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Anil Mitra 2005-2
CONCEPTS: add to ‘Concepts’ in Object.Concept or other appropriate location 1. The initial or ‘common’ form as-it-appears-in-experience may suggest the potential for extension but is not identical to the extension either in sense or reference 2. Cognitive scientists have criticized common concepts used to talk about mind and experience –beliefs, emotions, desires– and so on as belonging to ‘folk psychology’ and perhaps lacking in empirical grounding and would replace them with concepts that are neutral with respect to the categories of subjective experience. While common use may be inadequate as an extension to the a full and precise system, this does not mean that the common terms are inadequate in themselves. For, it is not only in psychology that the terms used have origin in everyday experience. In physics, ‘force,’ ‘inertia,’ ‘motion’ are rooted in common use but their sense, reference, precision and integration changes in physics having some overlap with common use. The categories of intuition have a ‘folk’ component. Modern physics continues to use some terms of ‘folk physics.’ Additionally it is a mistake to suppose that the common uses are devoid of content or utility; and it is also a mistake to think that science can itself eliminate its origin in common use or that science is outside common use regardless of how esoteric it may become. The use of the term ‘folk psychology’ is probably intended as disparaging and, if so, is an example of poor argument. That some cognitive scientists have compared common terms to the phlogiston theory of heat supports the thought that the sense is derisive 3. The way to a good scientific account of any field is not necessarily in the elimination of terms used previously but in the deepening of the terms as possible and indicated, sharpening of the terms, introduction of new terms, systematic development of the terms as interactive in their meaning, and empirical grounding. Not all cases of possible and consistent extension are productive and it is only when this leads to a more coherent theory andor to a broader one that extension is good |