Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Common Sense Psychology

The contributors to this volume examine current controversies about the importance of common sense psychology for our understanding of the human mind. Commonsense 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? The primary readership for the book will be found among philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, but the issues discussed will also interest researchers in artificial intelligence, social psychologists, and cultural anthropologists.

• Up-to-date collection on commonsense psychology

1. The folklore of the mind Radu J. Bogdan; 2. Analysis without noise Jonathan Bennett; 3. Folk psychology and the explanation Paul M. Churchland; 4. Methodological reflections on belief Robert Cummins; 5. Consciousness and content Colin McGinn; 6. The inevitability of folk psychology Adam Morton; 7. How is eliminative materialism possible? Alexander Rosenberg; 8. The long past and the short history Kathleen V. Wilkes; 9. Common sense naturalized: the practical stance Radu J. Bogdan; Index.