The very idea of Folk Psychology

by Thomas Pyne

Suppose that the phenomena historically associated with demonic possession can be explained as psychotic symptoms.  That would not tempt us in the slightest to adopt reductionist theoretical identities like:

• Belial  =  Psychotic Condition X
• Asmodeus = Psychotic Condition Y

Instead we would just say, “There are no demons.”  And eliminate them from our ontology.

What makes a sort of entity A a candidate for an eliminativist program rather than reduction via theoretical identification?  Two conditions:  (i) A does no work in a literal and complete account of Everything That Is So; (ii) A has dubious credentials.  That is, we have reason to suppose that our acceptance of A was based on some cognitive error, or confusion.  An eliminativist program then must account for the error by which we came, mistakenly, to think that there were A’s. 

Contemporary Eliminative Physicalism has been conscientious in its attempt to meet both conditions.  First condition: it claims that attributing mental states is not needed in a literal and complete account of the world. Rather, the place of those attributions will be taken, as Paul Churchland puts it, by the employment of the conceptual scheme of a matured neuroscience.  It’s not that, say, ‘believing’ will be revealed as a brain process; it’s that there is no such thing as believing.  With the science-based conceptual scheme we will be able to talk about what is really going on in the brain instead.   Adoption of the new scheme in place of the old will constitute a “quantum leap in self-apprehension.” (It will accomplish that, of course, only if our ordinary mental attributions really don’t do any work.)

Second condition:  our traditional attribution of mental states is consequent upon a conceptual scheme that embodies a mistaken and inadequate theory.  This conceptual scheme, “Folk Psychology,” is the same kind of error or confusion as invoking demons to explain the voices schizophrenics hear.

The two conditions on an eliminativist program are not independent.  If it turns out that accepting a sort  of entity A is not, after all, a cognitive error or confusion (which is required for meeting the second condition), this weakens our grounds for thinking that A will not figure in a literal and complete account of Everything That Is So.    

This trope of characterizing our mental concepts as ‘Folk Psychology’should be subjected to sterner questioning than it usually is.  In particular we should question the assumption that our ordinary mental concepts form a theory. Just on the face of it, this is an implausible piece of historical revisionism, and I have thought so from the very first time I encountered the phrase.

In any language with which I was familiar the common verbs for cognitive activity are of the same antiquity, and are as much semantic ‘roots,’ as the verbs for other common activities. Liddell & Scott’s  Greek-English Lexicon thoughtfully prints semantic roots in caps. GEN (‘become’:  the root of ordinary Greek epistemic terms, eg. gnosis) BOL (‘desire’ or ‘intend’), PEITHO (‘overcome,’ ‘persuade,’ or in the middle voice ‘believe’) are basic to the language as EDO (‘eat’), PNEO (‘breathe’), BDEO (‘fart’), and BINEO (‘mate’).  In Old English ‘think,’ ‘ween,’ ‘deem’ are “four-letter” words:  as ancient as ‘walk,’ ‘sleep,’ and ‘shit.’ 

The best abductive explanation of this fact is that mental terms, like the other terms, designate common ordinary human functions and actions.  There is no particular distinction made between ‘physical’ actions and functions and ‘mental’ ones.  Eating, sleeping, farting, thinking, believing, and desiring are all just Stuff People Do.

To describe someone as ‘believing that it will rain,” or “wanting to lie down” is not to offer some sophisticated – though mistaken –  explanation of what they’re doing;  it’s simply to describe it.  What is a piece of philosophical sophistication is distinguishing between the ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ in a way that makes such attributions seem conceptually troublesome.  But this philosophical sophistication doesn’t license our reading that distinction back into our ordinary conceptual scheme.

To use an analogy, ‘Zeus’s Spear^’ is an explanatory concept (in ‘Folk Meteorology’) of a more basic phenomenon, lightning.  ‘Lightning,’ however, is not a term of Folk Meteorology: it does not convey an explanation of anything.  It names the phenomenon to be explained.  Likewise, there is no more basic phenomenon that ‘believe’ serves to explain:  it is the phenomenon.  ‘Believe’ is like ‘lightning,’ not like ‘Zeus’s Spear.’

Eliminative physicalism regarding the mental became a popular strategy in the 80’s and 90’s again when it grew increasingly clear that reductive physicalism was never going to work.  But candidates for eliminativist strategies are entities with dubious credentials, our belief in which is based on confusions.  Thinking, desiring, and believing hardly come with dubious credentials.  They are common human functions, among the most obvious and humdrum features of our being in the world.

They are, when you stop to think about it, the least likely candidates imaginable for an eliminativist program. After all, there are no philosophers trying to eliminate ‘shit.’

That's because it makes an indispensable contribution to a literal and complete account of Everything That Is So.

Thomas F. Pyne
Professor
Department of Philosophy
Sacramento State