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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
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References: <1994Sep26.114409.4876@oracorp.com> <CwrB04.9JI@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 19:14:30 GMT
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In article <CwrB04.9JI@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
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.

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

Well, this is not true even if you consider the medieval theory of the 
humors to be a notion of body chemistry.  We still retain some of the
terminology from that time: good-humored, ill-tempered, lose one's temper,
sanguine, choleric, melancholy, bilious.  Folk psychology has always been
content to mine the science of its day to add to its explanatory repertoire.

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.
