Abstract

There is something of a consensus among contemporary philosophers of mind that our everyday thought and discourse about the mind and mental phenomena embodies an empirical theory that is subject to the same canons of epistemological evaluation as any other empirical theory. Furthermore, many of these writers argue that, when our "folk psychology" is subjected to these canons of evaluation, it not only turns out to lack empirical adequacy, but cannot be reconciled with the truth of physicalism. ;I begin this dissertation with an attempt to clarify the view that folk psychology is a theory, or folk theory, or the mind. On my account, a folk theory is what we might call an "Ur-theory": a kind of basic, non-scientific theoretical framework that makes our understanding and perception possible even after the effects of highly speculative theories are removed. It is not a scientific, or proto-scientific, theory; rather, it is a theoretical framework that must already be in place before science can get underway. ;If this account of folk theory is correct, it means that the empirical adequacy of folk theory cannot properly be assessed against a scientific standard. In that case, most attacks on the empirical adequacy of folk psychology have so far missed their mark. ;I next turn to the charge that folk psychology cannot be reconciled with the truth of physicalism. In most cases this belief stems from the fact that folk psychology appears most unlikely to "reduce" to some physical or non-intentional theory. However, I argue for a particular theory of psychophysical supervenience, one that does not commit us to any brand of psychophysical reduction or to a doctrine of psychophysical laws.