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The Domain of Folk Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

José Luis Bermúdez
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My topic in this paper is social understanding. By this I mean the cognitive skills underlying social behaviour and social coordination. Normal, encultured, non-autistic and non-brain-damaged human beings are capable of an impressive degree of social coordination. We navigate the social world with a level of skill and dexterity fully comparable to that which we manifest in navigating the physical world. In neither sphere, one might think, would it be a trivial matter to identify the various competences which underly this impressive level of performance. Nonetheless, at least as far as interpersonal interactions are concerned, philosophers show a rare degree of unanimity. What grounds our success in these interactions is supposed to be our common mastery of (more or less similar versions of) folk psychology.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 53 , September 2003 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2003

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