November 8th to 11th, 2004

Sérgio da Costa Oliveira
sgoliver@uol.com.br
PUC - RIO - Brazil

ON THE REALITY OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY

ABSTRACT
Should we prefer the "scientific image" that arises from the neurophysiological researches or even the mechanistic descriptions of behavior to the common sense image of our actions? Should our daily intentional explanations lose their force and be discarded because of the more precise and rigorous language of science? At last, should we make an effort in order to get rid of the "illusions" in which we would be trapped by our shared "folk psychology"? Now and then, followed by a speech of reforms and salvation, the replacement of the folk image of our actions for a scientific one is presented as the natural aim of knowledge and the necessary step that will remove us from that steady illusion in which we are forced to live. The most meaningful representatives of this thought are Paul & Patricia Churchland and B. F. Skinner, the eliminativists tout court. By subscribing to a strict scientific realism, according to those different authors, the so-called "folk psychology" should not have any future. Contrary to this stance and based upon Gilbert Ryle's and Daniel Dennett's works and, chiefly, the neopragmatist perspective developed by Richard Rorty, we attempt to demonstrate the nonsense of that position, since there is no need to keep any essential opposition between the literal and the metaphorical use of language.

KEYWORDS: Neopragmatism, Language, Folk psychology, Eliminativism.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil