Folk psychology
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Folk psychology (sometimes called naïve psychology, common sense psychology or vernacular psychology) is the set of background assumptions, socially-conditioned prejudices and convictions that are implicit in our everyday descriptions of others' behavior and in our ascriptions of their mental states.[1] It includes concepts such as belief ("he thinks that Peter is wise"), desire ("she wants that piece of cake"), fear ("Alex is afraid of spiders") and hope ("she hopes that he is on time today").
Folk psychology is not a scientific theory, because it does not make testable predictions.[1]
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[edit] Examples
Folk theories, i.e. theories that are based on common, everyday experiences, but not subjected to rigorous experimental techniques, may underlie[weasel words] many of our actions. For instance, a fairly sophisticated folk physics (the theory of the behavior of middle-sized, common objects, such as tables, chairs and bowling balls) is essential to our everyday interactions with the surrounding environment.
Just think of all the assumptions you make about the clothing you are currently wearing, for example, that it is not going to melt, that it stays at a certain temperature range in standard conditions, that it will not protect you from bullets and so on. Similarly, folk psychology is considered the basis for many of our social actions and judgments about the psychology of others. It encompasses all of the assumptions we make about the correlations between people's behavior, mental states, and surrounding conditions.
[edit] Controversy
Many philosophers, under the influence of Wittgenstein and Sellars, have denied that the alleged theoretical entities posited by folk psychology ("beliefs", "desires", etc.) have any causal status.[citation needed] According to the theory-theory, a typical causal or counterfactual generalization (or law) of folk psychology would be characterized schematically as follows:
- If X wants that Y, and believes that Z is necessary for Y, then X will do Z.
If, as the Wittgensteinian claims[citation needed], propositional attitudes are not causes, then this would turn out to be meaningless. However, it is not clear on this analysis what properties such mental states do have, if not that of causality.
In the view of Daniel Dennett[citation needed], X wants that Y and believes that Z is necessary for Y just in case it can be predictively attributed these beliefs and desires. He maintains this even if it is a simple animal, such as a frog, or a non-living object, such as a robot. In this, he declines to identify beliefs or desires with specific natural kinds. Thus, our folk-psychological talk about beliefs and desires is essential and frequently true, but does not concern entities in the brain.
[edit] Alternate views
Others claim[weasel words] that what we actually do when we attempt to mentally describe and explain other's behavior is simulate the behavior and the mental states of the other person within our own mind. On this view, folk psychology is not an explicit theory, but rather a practice based on this ability to simulate.
Those who reject eliminativism but accept that folk psychology is a theory may argue[weasel words] that this theory developed over time, or the course of evolution, into a successful tool for predicting the behavior of other humans and animals.
Another Perspective:
It has been argued (during past academic dialog) that we all, beginning at some infantile stage, are responding in an adaptive manner to the world around us; more specifically the people in it. The stated anacdotal evidence is the seemingly uncanny (naive, unconscious) tendency of a child to try to manipulate those raising them to satisfy their needs/wants. And, often being incredibly successful at it. In the case of abuse and neglect, this development is contaminated and twisted, leaving the child with very disfunctional relational and behavioral patterns--complete with often pathological explanations and justifications for their actions and emotive states.
If such explanation and analysis is valid, it would appear most likely to fit within development constructs, Therefore, the best definition(s) and understanding of it may well be found or infered via developmental theories. As such, it is not then necessarily evolutionary (in a purely random or macro evolutionary sense), nor locked in stasis at a particular stage of development. Rather, it is likely subject to complex changes ranging from further life experiences in general, education both formal and informal, and, especially, the social norms and pressures, including interpretive explanations of those groups.
Another inference is that we all are practicing our own unique "brand" of naive psychology virtually all the time. Social animals that we are, we are both influenced and influencing each other in overt and subtle ways (conscious and unconscious). The worst possible personal condition then is that we compound any our very likely and common interpretive errors of others and reality by being naive to this then "normal" naive state. Awareness of this naive state and any possibility of directed (micro evolutionary) adaptive growth is significantly enhanced by an admission of its personal and pervasive probablity--and hindered by any and all denial that we are somehow magically not subject to it.
[edit] Folk physics
Folk physics has been, to a large extent, discredited and shown to be thoroughly inadequate in providing robust explanations of various physical phenomena. This, of course, raises the question of how folk psychology would fare in this respect and this matter is a subject of lively debate in the philosophy of mind.
Philosophers take various attitudes toward the possibility of vindicating / extending folk psychology by allowing its theoretical terms (e.g. 'belief' 'desire' etc.) to play a role in serious scientific theorizing.
Among the advocates of such a possibility, Jerry Fodor is surely the most famous (for a defense of this view see his 1987 book "Psychosemantics"). The other extreme is exemplified by eliminative materialists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland and Stephen Stich. Although Stich no longer considers himself an eliminativist, his book, "From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief" generated much attention for eliminative materialism.
Daniel Dennett's Intentional Stance theory[citation needed] can be viewed as a middle ground, as he concedes some aspects of eliminativism (arguing that folk psychological entities cannot be reduced to natural kinds in the brain) whilst still seeing the value of folk psychological concepts as both essential to our understandings of and dealings with other people, and as grounded in real regularities in human behavior.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Scott M. Christensen, Scott M. Christensen; Dale R. Turner (1993). Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind Introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, xv-xxx. ISBN 0805809317.
[edit] Further reading
- Geary, D. C. (2005). Folk knowledge and academic learning. In B. J. Ellis & D. F. Bjorklund (Eds.), Origins of the social mind (pp. 493-519). New York: Guilford Publications. Full text
- Horgan, T. and Woodward, J. (1999). Folk Psychology is Here to Stay. In Lycan, W.G., (Ed.), Mind and Cognition: An Anthology, 2nd Edition. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.
- Hutto, Daniel D. (2008). "Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons", Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262083676
