Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Common Sense Psychology

by Edited by Radu J. Bogdan

• ISBN13: 9780521069397
• ISBN10: 0521069394
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

The contributors to this volume examine recent controversies about the importance of common sense psychology for our understanding of the human mind. Common sense provides a familiar and friendly psychological scheme by which to talk about the mind. Its categories (belief, desire, intention, consciousness, emotion, and so on) tend to portray the mind as quite different from the rest of nature, and thus irreducible to physical matters and its laws. In this volume a variety of positions on common sense psychology from critical to supportive, from exegetical to speculative, are represented. Among the questions posed are: Is common sense psychology an empirical theory, a body of analytic knowledge, a practice or a strategy? If it is a legitimate enterprise can it be naturalized or not? If it is not legitimate can it be eliminated? Is its fate tied to our understanding of consciousness? Should we approach its concepts and generalizations from the standpoint of conceptual analysis or from the philosophy of science?

Table of Contents

The folklore of the mind

Analysis without noise

Folk psychology and the explanation

Methodological reflections on belief

Consciousness and content

The inevitability of folk psychology

How is eliminative materialism possible?

The long past and the short history Kathleen

Common sense naturalized: the practical stance

Index

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