Open AccessJustification, conversation, and folk psychology
Author(s) -
Víctor Fernández Castro
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
theoria
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2171-679X
pISSN - 0495-4548
DOI - 10.1387/theoria.18022
Subject(s) - conversation , attribution , psychology , epistemology , folk psychology , cognition , function (biology) , social cognition , cognitive science , cognitive psychology , social psychology , philosophy , communication , neuroscience , evolutionary biology , biology
The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis.