# Folk Psychology Folk psychology is our everyday framework for understanding and predicting behavior in terms of mental states—beliefs, desires, intentions, fears. "She went to the fridge because she wanted water and believed it was there." This belief-desire reasoning is so natural we barely notice it, but it constitutes an implicit theory of mind that could, in principle, be wrong. The debate centers on folk psychology's status. Functionalists and defenders of the [[Language of Thought]] see it as approximately true. [[Eliminative Materialism]] (the Churchlands) argues it's a failed theory that neuroscience will replace—"belief" and "desire" may not map onto real brain states. [[Jerry Fodor]] defends folk psychology as our best theory of behavior; eliminativists see it as the new phlogiston. ## The Debate | Position | View of Folk Psychology | |----------|------------------------| | Vindication | Approximately true, will be refined | | Reduction | Will map onto brain states | | Elimination | False theory, will be replaced | ## References - Churchland, Paul. "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes" (1981) - Fodor, Jerry. *Psychosemantics* (1987) ## Related - [[Eliminative Materialism]] - [[Paul Churchland]] - [[Jerry Fodor]] - [[Language of Thought]] - [[Philosophy of Mind]]