Abstract
Why do we engage in folk psychology, that is, why do we think about and ascribe propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, intentions etc.) to people? On the standard view, folk psychology is primarily for mindreading, for detecting mental states and explaining and/or predicting people’s behaviour in terms of them. In contrast, McGeer (1996, 2007, 2015), and Zawidzki (2008, 2013) maintain that folk psychology is not primarily for mindreading but for mindshaping, that is, for moulding people’s behaviour and minds (e.g., via the imposition of social norms) so that coordination becomes easier. Mindreading is derived from and only as effective as it is because of mindshaping, not vice versa. I critically assess McGeer’s, and Zawidzki’s proposal and contend that three common motivations for the mindshaping view do not provide sufficient support for their particular version of it. I argue furthermore that their proposal underestimates the role that epistemic processing plays for mindshaping. And I provide reasons for favouring an alternative according to which in social cognition involving ascriptions of propositional attitudes, neither mindshaping nor mindreading is primary but both are complementary in that effective mindshaping depends as much on mindreading as effective mindreading depends on mindshaping.
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Notes
Folk psychology is also often understood as the “capacity for mentalistic attribution and explanation” (McGeer 2015: 259), that is, it is taken to be an epistemic ability to “make sense” of people’s behaviour by appealing to their PAs (Hutto 2008: 3; Zawidzki 2008: 194). However, this is not unproblematic when the function of folk psychology is at issue, because it already defines folk psychology so that it has the epistemic function of explaining behaviour. We need a neutral term. Construing folk psychology only as the practice of ascribing PAs, as I do here, avoids the problem of prejudging the matter.
Notice that McGeer (2007, 2015) and Zawidzki (2008, 2013) do not defend entirely the same view. They both independently developed different proposals (see below, section 1.2). When I refer to their views here and below by using the singular, i.e., ‘proposal’, ‘account’ etc., I merely mean to highlight the fact that they both advocate a version of the mindshaping view that is characterized by the two features just mentioned. This is compatible with their accounts also being distinct in various other ways.
That we can acquire a belief that p via acting as if we hold the belief (e.g., via repeatedly entertaining and asserting that p) is in line with a Spinozan account of belief formation; for empirical evidence supporting the account and a critique, see Peters (2017).
Notice that (PT) is compatible with the view that PA-specific mindshaping relies on various kinds of epistemic processing that does not involve the tracking of PAs but does involve the tracking of some other mental state and/or behavioural patterns. Indeed, this is arguably the view that Zawidzki (2013), in particular, favors. (PT) only pertains to the claim as to whether PA-specific mindshaping involves PA-specific epistemic processing, i.e., the tracking of PAs (as opposed to other mental states).
I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer here for pressing me on this point.
There is debate on whether implicit biases are associations or beliefs (Brownstein 2015). Nothing hinges on the matter here though.
The empirical and philosophical research on implicit biases is not uncontroversial; see Peters (forthcoming) for details and discussion.
One such built-in cognitive feature to tackle computational intractability might be egocentric bias, see Peters (2016) for details and discussion. Another one might be the tendency to automatically accept the propositions one entertains, see Gilbert et al. (1993); but see also Peters (2017) for a critical discussion.
The term ‘quotidian’ is meant as a qualifier, because we often use folk psychology in fictional contexts, e.g., in story telling to describe a protagonist’s action. In these cases, we do not commit to the truth of our PA ascriptions.
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Peters, U. The complementarity of mindshaping and mindreading. Phenom Cogn Sci 18, 533–549 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9584-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9584-9