Deconstructing the mind

by Stephen P. Stich

During the past two decades, debates over the viability of commonsense psychology have occupied center-stage in both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. From early childhood onward, we all predict and explain human behavior by invoking mental states like beliefs and desires, but do these familiar states actually exist? A group of prominent philosophers known as eliminativists argues that they do not, contending that commonsense mental states are fictions, products of a tacit and deeply flawed "folk" theory of mind that gives a radically mistaken account of mental life. Recent advances in cognitive science and neuroscience, eliminativists maintain, underscore the shortcomings of commonsense psychology and make it very likely that a mature science of the mind/brain will reject commonsense mental states in much the same way that modern chemistry and physics reject caloric fluid and phlogiston. In Deconstructing the Mind, distinguished philosopher Stephen Stich, once a leading ad