Re: Folk Psychology

From: HARNAD Stevan (harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 07 1996 - 23:04:07 BST


> Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 21:19:21 +0100 (BST)
> From: "Valenti Gianni" <gv195@soton.ac.uk>
>
> Folk psychology is ordinary day people`s thoughts about psychology. It
> is based on the facts that people do certain things because they Want
> to and Believe that by doing so they may reach a Wanted goal.
> -eg. Why did X. put on a jacket before going out in the rain? Because
> he wanted to put something on as he believed that by doing so he would
> prevent himself from getting wet, being this his wanted goal.
> This type of psychology does not explain what it does actually mean "to
> want to do" something as we all know what it feels like but we do not
> know what wanting actually is, as in what are the processes involved in
> wanting, what is happening in your head that generates the feeling of
> wanting. But we all believe that this psychology gives a satisfactory
> explanation, because we have all experienced what it is like to want
> and therefore we understand the actions of others knowing that we would
> behave the same way if we wanted and believed the same things.
> As this psychology actually does not tell us what are the mechanisms, the
> psycho-physiological causes that give rise to this feeling, by definition the
> answers that it provides are not GOOD answers and therefore needs an other
> science to came and rescue it (in this case cognitive psychology).
>
> In other words F.P. is what we say everyday, "I know why you did that!"
> based on our personal experiences.

Good, but for an A, relate it to the positive themes: reverse
engineering, computationalism, nets, etc.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Feb 13 2001 - 16:23:47 GMT