Rethinking Commonsense Psychology by M Ratcliffe

Rethinking Commonsense Psychology by M Ratcliffe

This book offers arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology, a view which Ratcliffe suggests is a theoretically motivated abstraction. His alternative account draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology, exploring patterned interactions in shared social situations.

'Rethinking Commonsense Psychology offers the to-date most detailed and sophisticated critique of the wide-spread philosophical dogma according to which humans understand each other by means of 'folk psychology'Drawing on a number of philosophical traditions as well as recent results in psychology and neuroscience, Ratcliffe not only refutes the dogma, but replaces it with a novel view. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology will be required reading for philosophers of psychology, developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists alike.' - Professor Martin Kusch, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

'Ratcliffe covers every detail of a thorough repudiation of standard accounts of how we understand other people. Folk psychology is dead and we can forget it since, as Ratcliffe shows, we clearly do not need it for purposes of understanding others or even explaining how we understand others. Ratcliffe has eliminated FP, not in the way that some hard-line reductionists would want it eliminated, but by showing its irrelevancy. The hard-line reductionists no longer need to worry about FP; at the same time, Ratcliffe provides them with much more serious things to worry about, since reductionism is dead too.' - Shaun Gallagher, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

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

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780230221208
ISBN 10	0230221203
Title	Rethinking Commonsense Psychology
Author	Matthew Ratcliffe
Series	New Directions In Philosophy And Cognitive Science
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
Year published	2008-09-11
Number of pages	271
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.