have found (ii) a very interesting topic, especially in connection with names
and deWnite descriptions. But let us consider (i)Wrst.
Suppose that John thinks, plausibly enough, that grass is green. John
also thinks that emeralds are green. ReXecting on this he concludes that
both grass and emeralds are green, and that they have something in
common – namely, greenness – with South African rugby jerseys, cre`me de
menthe, and Granny Smith apples. According to the folk, John applies the
same concept to all of these things. If you ask him whether any of these is
red, of course he will say ‘No’. And his reason will be the same in each case
- that he thinks the item in question is green, and he also thinks that in
general what is green cannot be red. A concept likegreencan feature in a
particular thought (such as, ‘Yuk, this cheese is turning green at the
edges!’), but wherever it appears it has an implicit generality. In order to be
thinkinggreenof one thing you need to stand ready to think the same of
anything else appropriately similar. So according to folk psychology con-
cepts are linking capacities, and their application or tokening is con-
stitutive of thoughts. (Compare Davies, 1991.)
As noted already, according to folk psychology someone can also think
of the same thing in diVerent ways. So if one has a thought about some
item, it cannot be the item itself which is a constituent of the thought, but
only the item-as-presented to the thinker, or the item-under-a-description.
(See chapter 6 below for a much more detailed treatment of this point.)
We can sum all this up by saying that folk psychology is committed to
people having intentional states, and to the claim that those intentional
states are forms of intentional content in which actual or possible items are
presented to a subject in various ways, and conceptualised in various ways.
Moreover, there are characteristic causal connections between perception
and some of these contentful states – so that, for example, a normal person
is caused to acquire the belief that a room is empty, on coming into an
empty room, byseeingit to be so. There are also – and this seems to be the
very belief/desire core of folk psychology – characteristic causal connec-
tions between combinations of intentional states and actions. Thus if
somebody wants to be alone and believes that the room at the end of the
corridor is empty, then like enough this will cause that person to enter the
room. In addition, there are characteristic causal connections between
contentful intentional states themselves. Inference is a conspicuous
example. You see someone going into the room at the end of the corridor.
You are thereby caused to acquire the belief that this person has entered
the room; and that belief will (usually) further cause you to acquire the
belief that the room is no longer empty.
38 Folk-psychological commitments