Naturalism and Other Minds: On the Invisibility of Everyday Psychology

A/Prof David Macarthur (University of Sydney)

The standard functionalist account of the mind treats the mind as a set of functional states. In the context of what is popularly called “naturalism” this becomes the thesis that the mind is a set of states that are objects of scientific study. Our everyday psychological vocabulary is seen as part of a “folk theory” of the mind – a proto-scientific theory that can be revised or replaced by scientific theories that are seen as more empirically adequate. In this talk I oppose this orthodoxy and argue instead that everyday psychology becomes invisible when looked at from a scientific point of view. Within a different liberal naturalism, I take up the question “Do we (directly) observe other minds” and suggest that the reason we are inclined to answer in the negative is not because other minds are hidden but, rather, like artworks, they can be hard to read.

Bio:

David Macarthur is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney. He works at the interfaces of contemporary pragmatism, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and psychology and the philosophy of art. In addition to these topics, he has published articles in leading philosophy journals and books on liberal naturalism, metaphysical quietism, skepticism, common sense, perception, ordinary language, philosophy of architecture, and philosophy of photography and film. He has co-edited three collections of papers with Mario De Caro (Roma Tré): Naturalism in Question (Harvard, 2004); Naturalism and Normativity (Columbia, 2010); and Philosophy in an Age of Science: Physics, Mathematics and Skepticism (Harvard, 2012); and recently edited Hilary & Ruth-Anna Putnam, Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey (Harvard, 2017).