Making Folk Psychology Explicit

Abstract

One of the central explananda in the debate on social cognition is the interpretation of other people in terms of reasons for action. There is a growing dissatisfaction among participants in the debate concerning the descriptive adequacy of the traditional belief-desire model of action interpretation. Applying this model as an explanatory model at the subpersonal level threatens to leave the original explanandum largely unarticulated. Against this background we show how Brandom's deontic scorekeeping model can be used as a valuable descriptive tool for making folk psychology explicit. Following Brandom's non-formalist and nonmentalistic account of reason discourse, we suggest that the process of making sense of others is best captured as proceeding from a 'factive' baseline. According to this picture the ascription of beliefs and desires is not the default interpretation strategy, but rather the result of prior scaffolding of the agent's deontic score. We close by discussing Brandom's model in the light of empirical findings on the ontogeny of reason attribution.

The expressive function of folk psychology

“…On the other hand, simulation-theory contends that the process is carried out by different simulation mechanisms based on introspections or off-line sub-personal mechanisms (Goldman, 1989;Heal, 1996). 3 In the last decade, a group of dissenters have spoken out against the received view (Andrews, 2012;Hutto, 2004;McGeer, 2007McGeer, , 2015Millikan, 2004;Strijbos and Bruin, 2012;Zawidzki, 2008Zawidzki, , 2013. The main strategy of this heterodox view has been to undermine the centrality that the received view has assigned to mindreading; i.e., these scholars share their refusal of the idea that mindreading is the linchpin of social cognition.…”