Online research in philosophy

This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.¹ At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?

After addressing the question of whether Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973) even had a theory of psychology, which is not obvious unless one collates the many dispersed remarks, a well-documented exposition of that theory is offered that clarifies the data, categories, field, methods, and topics of the versions of psychology he advocated.

Explaining people : theoretical psychology throughout the ages -- Ways of knowing : the scientific method and its alternatives -- From philosophy to laboratory : the arrival of empirical psychology -- The evolution of measurement : from physiognomy to psychometrics -- The behaviourist revolution : actions as data -- The cognitive revolution : the metaphor of computation -- Neuroscience and genetics : 21st century reductionism? -- Can psychology be scientific? -- Subjectivist approaches to psychology -- The problem of consciousness -- Science since the 20th century : postpositivism and postmodernism -- Relativism, constructivism and their implications for psychology -- The future of psychology -- And finally, before the exam--.

This book proposes a series of interconnected arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves the use of a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology. Ratcliffe suggests that folk psychology, construed as the attribution of internal mental states in order to predict and explain behaviour, is a theoretically motivated and misleading abstraction from social life. He draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology to offer an alternative account that emphasizes patterned interactions between people in shared social situations.

This paper defends both an interpretation of Mencius' moral theory and that theory itself against alternative interpretive defences. I argue that the 'virtue ethics' reading of Mencius wrongly sees him as denying the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology. Virtue ethics is flawed, because it makes such a denial. But Mencius' moral theory, in spite of Mencius' obvious interest in moral psychology, does not have that flaw. However, I argue that Mencius is no rationalist. Instead, I show that he upholds a coherentist moral theory, in which reason and psychology both have a role. The final third of the paper compares my interpretation with the work of various important Mencius scholars. I point out that the issue of the difference between moral philosophy and moral psychology is quite important in contemporary Western moral theory.

This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.¹ At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that our everyday or "folk" understanding of mental states constitutes a theory of mind. That theory is widely called "folk psychology" (sometimes "commonsense" psychology). The terms in which folk psychology is couched are the familiar ones of "belief" and "desire", "hunger", "pain" and so forth. According to many theorists, folk psychology plays a central role in our capacity to predict and explain the behavior of ourselves and others. However, the nature and status of folk psychology remains controversial.

... PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY is the study of conceptual issues in psychology. For the most part, these issues fall equally well in psychology as in ...