Is Folk Psychology Mechanistically Neutral?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of Paweł Gładziejewski’s position presented in chapter five of his book Wyjaśnianie za pomocą reprezentacji mentalnych. Perspektywa mechanistyczna (Explaining with Mental Representations. A Mechanistic Perspective). The chapter, entitled Reprezentacjonizm w kognitywistyce a problem naturalizacji intencjonalności (Representationalism in Cognitive Science and the Problem of Naturalizing Intentionality), is devoted to the status of folk psychology and propositional attitudes in the context of the mechanistic model of explanation in cognitive science. The paper also contains a sketch of an alternative naturalistic account of propositional attitudes compatible with the mechanistic model of representational explanation.