Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news.unt.edu!hermes.oc.com!internet.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
Message-ID: <Cwv4GJ.8qy@spss.com>
Sender: news@spss.com
Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <1994Sep26.114409.4876@oracorp.com> <CwrB04.9JI@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <Cwsys7.K9w@spss.com> <Cwuu1z.KxM@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 23:12:17 GMT
Lines: 44

In article <Cwuu1z.KxM@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <Cwsys7.K9w@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>>>As I have pointed out, in some case we already say "he has very high 
>>>testerone levels" instead of "he is a very amorous guy, Don Juan type, 
>>>loves all women".
>>
>>I agreed with most of the rest of your post, but here I think you're 
>>misanalyzing.  "He has a very high testosterone levels" *is* a statement
>>of folk psychology.  Just because it uses the jargon of scientific study
>>of the brain doesn't make it a scientifically informed statement.
>>
>Are you saying that it is not scientifically true that men with high 
>testerone levels devote more of their attention to sex oriented activities?

No, I'm saying that "He has a very high testosterone level" instead of
"he is a very amorous guy, etc." is a statement of folk psychology.  
The statement about testosterone level is just appropriating scientific-
sounding jargon for the purposes of gossip.

(By the way-- it *isn't* "scientifically true", for the same reason that
it isn't scientifically true that men are stronger than women.  Sorry
to bring it up, but we take statistical distributions seriously here...)

It's like the popular appropriation of terms of Freudian psychiatry--
"He's a very repressed guy"; "She's real anal-retentive"; "I'm obsessive
about running".  These statements certainly aren't based on a real
psychiatric evaluation; and they're usually founded on a misinterpretation
of the technical meaning of the terms anyway.

>>In ancient times astrological theory could be mined for the same purpose, 
>>and indeed we can still describe people as mercurial, jovial, saturnine.
>>And Plato had his theory of the soul as well.  People were not limited
>>to descriptive statements before the development of chemistry.
>
>I am not sure what you are driving at here. Has vitamins then become a part
>of folk medicine?

Certainly it has; people routinely misuse vitamins.  But what I was driving
at was simply to correct your original statement:

>>>The letter was the only explanation available when there was no notion of 
>>>body chemistry.
