Do Apes Read Minds?: Toward a New Folk Psychology

Chapter 10. Folk Psychological Pluralism: Reading People, Not Minds

10 Folk Psychological Pluralism: Reading People, Not Minds Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. —F. Scott Fitzgerald The Principles of a Pluralistic Folk Psychology According to Standard Folk Psychology, human understanding of other people rests on our sense that behavior is caused by beliefs and desires. However, the evidence presented thus far indicates that this view is misguided , because humans use a variety of methods to engage in their folk psychological practices, and not all these methods require seeing others as having reasons for their actions. According to a pluralistic account of folk psychology, while many different cognitive processes facilitate social interaction , what is necessary for being a folk psychologist is the ability to see others as intentional agents. In the standard view, the dividing line between folk psychologists and others is the ability to see others as acting from their propositional attitudes. However, this dividing line underestimates the power of other cognitive processes used in social interaction. Even without a robust understanding of beliefs and desires, agents can predict and explain others’ behavior. They can also justify behavior, shape their own behavior to acceptable societal standards, coordinate their behavior with others, identify intentional action, make moral judgments, and engage in a host of other social practices that are arguably as important as predicting and explaining behavior. Instead of taking folk psychologists to be the class of people who are able to attribute beliefs and desires to others, we can offer a different set of criteria. To engage in our folk psychological practices, we require two 184 Chapter 10 capacities. First, a folk psychologist must be able to distinguish agents from nonagents. Second, a folk psychologist must have facility with at least some of the cognitive mechanisms that allow for engagement with some of the practices of prediction, explanation, and so forth. If you want a dividing line, that is the best you’ll get. Organisms who are able to differentiate intentional agents from everything else and interact socially with other intentional agents have many of the properties that make us so interested in human mind and action. After that, it is all a matter of degree. Having the concepts of belief and desire does not make for a radical change in social interactions, for as I have argued, it isn’t necessary for the ability to predict others’ actions, or even for the ability to explain behavior, and as I argue in the next chapter, it isn’t necessary for deception, either. Recall that standard folk psychology is based on the following commitments: (SFP1) Propositional attitudes are the cause of all intentional behavior. (SFP2) Folk psychology is the attribution of propositional attitudes. (SFP3) One needs to be a folk psychologist to have robust success in predicting, explaining, and interpreting behavior. (SFP4) The method that allows us to predict behavior is also the method that allows us to explain behavior. Given the centrality of (SFP3) to the definition of folk psychology, I have argued that we should preserve this principle, but in so doing, we are forced to reject all the others. I propose that we replace the principles of SFP with another set of principles that are consistent with both (SFP3) and the descriptive account of social cognition that I have presented. Let us replace them with the principles of a Pluralistic Folk Psychology, as follows: (PFP1) One needs to be a folk psychologist to have robust success in predicting, explaining, and interpreting behavior. (PFP2) Folk psychology is a social competence, which includes the ability to identify behavior, predict behavior, explain behavior, justify behavior, normalize behavior, coordinate behavior, and so on. (PFP3) The social competences of folk psychology are supported by a number of different cognitive mechanisms, and one’s degree of success as a folk psychologist is a function of the number of competences mastered and the degree of facility with the different competences. Folk Psychological Pluralism 185 (PFP4) Intentional behavior is seen as sometimes caused by any number of factors, such as moods, propositional attitudes, emotions, and so on, and sometimes influenced by other factors such as personality traits, dispositions , or historical facts. (PFP5) The requirement...