When does ‘Folk Psychology’ Count as Folk Psychological?

Abstract

It has commonly been argued that certain types of mental descriptions, specifically those characterized in terms of propositional attitudes, are part of a folk psychological understanding of the mind. Recently, however, it has also been argued that this is the case even when such descriptions are employed as part of scientific theories in domains like social psychology and comparative psychology. In this paper, I argue that there is no plausible way to understand the distinction between folk and scientific psychology that can support such claims. Moreover, these sorts of claims can have adverse consequences for the neuroscientific study of the brain by downplaying the value of many psychological theories that provide information neuroscientists need in order to build and test neurological models.

Processos Cognitivos e Mente Estendida: uma metáfora neofuncionalista?

“…Ao assumirmos a hipótese preliminar de que a cognição e os processos cognitivos são atrelados à dinâmica fisiológica cerebral, devemos também aceitar a existência de um dilema quando consideramos a percepção e/ou recepção dos fenômenos exteriores, geralmente desconsiderados. Alguns autores (Nagel, 1974;Searle, 1980) têm sustentando que os eventos exteriores são irrelevantes ou insuficientes para a avaliação da qualidade do conteúdo mental; outros (Aranyosi, 2011;Churchland, 2013;Hochstein, 2017), ao contrário, têm argumentado que o conflito epistêmico entre mental e físico é de natureza aparente, uma vez que há uma expectativa gramatical escondendo os reais processos fisiológicos e químicos que acontecem no cérebro.…”

Neuroscience and everyday life: Facing the translation problem

“…Thus, we can contrast neuroscience and FP in terms of their vocabularies (SCCs vs. CCCs), but we can also contrast them in terms of styles of explanation (see also Hochstein, 2016). Does FN resemble FP or neuroscience when comparing, respectively, vocabularies and styles of explanation?…”