system of deferents and epicycles, was originally intended by him in
exactly this spirit – tosave the phenomena, with no commitment to the
reality of the motions involved. Not all astronomers stuck to this modest
and non-committal position. Many combined the representation of the
sun, moon and planets as if circling round deferents which were circling
round the Earth, with the idea that the Earth really was stationary and
located at the very centre of the cosmos. That theoretical package was
certainly refuted. But it remained possible to treat the apparatus of de-
ferents and epicycles as merely a calculating device, without any preten-
sions to capture the way the universe is structured or what forces are at
work. Clearly, while such aninstrumentalisttheory can be superseded, it
cannot strictly speaking be refuted, any more than the abacus can be
refuted by the pocket calculator.
By contrast, realists have more to be wrong about. They can be wrong,
not only in their predictions concerning whatever phenomena are under
consideration, but also about how those phenomena are produced. For
this reason realism concerning folk psychology seems to leave room for a
genuine challenge from eliminative materialism – folk psychology may
turn out to be a false theory, and it may turn out that there are no such
genuine kinds asbeliefanddesire. But equally, instrumentalism concerning
folk psychology may be vulnerable to a diVerent sort of pressure from
scientiWc psychology. For if the latter has to take some of its terms and
principles from the folk (at least initially), and if science should assume
realism on methodological grounds, then scientiWc psychology may well
come toenrichthe theoretical commitments of the folk. So we need to ask:
to what extent are users of common-sense psychology engaged in a prac-
tice which has realist commitments?
2 Two varieties of anti-realism
Anti-realism (of intention) about folk psychology has been a popular view
in the philosophy of mind, and has come in too many forms to survey
exhaustively here. We will, however, indicate the ways in which we disag-
ree with the positions of two inXuential philosophers, Davidson and
Dennett. According to Davidson, folk psychology is not so much a theory
as an interpretative schema which allows us to devise mini-theories of the
psychological states of particular people, who are the targets of inter-
pretation. According to Dennett, folk-psychological practice is a matter of
adopting a certain kind of stance –the intentional stance– in order to
predict the behaviour of other people. It is striking how these two ap-
proaches tend to concentrate on diVerent folk-psychological tasks: inter-
pretation and explanation after the act in Davidson’s case, and expectation
26 Folk-psychological commitments