Interpretivism, mental fictionalism and folk psychology

Folk psychology serves as our common conceptual framework for understanding mental phenomena and shaping and regulating behavior. Interpretivism is a view on mental phenomena that considers them to be constitutively bound with interpretation. In some versions, it amounts to the claim that to have a mental state (e.g., a belief) is to be interpretable as having this belief. Mental fictionalism, a more recent position, views folk psychological ascriptions of mental states as fictional statements that are useful but not literally true. It remains an open question whether interpretivism and mental fictionalism are competitors or allies, a question that the workshop aims to explore. Specifically, the workshop seeks to:

1. clarify the relationship between interpretivism and fictionalism regarding folk psychology;
2. consider the pros and cons of interpretivism and mental fictionalism;
3. advance interpretivist and fictionalist positions further.