As far as I know, the modern debate ab out folk psychology begins with Wilfrid Sellars's view that folk psychology is a proto-scientific theory. For a while, the whole debate was over whether such a theory was mostly correct or incorrect, reducible or irreducible to lower-level theories. Then in the 1970s, psychologists (and primatologists) picked up on the idea and developed a whole empirical field devoted to "theories of mind".
Shortly after that, Robert Gordon came up with an alternative. According to his simulation theory, we predict others' mental states and behavior based not on a theory, but on simulating them using our own mental states and processes. Since then, there has been considerable debate between simulation theorists and theory theorists, with some people (such as Shaun Nichols and Steve Stich) offering "mixed" simulation-theory theories.
More recently, the theory vs. simulation dichotomy has come under attack from various sides.
On the one hand, some authors (Heidi Maibom, Peter Godfrey-Smith) have drawn from philosophy of science to argue that folk psychology should be taken to be a model rather than a theory or simulation. I recently read
Godfrey-Smith's paper along these lines. My impression is that he did not succeed in defining a stable position independent of the theory-simulation dichotomy. When he explains how folk psychology is not a theory, his models look like they could be simulations. When he explains how folk psychology is not a simulation, his models seem close enough to theories to make his view a variant of the theory theory.
On the other hand, some authors (Shaun Gallagher, Daniel Hutto) have argued that folk psychology is a narrative rather then a theory or simulation. While there is obviously some truth to the narrative view, the capacity to construct narratives is very high-level and in need of an explanation. So I don't see that the narrative view is a serious competitor of the existing alternatives.
There is also Matthew Ratcliffe, whose new book argues that there is no such thing as folk psychology. Folk psychology is just a "misguided reification of abstractions" (23). "Social understanding . . . is a form of what is often called 'situated', 'embodied, embedded' or 'extended' cognition.
Social understanding is
inextricable from interaction with the social world" (86, see also 107; emphasis added). (I took these quotes from
Hutto's review; I haven't seen the book.) Ratcliffe's view sounds extremely implausible to me; yet another instance of situated/embodied/embedded cognition run amok.
Interestingly, in recent years there has been movement among some cognitive neuroscientists and roboticists in the direction of simulation theory (Gordon, personal communication). For cognitive neuroscientists, the big reason is the discovery of mirror neurons, which are relatively easy to interpret within a simulationist framework and not so easy within a theory theory framework. For roboticists, the main reason seem to be that implementing simulation routines is more straightforward and computationally less costly than attempting to give a robot an explicit theory of mind. So for now, simulation theory seems to be on the rise.
Comments? Anything wrong with my story?
