Folk psychology Re-Assessed

Abstract

This is a truly groundbreaking work that examines today's notions of folk psychology. Bringing together disciplines as various as cognitive science and anthropology, the authors analyze the consensual views of the subject. The contributors all maintain that current understandings of folk psychology and of the mechanisms that underlie it need to be revised, supplemented or dismissed altogether. Although there is considerable debate over which cognitive processes support our folk psychological abilities and how those abilities develop during childhood, there has up to now been a remarkable degree of consensus concerning what folk psychology involves. Most discussions begin by stating or assuming that it consists primarily of an ability to attribute propositional attitudes to humans and other organisms, in order to predict and explain their behavior. This ability is usually regarded as an underlying core that enables all social life, rather than just one amongst many ingredients of human social ability. There have been a number of recent criticisms of this orthodox characterization, which question the scope, function, reliabili. © 2007 Springer. All rights reserved.