The Very Idea of a Folk Psychology*

Philosophers with a yen for conceptual reform are nowadays prone to describe our ordinary, common sense, Rylean description of the mind as ‘folk psychology,’ the implication being that when we ascribe intentions, beliefs, motives, and emotions to others we are offering explanations of those persons’ behaviour, explanations which belong to a sort of prescientific theory. Though the term is in vogue, the philosophers whose belief in folk psychology make their writings very acceptable clay pigeons are Paul and Patricia Churchland and Stephen Stich. ¹ All three contrast folk psychology with a pukka theory about the mind and its workings which is either broadly materialist or more specifically based on the computer model. For all three, folk psychology is thought of as a stone-age relative of more respectable scientific theories. For all three, folk psychology is as theoretical an enterprise as the explanation of the reflex contraction of the pupil in the face of a bright light in terms of a neural network. The origin of these ideas seems to lie in Wilfrid Sellars's work of a couple of decades ago; ² I shall argue that our policy should be ‘caveat emptor.’