Making sense of folk psychological practices: the value of anthropological methods

Folk psychology, or the everyday practice of interpreting each other’s behavior in terms of mental states, is a common feature of many social communities. The existence of such practices in which people ascribe for example beliefs, desires and intentions to each other, raises important philosophical questions. For example, what is the purpose of ascribing mental states to another person or to oneself? And: do folk psychological practices in different social communities have any necessary features in common? Even though recent work in experimental philosophy provides valuable information on differences between folk psychological practices, we will show that the methods of experimental philosophy are not fully suited to answer such questions. Instead, we will argue that to understand the aims of folk psychology and to map out similarities and differences between various practices, we need what Gilbert Ryle called thick descriptions of the particularities of folk psychological practices found in different communities. More specifically, in order to develop such thick descriptions, philosophical research on folk psychology should engage more seriously with the discipline of anthropology, which employs methods specifically geared toward generating thick descriptions of “ordinary life” in various social practices.