Daniel D. Hutto

Folk psychology re-assessed

1. Introduction Matthew Ratcliffe and Daniel Hutto I. Emotion, Perception and Interaction 2. Expression and Empathy Dan Zahavi 3. We Share, Therefore We Think R. Peter Hobson 4. Logical and Phenomenological Arguments against Simulation Theory Shaun Gallagher 5. Persons, Pronouns and Perspectives Beata Stawarska II. Reasons, Norms, Narratives and Institutions 6. There are Reasons and Reasons Peter Goldie 7. Folk Psychology without Theory or Simulation Daniel Hutto 8. The Regulative Dimension of Folk Psychology Victoria McGeer 9. Folk Psychology: Science and Morals Joshua Knobe 10. Folk Psychology and Freedom of the Will Martin Kusch III. The Fragmentation of Folk Psychology 11. Critter Psychology: On the Possibility of Nonhuman Animal Folk Psychology Kristin Andrews 12. Folk Psychology does not Exist Adam Morton 13. From Folk Psychology to Commonsense Matthew Ratcliffe

The Narrative Practice Hypothesis: Origins and Applications of Folk Psychology

The original article can be found at: http://journals.cambridge.org/--Copyright The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors & Cambridge University Press DOI : 10.1017/S1358246107000033

The Narrative Practice Hypothesis: clarifications and implications

The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our mature folk psychological abilities, those involving our capacity to explain ourselves and comprehend others in terms of reasons. This paper aims to clarify its content, importance and scientific plausibility by: distinguishing its conceptual features from those of its rivals, articulating its philosophical significance, and commenting on its empirical prospects. I begin by clarifying the NPHs target explanandum and the challenge it presents to theory theory (TT), simulation theory (ST) and hybrid combinations of these theories. The NPH competes with them directly for the same explanatory space insofar as these theories purport to explain the core structural basis of our folk psychological (FP)-competence (those of the sort famously but not exclusively deployed in acts of third-personal mindreading).

The brain as part of an enactive system.

The notion of an enactive system requires thinking about the brain in a way that is different from the standard computational-representational models. In evolutionary terms, the brain does what it does and is the way that it is, across some scale of variations, because it is part of a living body with hands that can reach and grasp in certain limited ways, eyes structured to focus, an autonomic system, an upright posture, etc. coping with specific kinds of environments, and with other people. Changes to any of the bodily, environmental, or intersubjective conditions elicit responses from the system as a whole. On this view, rather than representing or computing information, the brain is better conceived as participating in the action.

A Cause for Concern: Reasons, Causes and Explanations

Original article can be found at: http://www.jstor.org/journals/00318205.html Copyright Blackwell Publishing. [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]

Extensive enactivism: why keep it all in?

Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for individuating cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism—empirical or commonsensical—we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition.

Limited Engagements and Narrative Extensions

Abstract E‐approaches to the mind stress the embodied, embedded and enactive nature of mental phenomena. In their more radical, non‐representational variants these approaches offer innovative and powerful new ways of understanding fundamental modes of intersubjective social interaction: I‐approaches. While promising, E and I accounts have natural limits. In particular, they are unable to explain human competence in making sense of reasons for actions in folk‐psychological terms. In this paper I outline the core features of the ‘Narrative Practice Hypothesis’ (NPH), showing how it might take up that burden in a way which complements non‐representationalist E and I accounts. I conclude by addressing a new‐order eliminativist challenge from Ratcliffe that questions, inter alia, the very idea that there is anything like a well‐defined folk‐psychological competence that needs explaining, thereby rendering the NPH otiose. Additionally, I respond to Ratcliffe’s claim that the relevant structures needed for the development of that competence do not reveal themselves in relevant narratives, rendering the NPH’s developmental story impossible.

Truly enactive emotion

Any adequate account of emotion must accommodate the fact that emotions, even those of the most basic kind, exhibit intentionality as well as phenomenality. This article argues that a good place to start in providing such an account is by adjusting Prinz’s (2004) embodied appraisal theory (EAT) of emotions. EAT appeals to teleosemantics in order to account for the world-directed content of embodied appraisals. Although the central idea behind EAT is essentially along the right lines, as it stands Prinz’s proposal needs tweaking in a number of ways. This article focuses on one—the need to free it from its dependence on teleosemantics. EAT, so modified, becomes compatible with a truly enactivist understanding of basic emotions.

Folk Psychological Narratives and the Case of Autism

Abstract This paper builds on the insights of Jerome Bruner by underlining the central importance of narratives explaining actions in terms of reasons, arguing that by giving due attention to the central roles that they play in our everyday understanding of others provides a better way of explicating the nature and source of that activity than does simulation theory, theory-theory or some union of the two. However, although I promote Bruners basic claims about the roles narratives play in this everyday enterprise, I take issue with his characterization of the nature of narrative itself. In so doing, important questions are brought to the fore about what makes our understanding of narratives possible. In line with the idea that we ought to tell a developmental story that looks to the social arena for the source of narratives about reasons, I promote the idea that what is minimally required for becoming conversant in such everyday narratives need not be anything as sophisticated as a theory of mind or a capacity for simulation. The paper concludes using evidence concerning autism as a test case to help support this conclusion.

Exposing the Background: Deep and Local

Humans engage with the world and one another in sophisticated ways that (arguably) creatures lacking language cannot. Language (again, arguably) enables us to communicate meaningfully, to form contentful attitudes and intentions, and to design and execute plans so as to satisfy our needs and desires. Yet, for this to be so, a great deal that is not captured in terms of explicit content, necessarily, informs everything we expressly say, explicitly think and deliberately do.