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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Folk psychology (was: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?)
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References: <1994Sep21.131455.3228@oracorp.com> <35q0l5$mgr@mp.cs.niu.edu> <CwJKq8.7n9@spss.com> <CwLGsH.MF4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 18:54:58 GMT
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In article <CwLGsH.MF4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <CwJKq8.7n9@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>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 on the 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? 

One rough guide could be the size of the technical vocabulary needed to
analyze a situation in the domain in question.  I purposefully say 
"analyze" rather than "describe"; the Greeks might have had hundreds of
words for different kinds of materials, for instance, but in terms of
analysis didn't get much beyond trying to classify them into four 
"elements".  Analyzing each other's behavior, however, they would have
had hundreds of concepts available: names of emotions, descriptions of
goals and beliefs, rules of thumb, etc.

The time it takes to acquire the body of knowledge in question might be
another gage.  What the ancient Greeks knew of physics would barely fill
a semester; it took them (and us) years, if not decades, to attain their
understanding of human behavior.

I agree, by the way, that Greek *technology* might have been quite
sophisticated; but Searle was talking about their *physics and biology*,
not the same thing.

Note also that Searle advances his theory as a suggestion, not as 
a theorem; take it as food for thought.

>>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.

How do you know that?
