Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons

by Daniel D. Hutto

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Language

343 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2007

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alternate approach to Theory of Mind rejection, Folk Psychology explores the innate ability of us to create intention, and why it easily gets out of hand. References include child development. A great book, not to be overlooked as too specialized.

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of the book is a bit misleading. An explanation of the origins of language, argument for the existence of nonpropositional intentional attitudes, and new account of Gibsonian affordances are all equally involved here and codepend on each other. I found each of these major elements of the book wonderfully detailed and well-defended. Hutto first walks through these different parts and then draws on all of them crucially to define his position on the theory of mind debates. These debates center on the question on how it is possible that we can understand each other in conversation, and how we can infer people's intentional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires) on the basis of observing behavior. Hutto forwards his position while skillfully dismantling the two major positions on this debate, theory-theory and simulation-theory.

Hutto's position is that in the vast majority of cases we do not engage in any reflective or theoretical activities in order to make sense in conversations or in observing behaviors. Instead, this sense-making is instant and spontaneous due to speech and behaviors serving as "action coordination indexicals" (Hutto's new way of describing Gibsonian affordances). Hutto illuminates the basic nature of action coordination indexicals in the case of bee-dancing: these dances can be informationally rich due to biological sensitivities to environmental structures and the covariation between them.

He shows how highly sophisticated indexicals, of a similar nature, are found in the case of human social experiences. The complexities of such human-social indexicals are made possible by the human ability for mimesis (which is what modern mirror neuron system research gets at) and "recreative imagination" (a multimodal ability to vividly re-simulate or recall sensory experiences, e.g. visual imagery off from visual experience). The combination of these two abilities opens many possibilities of having "distance" from immediate environmental cues, recombining informationally rich covariations of environmental cues, predicting and testing the consequences of such combinations; and then mimicking each other's behaviors anchored on these sophisticated indexicals gives rise to social norms, systematic and shared restraints on these combinatory possibilities, the development of similar indexicals within all individual perspectives, and the possibility of social interaction and societal activities.

Hutto makes the point that for the rare cases where we do need to be reflective and theoretical in order to make sense of communication or behaviors, we are able to do so on the basis of identifying "reasons for action" - this identification depends on prior grasp of belief/desire couplings and the capacity to interrelate these different propositional attitudes. Engaging in narrative practices (whether in stories revealed in conversations, TV, or any other media) is the medium through which we acquire these prerequisite abilities for grasping reasons for action. Stories provide holistic realms where we implicitly come to understand how beliefs and desires work together to form reasons or bases for actions.

Hutto crucially shows how such narrative practices, and thus folk psychological skills and theory of mind, fully depends on grasp of natural language. Only complex grammatical symbolic systems provide the structures of thought in which we can discursively embed meaning-units, which enable us to represent representations - for example, to have beliefs about other beliefs that are about other beliefs. Language is necessary for grasping how others can have sets of beliefs and desires distinct from one's own and for interrelating these propositional attitudes, in order to make sense of behaviors and speech.

My only side-complaint of this book is that Hutto is in love with using adjectives, which can get annoying or just elicit laughter. Example: “... properly logical, honest-to-God systematic and productive modes of reasoning” (96) - 5 adjectives. He also loves coining new labels for various theories, whether his own or others that he cites, and giving them acronyms. Then he exclusively refers to these theories by these acronyms. Fortunately, he provides a list of all the acronyms at the beginning (there are 2-3 dozen in total), but it is annoying to refer to these, and I find this writing practice unnecessary.

Anyways I strongly recommend to this book to anyone interested in 4-E cognition, the origins of language, or the role of language in intersubjectivity (e.g. individual interactions, social norms, cultural practices). If a reader is more interested in philosophical studies on the relations between narrative and aspects of subjectivity (which the book title might misleadingly indicate), this book will not provide that.

[Shaani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book exploring Folk psychology, folk psychological narratives and challenging some of the dominant views in the field of philosophy of mind. Whether it be ToM (Theory of Mind), TT (Theory-theory) or ST (Simulation Theory), Hutto develops a strong argument in order to the challenge these views with his own view; The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH). Hutto's abilitity to explain its origins, but also entertain it's objectors makes it a helpful and insightful read. Touching on child development, sociocultural models and intentions, this book is fantastic for those reading up on this particular field of philosophy.