The Philosophy of Psychology

The question of the content of the book was more difficult. There is a vast range of topics which could be discussed under the heading of ‘philosophy of psychology’, and a great many different approaches to those topics could be taken. For scientific psychology is itself a very broad church, ranging from various forms of cognitive psychology, through artificial intelligence, social psychology, behavioural psychology, comparative psychology, neuro-psychology, psycho-pathology, and so on. And the philosopher of psychology might then take a variety of different approaches, ranging from one which engages with, and tries to contribute to, psycho[1]logical debates (compare the way in which philosophers of physics may propose solutions to the hidden-variable problem); through an approach which attempts to tease out philosophical problems as they arise within psychology (compare the famous ‘under-labourer’ conception of the role of the philosopher of science); to an approach which focuses on problems which are raised for philosophy by the results and methods of psychology. We have chosen to take a line towards the latter end of this spectrum, concentrating on cognitive psychology in particular. Our main focus is on ix the relationships between scientific (cognitive) psychology, on the one hand, and common-sense or ‘folk’ psychology, on the other. Since humans are such social creatures, one might expect psychology to be a subject in which people would start out with the advantage of being expert laymen. Yet there are various ways in which scientific psychology can easily seem to threaten or undermine our self-image either by raising doubts about the very existence of mental states as we conceive of them, or by challenging one or another cherished picture we have of ourselves (for example, as rational). And various questions can be raised concerning the extent to which folk and scientific psychology are attempting to do the same kind of job or achieve the same kind of thing. What this means is that there is a great deal less in this book about levels of explanation, say, than certain pre-conceptions of what is required of a text on Philosophy of X (where X is some science) would suggest. There is also much less on connectionism than will be expected by those who think that philosophy of psychology just is the connectionism and/or eliminativism debate. And we say rather little, too, about a number of areas in which much scientific progress has been made, and which have been well worked-over by philosophical commentators – including memory, vision, and language. Following an introductory chapter in which we review some back[1]ground developments in philosophy of mind and scientific psychology, the main body of the book begins in chapter 2 with a discussion of the relationships between folk and scientific psychologies, and the proper interpretation of the former. Here we defend a robustly realistic construal of our folk-psychological commitments, which underpins much of what we say thereafter. Chapter 3 reviews the psychological arguments for nativism and modularity, raising the question whether modularism is consistent with our picture of ourselves as unified subjects of experience (and indicating a positive answer). Chapter 4 then considers what may be the best scientific view of the nature of our folk psychology, and the course of its development in the individual – arguing for a nativist/modularist ‘theory-theory’ approach, as opposed to either an ‘empiricist’ or a ‘simulationist’ one. Chapter 5 discusses the extent to which psychological evidence of widespread human irrationality undermines our picture of ourselves as rational agents, and considers the arguments of some philosophers that widespread irrationality is impossible. Chapter 6 takes up the issue concerning the appropriate notion of intentional content required by psychology (both folk and scientific) – that is, whether it should be ‘wide’ or ‘narrow’ – and defends the role of narrow content in both domains. (Here, in particular, we are conscious of swimming against a strong tide of contrary opinion.) Chapter 7 is concerned with the question of the natural[1]x Prefaceisation of semantic content, discussing the three main programmes on offer (‘informational’, ‘teleological’, and ‘functional-role’ semantics). Chapter 8 discusses the connectionism–Mentalese debate, and considers a variety of ways in which natural language may be more closely implicated in (some of) human cognition than is generally thought. Then finally, in chapter 9, we consider the arguments for and against the possibility of integrating phenomenal consciousness into science. Here, as elsewhere in the book, we defend an integrationist line. We think that the prospects for the future survival of folk psychology are good, and also for its relatively smooth integration into psychological science. And we think that the prospects for fruitful collaboration between empirically minded philosophers of mind and theoretically minded cognitive psychologists are excellent. These are exciting times for scientific psychology; and exciting times, too, for the philosopher of psychology. We hope that readers of this book will come to share some of that excitement.