The Pluralist Answer to the Question of the Content Of Folk Psychology

Abstract

Folk psychology as the basis of our capacity to explain and predict behavior is one of the main topics of the philosophy of mind. However, the discussions surrounding it have focused primarily on the questions of its status in the scientific study of the mind and the form of its constitutive mechanisms (theory, form, etc.). Relatively less attention has been paid to the question of its content – which concepts or abilities to sort under the label “folk psychology”. I will focus on the question of content and one possible answer to it given by the pluralist view of folk psychology. First, I will provide some arguments questioning the standard view of folk psychology and then I will introduce the pluralist view, which broadens folk psychology by a number of social cognition abilities. Finally, I will briefly focus on the consequences of this broader construal of folk psychology for the questions of status and form.

Keywords

• folk psychology
• social cognition
• pluralist view of folk psychology
• propositional attitude psychology