How to be realistic about folk psychology

Abstract

Folk psychological realism is the view that folk psychology is true and that people really do have propositional attitudes, whereas anti‐realism is the view that folk psychology is false and people really do not have propositional attitudes. We argue that anti‐realism is not worthy of acceptance and that realism is eminently worthy of acceptance. However, it is plainly epistemically possible to favor either of two forms of folk realism: scientific or non‐scientific. We argue that non‐scientific realism, while perhaps unpopular among philosophers of mind, is a distinct form of realism from scientific realism, and that it is not yet knowable whether scientific or non‐scientific realism is true. We also outline how adopting realism, but remaining neutral between scientific and non‐scientific realism, offers fresh insights into such topics as instrumentalism, supervenience, the language of thought hypothesis, and elimin‐ativism.

Notes

This is a thoroughly collaborative paper. The order of authorship is alphabetical.