Book contents
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
It is an old adage that two minds are better than one, and the same may go for theories of mind. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with modern philosophy of mind knows that philosophers differ widely in their view of the nature of mental states. One of the sharpest differences is that between the views of Daniel Dennett and Jerry Fodor. According to Dennett (or a slightly caricatured version of him), there is nothing more to having a belief or desire than being disposed to behave in the right way. Mentalistic discourse is a shallow, but very useful, way of characterizing and predicting people's behaviour. According to Fodor, on the other hand (to caricature slightly again), beliefs and desires are discrete, linguistically structured representational states, and everyday mentalistic discourse incorporates a theory of the internal processes that generate behaviour. These views seem, on the face of it, straightforwardly incompatible, and it is widely assumed that endorsing one means rejecting the other. I am going to argue that this is not so. When we look carefully, we find some striking divisions in the way we use mentalistic terms and in the kinds of mental explanation we give. In a rush to establish the scientific credentials of folk psychology, philosophers have tended to gloss over these divisions, imposing a unified framework on the folk concepts and practices. This has, I think, been a mistake.
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- Mind and Supermind , pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004