Folk Psychology: Here to Stay?

Review  We have been examining the most influential arguments in favor of eliminative materialism. Churchland: FP pales in comparison to neuroscientific perspective. Stich: FP undermined by research in cognitive and social psychology.

Preview  Question: What is the best response to the eliminativists? Main options: 1. Realism: FP is ‘mostly’ true. So we should keep it. 2. Instrumentalism: FP is not true, but it is useful, so we can keep it. 3. Simulationism: FP won’t be eliminated because it is based upon simulations rather than theories.

Horgan (Arizona) Woodward (Cal Tech)

Realism about Folk Psychology  Question: What is the main argument that H&W present in favor of realism?

Two Main Arguments  (1) Negative: The main arguments in favor of EM are simply unpersuasive (today).  (2) Positive: Folk Psychology provides genuine causal explanations of behavior, and this can only be explained by realism (next time).

(1) Negative Arguments: Churchland  Review: Why does Paul Churchland maintain that FP is probably false?  What are the three main reasons that he gives?

Reason 1: Massive Explanatory Failure  Churchland: FP sheds no light on these capacities: -mental illness -creative imagination -individual differences in IQ -sleep -vision -memory -learning  Question: What do H&W say in response? How might Churchland respond?

Point of Debate #1

Objection 1  Objection: Theories that draw upon FP have in fact shed light on these topics (200). Ex. Cognitive psychological research on attribution and cognitive dissonance.  Responses: (a) This research will turn out to be false as well, unless it can be reduced to neuroscience. And even if it were true, it would undermine FP!

Objection 2  Objection: Churchland puts an unfair burden upon FP. FP might do a good job explaining “common human actions”, even if it cannot explain everything! (201)  Response: The demand is not that FP explains everything; but it must explain common facts, and the facts that Churchland cites are extremely common.

Reason 2: Theoretical Stagnation  When a student makes no progress in a semester, teachers give them failing grades.  So what should one do with a student who doesn’t make any progress in 5,000 years?  Question: What do H&W say in response? How might Churchland respond?

Point of Debate #2

Objection  Objection: (a) FP is actually progressive; and (b) even if it is not, this would not matter. (a) FP has come to emphasize situational factors over stable character traits (Doris); and it has incorporate the unconscious. (b) Our particular judgments about behavior work pretty well; it does not matter if the entire set of generalizations has not grown.  Response: It would seem that the research in (a) would destabilize FP; and eliminativists would deny that (b) is true.

Reason 3: FP does not fit into emerging scientific worldview  Churchland maintains that FP is probably false because it does not cohere with materialistic view of human beings.  H&W translate this into the claim that FP is false because it cannot be reduced into lower-level theories.  Question: What do H&W say in response? How might Churchland respond? (NO DEBATE)

Objection Question: Which of these premises does H&W object to and why? P1: Reduce or reject. P2: FP cannot be reduced. C: FP must be rejected.

Objection: Fallacy of Excluded Alternative  H&W maintain that P1 is false. It commits the fallacy of “excluded alternatives”.  Which alternative? Other philosophers (who are not crazy) have defended non-reductive versions of materialism…

Davidson’s Anomolous Monism

(1) Negative Arguments: Stich  Review: Why does Stich maintain that FP is probably false?

Reason 1: Social Psychology  There is evidence from social psychology (attribution theory and cognitive dissonance) which demonstrates that FP is mistaken about the “overall causal organization of the cognitive system”.  FP says that beliefs are individuated in terms of their causal roles in producing verbal and non-verbal behavior.  But a variety of evidence shows that this is patently false: two different cognitive mechanisms produce these two types of behavior.

The Storms & Nisbett experiment  First phase: Group of insomniacs were given placebos. A-group was told that it would produce arousal. B-group was told that it would produce relaxation. Result: A-groups went to sleep faster, and B-group took longer. Interpretation: A-groups fell asleep easier because they attributed their physical symptoms to pill rather than their emotional stress.

The Storms & Nisbett experiment  Second Phase: A-group was later asked why it took them longer to fall asleep.  Result: They would confabulate answers. They would rely upon intuitive theories to explain it.  Interpretation: There are two different mechanisms responsible for verbal behavior (second stage) and non-verbal behavior (first stage).

Objections  Question: How do H&W object to this argument?

Point of Debate #3

Objection 1  The first objection is that this argument is not valid. The eliminativist conclusion does not follow from the experimental data unless these additional two premises are true: A1. There is no cogent way to ascribe beliefs and desires in these cases. A2. One can generalize from these cases.

Objection 2  The second objection is that A1 is false.  Key claim: We can explain both stages in terms of beliefs. The only catch is that one belief is unconscious (stage one) and one is conscious (stage two).  Response: Doesn’t this miss the point? The crucial point is that the same belief does not produce both types of behavior; and this is enough to support the claim that there is nothing that plays the causal roles as FP would have it.

Objection 3  The third objection is that A2 is false.  H&W argue that this is an exception rather than the rule. We cannot infer that we never know our own minds.  Response: I think Jim O. said this last time… How would you ever know whether your beliefs about your behavior were genuine causes of it? Does this matter? FP would be true sometime, false others. But is FP committed to the claim that it must always be true?

Reason 2: Memory and Modularity  FP assumes that beliefs and desires are ‘isolatable’ parts of the cognitive system. But recent models of memory show that this is not true.  According to leading computational models, memory is massively parallel and involves spreading activation between concept notes.  Crucial Point: It becomes impossible to isolate a particular mental state. They become ‘diffuse’.

Semantic Network

Point of Debate #4

Objection (pp )  Objection: H&W admit that cognitive science might very well end up showing that the modularity assumption is false.  Question: So how do they respond, then, to Stich’s argument?