Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons

Notes

Notes Preface 1. Some prefer to talk of “commonsense psychology” as opposed to “folk psychology .” This is because the latter label was pejoratively fashioned by the enemies of this practice in order to highlight its weak scientific credentials. Calling it “folk” psychology was meant to signal that its tenets are outmoded, limited, and backward —that is, to highlight the fact that it is indeed “folksy.” However, I do not think our everyday practice of making sense of actions in terms of reasons can be usefully thought of as theoretical, nor can virtues and vices be compared in any straightforward manner with what is promised by a scientific psychology. Thus, in talking of folk psychology I happily ally myself with the vulgar without shame or embarrassment (see Hutto 1999a). Chapter 1 1. One might say that I am concerned with reasons under the aspect in which they motivate actions. Falling in line with tradition, I take this to be distinct from the question of whether the reason in question might be designated a “good” one. For more on this distinction and a challenge to the tradition see Dancy 2000. 2. Strictly speaking, practical reasoning does not result in action but always only in an intention to act (see Broome 2002). Malle (1999) offers five criteria for having the mature “folk concept of intentionality.” Crucially, among these criteria he defends the traditional view that “a belief or desire functions as a reason only if the agent considered it in at least a rudimentary reasoning process and formed an intention in light of it” (p. 26). I agree. 3. Anscombe’s classic work, Intention, published in 1957, is often cited as the modern locus classicus on this topic, but the idea has a much more venerable history. It appears in rudimentary form even in Aristotle, who tells us that “intellect itself moves nothing. . . . Hence choice is either desiderative thought or intellectual desire” (EN, 1139a 35–36, 1139b 4–5). 4. Note that I have identified folk psychology as a certain kind of practice. This is important because often the labels “folk psychology” and “theory of mind” are used to denote a set of rules or propositions—those that putatively underlie or explain our capacity to engage the everyday practice of giving and understanding reasons. To accept this characterization would be to get ahead of ourselves, to muddle the explanandum with a possible explanans. 5. I accept that “belief-desire reasoning forms the core of commonsense psychology ” (Baker 1999, 3). 6. Terminology—or rather its associated effects—matters. Loose talk sinks ships, so they say, but it can also keep them afloat. As long as our talk is unregulated it is impossible to assess claims properly. 7. To understand why it is generally supposed that the primary job of folk psychology is to effect third-person prediction and explanation, we must look at some rather big movements in the recent history of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. For what one finds is that the standard vision of the function of folk psychology is structurally supported at several points. Essentially, a number of factors conspired to make theory theory the reigning view, leaving simulation to play the role of its natural, if relatively conservative, rival. For it was the rise of the idea that folk psychology is best understood as a kind of low-level theory that gave credence to the now popular idea that its core business is predictive-explanatory in character. For a detailed account of the received view and its ideological history, see the introduction to Ratcliffe and Hutto 2007. 8. Gallagher (2001, 96) is right to stress that “a more basic question is whether our ordinary attempts to understand other people are best characterized as explanations and predictions.” For one thing, it is not plausible that we could take a detached interest in the movements of all those we encounter, for to do so would surely sap our intellectual resources. It is much more likely that we only tend to track those actions of others that have some potentially direct impact on us, since doing so is vital if we are to successfully coordinate our actions (see Morton 2003, chap. 1). 9. I have defended an account of nonconceptual content and connectionist processing that would suit this style of approach (see Hutto 1999b, chaps. 3, 4). Henderson and Horgan (2000) also develop an explanation along similar lines. 10. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, common...