CFP: Mental Fictionalism - Special Issue of Philosophical Psychology

Call for papers:

Special Issue of Philosophical Psychology

Mental Fictionalism

Guest Editors:

Tamás Demeter (Corvinus University of Budapest)
Adam Toon (University of Exeter)

Manuscript deadline: 31st March 2025

Folk psychology is often taken to play a key role in explaining and predicting behaviour. For realists, the success of folk psychology argues for the existence of the entities it invokes, from beliefs and desires to sensations and conscious experiences. For eliminativists, such entities are problematic and must be excluded from the scientific worldview. Mental fictionalism offers one way out of this predicament. According to the fictionalist, mental states are useful fictions: even if people do not have beliefs and desires (or sensations or conscious experiences…) inside their heads, it is useful to talk as if they do.

This special issue will assess the prospects of mental fictionalism and consider some of the problems it faces. It will also explore recent applications of mental fictionalism in other domains, such as artificial intelligence and the philosophy of psychiatry.

We invite submissions exploring the prospects, problems, and potential applications of mental fictionalism, including the following topics:

·         Can mental fictionalism provide a “middle way” between realism and eliminativism? Does it collapse into a variety of behaviourism?

·         Should the evidence of consciousness and introspection lead us to reject a fictionalist approach to the mind?

·         How does fictionalism relate to illusionism?

·         How does mental fictionalism related to key ideas within 4E approaches to cognition, such as the extended mind thesis?

·         Does treating mental representations as useful fictions provide an alternative to eliminativist approaches, like enactivism?

·         How does mental fictionalism relate to similar approaches, such as those taken by Gilbert Ryle, the later Wittgenstein, or Daniel Dennett’s intentional stance?

·         Can mental fictionalism help to explain our interaction with artificial intelligence systems, such as chatbots?

·         Can fictionalism help us to understand mental illness?

Confirmed contributors include Dan Hutto (University of Wollongong) and Meg Wallace (University of Kentucky).

Submission instructions

·         Only original articles will be considered.

·         The word limit for submitted paper is 8,000 words.

·         The editors will evaluate manuscripts before sending them for external peer review. Only the manuscripts judged as suitable for publication by two independent reviewers will be accepted for publication.

·         Please select "Mind and Fiction" in the Special Issues drop-down menu when submitting your paper to ScholarOne.

·         We warmly encourage submissions by authors whose first language is not English and by authors who belong to traditionally underrepresented groups in academia.

For more information, see: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/mental-fictionalism/