The Pros And Cons Of Folk Psychology

Folk psychology refers to our capacities for explaining and predicating the behavior of others by attributing mental states to them. We assume that other people have mental states such as beliefs, desires and so on. Attributing these mental states to others is a part of what allows us to understand them and to engage with them effectively. Basically folk psychology is the central part of our capacity for social cognition and our capacity for dealing with other people. To give a very simple example, suppose I go to the kitchen to get slice of pepperoni pizza. Why would I do this? I desired a slice of pizza and I believed there was a slice of pizza in the kitchen. Either I had no countervailing desires such as the desire to eat healthy and hence stick to a diet or my desire for pepperoni pizza overpowered my countervailing desire to eat healthy. One important way we make sense of other agents' behavior is by attributing various mental states to them and explaining and predicting their behavior on the basis of these attributed mental states. We’ve seen some ways in

While I can see how Folk Psychology on its own will not be able to withstand the pressures of our evolving scientific community, I don’t think Neuroscience is going to be the thing that replaces it. Eliminative materialism supports the fact that the existence of Folk Psychology is not real. My question is why anyone believes anything else. What is it about Folk Psychology that allows it to be so vague and lacking but still be widely accepted as though it were scientific fact? There are people who are really in the fact that Folk Psychology gives us legitimate fundamental explanations of behavior. It seems that underlying opinion about Folk Psychology is that while it may not be perfect or 100% true, it’s good