ABSTRACT
Philosophers have tended to focus attention on beliefs and desires, a Fodorian ‘language of thought’, based on the computational model of mind because they have tended to gloss folk psychology as propositional attitudes. In everyday life the main function of folk psychology is to give an account of others’ behaviour. This is reminiscent of Humphrey’s view that the function of self-consciousness is to enable social animals empathically to make sense of the behaviour of other members of the group. However, it appears that there are number of important differences between folk psychology and scientific psychology, first, with respect to functions. Folk psychology is a framework for managing interpersonal relationships, and thus often has moral, theological or epistemological overtones and purposes. Folk psychology and scientific psychology also differ with respect to their scope. The former is primarily concerned with social and personality psychology, whereas the latter deals with the whole range of behaviour, including cognitive and physiological aspects.
