David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Mind and Language 18 (3):257-265 (2003)
Hurley is right to reject the dichotomy between intentional agents and mere stimulus/response habit machines, and she is also right in thinking that it is important to map the space of systems for the adaptive control of behaviour. So there is much in this paper with which I agree. My disagreement concerns folk psychology. Hurley thinks that control space can be charted by asking whether and to what extent animals are intentional agents. In contrast, I doubt that the concepts of folk psychology, especially folk psychology construed as an interpretative practice, are the right mapping tools. If the main function of folk psychology is to make sense of one another, coordinate joint action, or make decisions about moral and legal responsibility, then there is no point in applying folk psychological notions to nonhuman minds. These interpretative functions simply do not arise for our interaction with nonhuman minds, and if folk psychology serves largely as a social tool serving them, there is no need to apply it to nonhumans, nor is there a reasonable expectation that we can usefully do so. If folk psychology does not even carve our sensing and control mechanisms at the joints, if it is not a good theory of human cognitive architecture, then it is not likely to be wellsuited for describing those of nonhuman agents
|Keywords||Action Animal Metaphysics Mind Reasons Hurley, S|
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References found in this work BETA
M. Tomasello (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press.
Daniel J. Povinelli (2000). Folk Physics for Apes: The Chimpanzee's Theory of How the World Works. Oxford University Press.
C. Heyes (2001). Causes and Consequences of Imitation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 (6):253-261.
Cognitive Evolution Group, Since Darwin, D. J. Povinelli, J. M. Bering & S. Giambrone (2000). Toward a Science of Other Minds: Escaping the Argument by Analogy. Cognitive Science 24 (3):509-541.
Citations of this work BETA
Édouard Machery (2004). Pour Une Approche Évolutionniste de la Cognition Animale. Dialogue 43 (4):731-745.
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