Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation

by Matthew Ratcliffe

Overview

This book offers arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology, a view which Ratcliffe suggests is a theoretically motivated abstraction. His alternative account draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology, exploring patterned interactions in shared social situations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230007109
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	02/01/2007
Series:	New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science Series
Edition description:	2007
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

MATTHEW RATCLIFFE is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Durham University.

Table of Contents

Commonsense Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation Where is the Commonsense in Commonsense Psychology? The World We Live in Letting the World do the Work Perceiving Actions The Second Person Beliefs and Desires The Personal Stance

Editorial Reviews

'Rethinking Commonsense Psychology offers the to-date most detailed and sophisticated critique of the wide-spread philosophical dogma according to which humans understand each other by means of 'folk psychology'. Drawing on a number of philosophical traditions as well as recent results in psychology and neuroscience, Ratcliffe not only refutes the dogma, but replaces it with a novel view. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology will be required reading for philosophers of psychology, developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists alike.' - Professor Martin Kusch, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

'Ratcliffe covers every detail of a thorough repudiation of standard accounts of how we understand other people. Folk psychology is dead and we can forget it since, as Ratcliffe shows, we clearly do not need it for purposes of understanding others or even explaining how we understand others. Ratcliffe has eliminated FP, not in the way that some hard-line reductionists would want it eliminated, but by showing its irrelevancy. The hard-line reductionists no longer need to worry about FP; at the same time, Ratcliffe provides them with much more serious things to worry about, since reductionism is dead too.' - Shaun Gallagher, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

From the Publisher