Commensense Psychology: Fodor, Dennett, Baker
| dc.contributor.advisor | Baker, Judith | |
| dc.creator | Gall, Diane Rebecca | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-07-31T16:53:14Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2014-07-31T16:53:14Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2014-04-04 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2014-07-28 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2014-07-28T16:23:21Z | |
| dc.degree.discipline | Philosophy | |
| dc.degree.level | Doctoral | |
| dc.degree.name | PhD - Doctor of Philosophy | |
| dc.description.abstract | The predominant conception of our everyday understanding of other people's actions is as a commonsense psychology that is a (proto-)scientific theory. A central version of this conception is that this theory takes propositional attitudes as mental states which are causally effective in the production of human purposive action. In this essay, I argue that this central version of our commonsense psychology is mistaken. I take Jerry Fodor's Psychosemantics as a locus classicus of this view. I examine arguments from Daniel Dennett and Lynne Rudder Baker that Fodor (and others who argue along the same lines as Fodor) make serious errors in being committed to a hyper-realist (i.e., physicalist) conception of mental states and causality. I argue that Fodor does not provide an adequate exposition of how his candidate for a scientific theory that vindicates his version of commonsense psychology accounts for the meaning of a propositional attitude. I further argue that our everyday practices that deploy commonsense psychological concepts are inconsistent with characterising commonsense psychology as a (proto-)theory or as part of a (proto-)science. From this investigation, I conclude that Fodor's conception of commonsense psychology psychology is untenable. Finally, I discuss briefly an alternative that is suggested by the rebuttals of Dennett and Baker that commonsense psychology is better conceived as an non-theoretical explanatory practice that deploys an alternative conception of psychological causality distinct from physical causality. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10315/27702 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.rights | Author owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests. | |
| dc.subject | Philosophy | en_US |
| dc.subject.keywords | Baker | en_US |
| dc.subject.keywords | Folk psychology | en_US |
| dc.subject.keywords | Commonsense psychology | en_US |
| dc.subject.keywords | Fodor | en_US |
| dc.title | Commensense Psychology: Fodor, Dennett, Baker | en_US |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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