Rethinking Commonsense Psychology A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation

This book proposes a series of interconnected arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves the use of a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology. Ratcliffe suggests that folk psychology, construed as the attribution of internal mental states in order to predict and explain behaviour, is a theoretically motivated and misleading abstraction from social life. He draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology to offer an alternative account that emphasizes patterned interactions between people in shared social situations.

MATTHEW RATCLIFFE is Reader in Philosophy at Durham University, UK. He is the author of Feelings of Being: Phemenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (2008) and co-editor of Folk Psychology Re-assessed (2007).