Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Rethinking Commonsense Psychology

A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation

  • Book
  • © 2007

Overview

Authors:
  1. Matthew Ratcliffe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science (NDPCS)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 120.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Commonsense Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 1-26

  3. Where is the Commonsense in Commonsense Psychology?

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 27-57

  4. The World We Live in

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 58-84

  5. Letting the World do the Work

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 85-120

  6. Perceiving Actions

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 121-151

  7. The Second Person

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 152-185

  8. Beliefs and Desires

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 186-221

  9. The Personal Stance

    • Matthew Ratcliffe
    Pages 222-244

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 245-271
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book offers arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology, a view which Ratcliffe suggests is a theoretically motivated abstraction. His alternative account draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology, exploring patterned interactions in shared social situations.

Reviews

'Rethinking Commonsense Psychology offers the to-date most detailed and sophisticated critique of the wide-spread philosophical dogma according to which humans understand each other by means of 'folk psychology'. Drawing on a number of philosophical traditions as well as recent results in psychology and neuroscience, Ratcliffe not only refutes the dogma, but replaces it with a novel view. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology will be required reading for philosophers of psychology, developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists alike.' - Professor Martin Kusch, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

'Ratcliffe covers every detail of a thorough repudiation of standard accounts of how we understand other people. Folk psychology is dead and we can forget it since, as Ratcliffe shows, we clearly do not need it for purposes of understanding others or even explaining how we understand others. Ratcliffe has eliminated FP, not in the way that some hard-line reductionists would want it eliminated, but by showing its irrelevancy. The hard-line reductionists no longer need to worry about FP; at the same time, Ratcliffe provides them with much more serious things to worry about, since reductionism is dead too.' - Shaun Gallagher, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

About the author

MATTHEW RATCLIFFE is Reader in Philosophy at Durham University, UK.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation