Folk Psychology: Theory of Mind or Mental Simulation?

Subject Areas : Philosophy

نوید فرهنگ وصالی ¹ (ندارد)

Received: 2010-11-30 Accepted : 2011-04-17 Published : 2011-03-21

Keywords: folk psychology, Simulation, propositional attitude, Belief, Desire,

Abstract :

The assumption that people understand each other by employing a‘folk’ or “commonsense” psychology is currently pervasive inphilosophy of mind, cognitive science and various other disciplines.Folk psychology is almost always taken to consist primarily of anability to attribute internal propositional attitude states, principallybeliefs and desires, in order to predict and explain behavior in adeductive structure, so “folk psychology” also called “belief- desirepsychology”. But this is not the only theory that considers interactionbetween people, there is also a rival that called simulation theory. Thistheory is the greatest opponent of “folk psychology”. In this researchI, like Ratcliff, call all the things that people do to understand, explainand predict each other, folk psychology. And call the first view “folkpsychology as a theory of mind” and the second one “folk psychologyas a mental simulation” or “simulation” alone. In this paper I will beginby the most accepted view, folk psychology as a theory of mind, ,based on Fodor’s view, then we will come to some critics that bring upby Goldman. After these critics we will present simulation view andanswer to some of its critics to “folk psychology as a theory of mind”.Then, at the end of the essay I will conclude that we can mix this toview together and present a hybrid theory to consider what peoplereally do to explain and predict each other behavior.