Graham Harman on the use of "folk"

Use of the adjective “folk” to describe one’s opponents is a shining example of the concept. Essentially, anything that Metzinger, Ladyman, Ross et al. don’t like is dismissed as the “folk” view on the topic.

via doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com

Matthew Ratcliffe, Rethinking Commonsense Psychology (Palgrave, 2006) shows that even the folk don't do "folk psychology"! It's a philosophical myth foisted on them. (IOW, we never really infer mental states (beliefs and desires) of others based on evidence presented to our senses of their outward behavior).

Here’s what I said about it in my foreword to the book when we adopted it into the New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science series I co-edit with Mike Wheeler:

The New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science series welcomes its second volume, Matthew Ratcliffe’s Rethinking Commonsense Psychology. Ratcliffe tackles the problem of other minds, and our supposed ability via folk psychology to understand their workings on the basis of our own cognitive processes, that is, our supposed ability to infer the contents of other minds on the basis of an interpretation of external behaviour. Now philosophers have long been devoted to rethinking the folk or commonsense notions of the people, but Ratcliffe provides us with a twist: what if folk psychology itself doesn’t belong to the people at all in their everyday practice, but is instead an invention of philosophers, a manner of speaking we learn at school and work with professionally? What would happen if, following the lead of the phenomenologists, we examine more closely and carefully what really happens when people understand each other, and thereby substitute the category of person for that of mind? Furthermore, what would happen if we examine the social context on which interpersonal understanding depends, instead of presupposing a bare encounter of isolated minds?

These are the challenges Ratcliffe undertakes with verve and intelligence. Once relieved of a false philosopher’s picture of isolated minds interpreting each other’s behaviour, we can see what really happens in interpersonal understanding in social context, and develop a vocabulary adequate to that reality, one that resonates both with classic work in phenomenology and with recent work in situated or embodied / embedded cognition. For its critical re-assessment and its positive contributions, then, Rethinking Commonsense Psychology is a welcome addition to the series.

Comments

[Mandel Cabrera]

I enjoyed what I read of Ratcliffe's book. It seems too strong to say that we *never* infer a person's mental state 'based on evidence presented to our senses of their outward behavior.' I take this to be the claim that we never infer a person's mental state from experiences of someone's behavior which present that behavior in ways which are so to speak *psychology-free*.

I take Ratcliffe to be arguing that we don't *usually* get onto a person's mental state in this inferential way. As the phenomenologists who have influenced Ratcliffe on these matters (e.g. Sartre or Merleau-Ponty) insightfully pointed out: we usually just directly perceive a cry of pain as a cry of pain, rather than first perceiving a mere physical sound and then inferring that it is a sign of an internal mental state (viz, pain).

I'm not sure Ratcliffe means to be saying we never infer mental states from percetions of merely physical phenomena. And even if he did, it wouldn't be too plausible.

My thought is this: as Heidegger is careful to point out, when circumstances are unusual, things sometimes show up as Vorhanden rather than Zuhanden. Usually, I just directly perceive your cry of pain as a cry of pain. For example, I can see your hand snap back from the rain-soaked stone and hear a loud noise come from your mouth. I can then need to *infer* that you are in pain from a burning sensation. Circumstances are unusual - rain-soaked stones are not usually hot, and I'm aware of no intense heat source in the vicinity. And so, I see a mere physical movement and hear a mere loud sound. Your cry, in other words, shows up as Vorhanden. And thus I must step back and consider for a moment the circumstances before I finally conclude that the noise you made was a cry of pain that is a sign of your being in pain.

These are minor quibbles, though. Ratcliffe is absolutely right that much so-called 'folk psychology' is a philosophical myth. The insights he brings to bear on these matters, I think, is ripe for a fruitful dialogue between phenomenology and contemporary analytic philosophy of action, since Wittgenstein and especially Elizabeth Anscombe have views on the epistemology of action behavior very much like the ones advocated by phenomenologists like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

[Mandel Cabrera]

Oops: there was a badly misleading bit in that last post. I didn't mean to suggest that directly perceiving a cry of pain as a cry of pain would be counter by Heidegger as a case of something's showing up as Zuhanden. I only meant to suggest that something's showing up as 'merely physical' would be counted by Heidegger as its showing up as Vorhanden, and that things show up as Vorhanden when the circumstances are unusual in particular ways. Although this can happen, in the usual case they show up in other ways - as Zuhanden in some cases, but in other ways (e.g. as cries of pain) in other cases...

[John Protevi]

Hi Mandel, thanks for your comment. Ratcliffe does in the end take the extreme position that we *never* use folk-psychological inferences. Dan Hutto calls him on this extreme position in his review in NDPR: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=11563. More precisely, Hutto shows how Ratcliffe sometimes adopts a more moderate position, as you do, that FP is not very often or almost never used, but that it is sometimes, if rarely, used (e.g., by detectives, or at the poker table), but that he ends up with the extreme position. I usually take the moderate position that FP is rarely used, but still at work sometimes.

About Heidegger, I'd have to do some more work, but I suspect we could classify the odd cry of pain as a modality of Mitsein, rather than as Vorhanden or Zuhanden. So a scientist could treat a human body as Vorhanden (a point mass in space with such and such a vector) and a monstrous sadist could treat it as Zuhanden (as material to build a living wall with), but I think your example would be a Mitsein case.