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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Folk psychology (was: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?)
References: <35q0l5$mgr@mp.cs.niu.edu> <CwJKq8.7n9@spss.com> <CwLGsH.MF4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Message-ID: <Cwy4tD.7Fy@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 1994 14:12:48 GMT
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In article <CwLGsH.MF4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <CwJKq8.7n9@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>In article <35q0l5$mgr@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:

>>>I would say that folk psychology has enormous explanatory power and
>>>negligible predictive power, when applied to humans.

>>Neil goes on to suggest an informal reason why we might overestimate
>>the predictive power of folk psychology.  I'll suggest an informal reason
>>why we might underestimate it: namely, like language, it's normally
>>so sophisticated and accurate that we're hardly aware of its correct
>>functioning, only of its relatively rare errors.

>>Evolutionarily, this ability should be no great surprise.  Animals have
>>been closely observing (and predicting) the behavior of others in the 
>>flock or herd or pack for millions of years.  

>Yes, but animals do not seem to need a theory of beliefs, desires etc to do 
>this.

Do you have some evidence to support the idea that
whatever-animals-use, it isn't some kind of folk psychology? Or is
this statement equivalent to "We have no evidence that animals use a
folk psychology, therefore they probably don't."?

Note that some of the cleverest animals seem able to lie, in the sense
that they will deliberately pretend to be doing A when they are really
doing B in order to mislead a hostile onlooker who would be provoked
by them doing B. I find it difficult to understand how one can pretend
or lie without some notion of the beliefs of others as distinct from
one's own different beliefs.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
