) a structure imposed upon it from the outside. My focus here will be on (a), which is presupposed by both (b) and (c). It is generally agreed by participants in the theory-simulation debate that 'folk psychology', understood in this broad sense, is not just a constituent of social ability but a central enabling condition for all social life. For example, Wellman (1990, p. 1) asserts that "an understanding of the mind is also fundamental to an understanding of the social world" and that this understanding consists of an ability to "explain our own and others' actions mentalistically, that is, in terms of the wishes, hopes, beliefs, plans, and intentions of the actor" (p. 8). And Churchland (1998, p. 3) goes so far as to state that folk psychology "embodies our baseline understanding of the cognitive, affective, and purposive nature of other people". 1 How are such claims supported? Assertions and assumptions about the nature and centrality of belief-desire psychology appear frequently, without explanation or justification. So perhaps the answer is that little effort is required to illuminate the structure of 'commonsense psychology'. Most of the recent literature takes an appreciation of what we do for granted and focuses instead on the philosophical problems that arise when it comes to explaining how we do it. Some claim that we employ a largely tacit theory; a systematically organised, domain-specific body of conceptual knowledge, embodied in the brain. Others claim that a large part of the burden is taken up by simulation; one uses one's own psychological mechanisms to model those of others and predicts their behaviour by working out what one would do in a similar environment or psychological state. There are also a number of hybrid theories, incorporating elements from both. But, despite numerous points of disagreement, most accounts start off with the same explanandum: everyday interpersonal understanding, construed as the attribution of intentional states in order to predict and explain behaviour. (Hereafter, I will refer to the conjunction of the claims that (a) we have a 'commonsense' or 'folk' psychology and (b) its main ingredient is an ability to attribute intentional states in order to predict and explain behaviour, as FP.)2 In what follows, I will challenge the orthodox account of FP in three ways. First of all, I will focus on the claim that certain abilities or concepts are part of our social 'commonsense', of a 'folk' view, and will show that proponents of FP have neglected to clarify what they mean by 'commonsense'. As a result, they fail to demarcate commonsense views from debatable philosophical positions. Then I will investigate the alleged scope of FP. Like other contributors to this volume, including Morton, I will argue that there are different kinds of social situation, which demand a number of different social skills. I will suggest that FP is not needed at all in some social situations and that its relevance to others is debatable. Despite this, participants in the theory-simulation debate have neglected to offer a clear account of its scope, the exception being those who have asserted, without argument, that it is the source of all social life. Finally, I will turn to the main ingredients of FP, focusing on belief. I will show that the term 'belief', as employed by proponents of FP, encompasses many different psychological states, in addition to features of situations. Although everyday talk allows us to intuit the differences between these states, examples of belief-desire explanation, of the kind routinely offered by proponents of FP, do not. Consequently, 'belief', as the term is employed in much of the folk psychology literature, is an abstract placeholder for a variety of psychological states that feature in everyday explanations of action. I conclude by suggesting that FP has no psychological reality and is instead an abstract philosophical systematisation of social life, the utility of which is unclear. © 2007 Springer.