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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Folk psychology (was: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?)
Message-ID: <CwLGsH.MF4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <1994Sep21.131455.3228@oracorp.com> <35q0l5$mgr@mp.cs.niu.edu> <CwJKq8.7n9@spss.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 18:02:40 GMT
Lines: 60

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.  On the other
>>hand, when applied to rocks it has enormous predictive power, and
>>negligible explanatory power.  Could this be because we are socially
>>conditioned to accept folk psychological explanations when applied to
>>humans, and to reject them when applied to rocks?
>
.........
>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.
>
>Searle basically makes this same point: 
>   Aristotle and Descartes would have been completely familiar with most of
>   our explanations of human behaviour, but not with our explanations of
>   biological and physical phenomena.  The reason usually adduced for this 
>   is that Aristotle and Descartes had both a primitive theory of biology
>   and physics ont he one hand, and a primitive theory of human behaviour
>   on the other; and that while we have advanced in biology and physics, we
>   have made no comparable advance in the explanation of human behaviour.
>   I want to suggest an alternative view.  I think that Aristotle and
>   Descartes, like ourselves, already had a sophisticated and complex theory
>   of human behaviour.  I also think that many supposedly scientific accounts
>   of human behaviour, such as Freud's, in fact employ rather than replace
>   the principles of our implicit theory of human behaviour.  
>   [_Minds, Brains and Science_, p. 59.]
>
It of course depends what one means by "sophisticaed and complex", but 
I do not buy the above claim. Note that Greeks had quite sophisticated
knowledge of glass and clay pot-making for example. Their medicine, i.e.
knowledge of human body behavior wasn't bad either. The same applies to
Descartes times. Sophistication and complexity of knowledge of a medieval
venetian glass-maker does not seem to me to be inferior to a good folk
psychologist of either today or yesterday. I am convinced that Greeks'
knowledge of weather, to give another example, was also quite good, 
otherwise they could not have been such succesful sailors. What criteria
do you apply to say that this knowledge was less sophisticated and 
complex than their knowledge of human behavior? Aristotle's an Descartes' 
knowledge of physics and biology only seems primitive by comparison with 
today's knowledge. Lacking a comparison criteria the above Searle's statement 
is a clear case of bending facts to prove his concepts.

>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.

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
