Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 37 No. 3, 2017.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.21464/fi37310
Folk Psychology: Scientific Perspectives of Realism, Eliminativism, and Instrumentalism
Marin Biondić
; Sveučilište u Rijeci, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilišna Avenija 4, RI–51000
Abstract
In this paper I analyse realist, eliminativist, and instrumentalist approach towards mental discourse on folk psychology. The basic idea is to examine folk psychology as a theory which explains and predicts behaviour. If folk psychology is a theory, then it must be reducible to or incorporated into a well-founded scientific physical theory, neuroscience foremost. The question is, is such a thing, even in principle, possible? Should we expect the scientific reduction of the entity of folk psychology or is it realistic to expect its elimination from scientific explanation and prediction of behaviour insofar as it is not possible to establish a connection with physical sciences? Or are we perhaps supposed to treat folk psychology as an abstract theory which is justified in its application, but has no scientific physical relations between its entities, and the entities of physical sciences? I begin this paper with the everyday, common sense use of folk psychology in explaining and predicting behaviour, and I follow up with a brief presentation of realist perspective and its issues. Afterwards, I lay out eliminativist perspective and its reach in the debate, and pass on to the promising perspective of instrumentalism. Finally, I endorse a transformation of the perspective of instrumentalism into a milder form of realism by introducing the notion of scattered causality.
Keywords
folk psychology; realism; eliminativism; instrumentalism; propositional attitudes; scattered causality
Hrčak ID:
196321
URI
Publication date:
23.11.2017.
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