Browsing by Author "Hougaard, Deryck Simon"

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    Toward a naturalistically explicable folk psychology
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Hougaard, Deryck Simon; De Villiers-Botha, Tanya; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the gap between what our science says and how many theorists and everyday people have characterised how we conceive of mental states. I argue that looking at our folk psychology (FP) in light of an understanding of real-world, current science yields beneficial philosophical results. FP, in the iteration that I shall be concerned with here, refers to every person’s ability to apply reason explanations to conspecifics’ behaviour. I focus predominantly on the underlying processes that we allegedly pick out in our folk psychologising, those of beliefs and desires (the propositional attitudes). The reason for this focus lies in the gap between our intuitive beliefs and understanding of our mental processes and the picture painted by the empirical sciences. I first explore some issues concerning traditional theorising on the topic, before discussing current scientific research into pur cognitive processes in the form of predictive processing (PP) as advocated by Friston (2003, 2008, 2010), Hohwy (2013), and Clark (2016). PP depicts our brains not as passive, stimulus-driven organs, but as active constructors of our environment. An implication of this approach is that the way in which we represent the environment within our mind is different to how it is typically conceived within traditional FP. I also explore Hutto’s (2008a; Hutto & Myin 2013a, 2017) claim that our minds are wired to be attuned to the environment in terms of minimal content, which allows me to develop a minimal conception of representation in terms of content, one in which direct correspondence between mental states and the supposed representation of the environment need not obtain for the mental to do causally efficacious work. I conclude that the beliefs and desires utilised in FP are socio-cultural impositions upon the neural substrate with no counterpart in reality. This has clear implications for our understanding of how we think about mental states within the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind, if what we are aiming toward is a clarification of just what the mental is. Additionally, these new insights may ensure that the cognitive sciences are better informed about what it is that is being explained and where to focus further research concerning the mental.