Folk Psychological Narratives

The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons

By Daniel D. Hutto

2007

First Published

4.10

Average Rating

368

Number of Pages

11H14M

Audio Length

Established wisdom in cognitive science holds that the everyday folk psychological abilities of humans—our capacity to understand intentional actions performed for reasons—are inherited from our evolutionary forebears. In Folk Psychological Narratives, Daniel Hutto challenges this view (held in somewhat different forms by the two dominant approaches, "theory theory" and simulation theory) and argues for the sociocultural basis of this familiar ability. He makes a detailed case for the idea that the way we make sense of intentional actions essentially involves the construction of narratives about particular persons. Moreover he argues that children acquire this practical skill only by being exposed to and engaging in a distinctive kind of narrative practice. Hutto calls this developmental proposal the narrative practice hypothesis (NPH). Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons (that is, folk psychological narratives) supply children with both the basic structure of folk psychology and the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice. In making a strong case for the as yet underexamined idea that our understanding of reasons may be socioculturally grounded, Hutto not only advances and explicates the claims of the NPH, but he also challenges certain widely held assumptions. In this way, Folk Psychological Narratives both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal.

Avg Rating

4.10

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

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4 STARS

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3 STARS

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Author

Daniel D. Hutto

Author · 4 books

Born and raised in New York, I finished my undergraduate degree as a study abroad student in St Andrews, Scotland where my maternal roots lie. I returned to New York to teach fourth grade in the Bronx for a year in order to fund my MPhil in Logic and Metaphysics. I then carried on my doctoral work in York, England. We, my wife and three boys, lived in England for over 20 years. Australia is our new home since I took up the position of Professor of Philosophical Psychology and Head of Philosophy at the University of Wollongong, Australia in 2013. Previously I worked at the University of Hertfordshire since 1993, where I served as Head of Philosophy from 1999 to 2005. My research is a sustained attempt to understand human nature in a way which respects natural science but which nevertheless rejects the impersonal metaphysics of contemporary naturalism. My recent research focuses primarily on issues in philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science. I am best known for promoting thoroughly non-representational accounts of enactive and embodied cognition, and for having developed a hypothesis which claims that engaging with narratives, understood as public artefacts, plays a critical role in underpinning distinctively human forms of cognition. Reaching beyond philosophy, I have often been invited to speak at conferences and expert meetings aimed at anthropologists, clinical psychiatrists/therapists, educationalists, narratologists, neuroscientists and psychologists. I am called upon regularly to serve major research bodies worldwide: including the European Research Council (ERC); Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK; and the National Science Foundation (NSF)/National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), USA. Since migrating to Australia I have joined the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts, and served as Chair of its Humanities and Creative Arts Panel. The following assessment, provided in support of my Readership application, is indicative of my intended style of approach: "He writes with polish, sophistication, direction and insight. Hutto exhibits a marvelous sense of adventure: he tries to tackle difficult problems and enthusiastically defends positions because they strike him as deep and best, not because they are popular or will readily get him published. Yet he publishes with ease." George Graham, August 1999.