Suppose Nothing Is Simple. A Polemic with Paweł Gładziejewski Concerning Folk Psychology

Abstract

The paper is a polemic with Paweł Gładziejewski’s account of the relation between folk psychology and cognitive science. According to Gładziejewski, folk psychological explanations operate at a higher level than those offered by cognitive science, but cognitive science is not independent of folk psychology, as the latter provides the former with explananda. I argue that, according to Gładziejewski’s own account, folk psychology cannot provide cognitive science with explananda because it is too deflated and too narrowly construed. However, if one makes it sufficiently broad and interprets it more realistically, then it may very well be incompatible with cognitive science.