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Review - Do Apes Read Minds?
Toward a New Folk Psychology
by Kristin Andrews
MIT Press, 2012
Review by David Fajardo-Chica
Apr 2nd 2013 (Volume 17, Issue 14)
Folk psychology is usually defined as a person's ability to predict and explain others' behaviors in virtue of attributing beliefs, desires and other mental states. Usually, folk psychology is compared with other "folk" domains of knowledge: folk biology, folk physics, and so on. What do they have in common? That knowledge is not acquired in an academic environment, but allows people to face certain phenomena in their everyday contexts. Folk psychology is, in other words, the commonsensical understanding of minds and how it relates to behavior.
In her book, Andrews criticizes the traditional way of understanding folk psychology. The core of the Standard Folk Psychology (SFP), as she calls it, is as follows: i) propositional attitudes are the cause of intentional behavior, ii) folk psychology is the attribution of such propositional attitudes, iii) a folk psychologist is a creature who is successful in predicting and explaining behavior and, iv) the cognitive mechanism which underlies the ability to predict is the same that underlies the ability to explain. Although all four theses were evaluated, only the third one is stands in her proposal: the Pluralistic Folk Psychology (PFP).
There are many differences between SFP and PFP. First, the author claims that SFP suffers of an over-intellectualization of the phenomena (ch. 2). Only the creatures having the capacity to establish relations with propositional attitudes can be both understood in folk psychological terms and in being folk psychologists. Then, the PFP diminishes the role of propositional attitudes -the allegedly mental contents. A colorful sentence about it: "While it is true that children do not understand people as bags of skins stuffed into pieces of cloth, it is also true that children do not understand people as bags of skin filled with propositional attitudes" (p. 36).
Second, the author argues (ch. 3 and 4) that the abilities of explanation and prediction do not rely on the same cognitive mechanisms. In Andrews' words, the traditional slogan of SFP "No prediction without explanation, no explanation without prediction" (p. 37) is false. A folk psychological evidence for this scission is the fact that sometimes we can explain in situations where we are unable to predict. For example: why did Peter abandon his wife? Because Peter realized that she had an affair. Although it sounds like a good explanation, the moment that Peter realizes that his wife had an affair, could we predict what his course of action would be? It seems that the answer is negative. On the other hand, sometimes the appeal to mental states can serve to predict, not to explain. Ana desires milk and also believes that there will be milk in the store. Then, we can predict that Ana will go to the store to buy milk and that it is perfectly possible that our prediction will be correct. But an explanation seeker will not be satisfied with the invocation to mental states if she asks: Why did Ana go to store if she had milk in her refrigerator? Maybe she needs more milk for a special recipe, or the milk in her refrigerator has expired. The mere appealing to mental states is not a good enough explanation.
Third, predictions and explanations can be done by other ways different from attribution of mental states (ch. 5 and 8). For example, we can predict people's behavior based on a stereotype: "She will protect her children". We can predict this in absence of information only with the knowledge that she is a mother. Maybe, if we know that in other occasions she abandons her children, we can predict: "She will not protect her children" in virtue of her past behavior. In both cases, we predict behavior without attributing mental states at all. In other situations, we predict putting ourselves in the other's shoes, "Oscar will be very angry if the airplane left him due to a five minutes delay". In this case, we do not attribute any special beliefs or desires to Oscar in order to predict his behavior. The author explores a lot of social psychology literature where many ways to predict, explain and understand behavior could be done in the absence of propositional attitudes attribution.
Fourth, PFP's approach allows the amplification of the category of folk psychologists (ch. 10, 11 and 12). In the frame of SFP, only creatures able to maintain relationships with propositions (creatures with language and a good competence in the understanding of beliefs, i.e. creatures that make achievements in a false-belief task) could be folk psychologists. Because they are the only creatures that can read minds. But, in Andrews's account, the criteria is less demanding. The folk psychologists do not need to be engaged in propositional thinking. Folk psychologists do not read minds. They read people, as a whole, as a complex phenomenon. They can do that by taking any available resources: past history, traits, stereotypes, situational context, and of course, also mental states attributions. In this sense the question about babies and chimpanzees is solved: they are folk psychologists.
Kristin Andrews' book has a lot of strengths. Her argumentation is an excellent example of an empirically oriented philosophy of mind. Her style is as pluralistic as her theory. She is doing conceptual analysis in one chapter (e.g. ch 3) and in the other is reviewing psychological literature (e.g. ch. 5).
However, there is room for debate. What is the real objective behind all this work? Is it only a terminological issue? The problem here is how to define folk psychology. Andrews proposes a definition, but as far as I can see, she does not push it strongly enough. Her proposal is to understand folk psychology as a set of "folk psychological practices", and these practices are those which allow predicting or explaining behavior. But, the question that rises here is: Why must we to call "folk psychological practices" to practices which do not imply the attribution of mental states? I am suspicious about her move. I think that there are two striking issues concerning folk psychology (traditionally understood): the prediction and explanation of behavior (as Andrews put it) and the attribution of mental states itself (an ignored part by Andrews). If Andrews wants to enlarge the category of folk psychology by adding other "folk psychological practices", I cannot see clearly why the new "practices" are "folk psychological" without the component of attribution of psychological (mental) states.
Nevertheless, it is an amusing book. There are plenty of great reviews of empirical research which could be particularly useful for philosophy students at upper level. Additionally, philosophers and cognitive scientists will find the information and argumentation of Do Apes Read Minds? really interesting.
© 2013 David Fajardo-Chica
David Fajardo-Chica is teaching some courses on Philosophy of Mind and Language at Universidad del Valle (Colombia).