In Defence of the Phenomenological Objection to Mental Fictionalism

The authors defend their earlier argument that mental fictionalism—the view that folk psychological talk is a useful fiction rather than a true description of mental states—is an undermotivated theory, meaning there is no good reason to abandon a realist approach to folk psychology. They respond to Gábor Bács's criticism that their argument equivocates on concepts of conscious experience. They argue that Bács's objection relies on an implausible verificationist approach. They also address Bács's remark about realist mental fictionalism, concluding that such a position is incoherent.

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Abstract

In this paper, we defend the main claims of our earlier paper “Mental Fictionalism as an Undermotivated Theory” (in The Monist) from Gábor Bács’s criticism, which appeared in his “Mental fictionalism and epiphenomenal qualia” (in Dialectica). In our earlier paper, we tried to show that mental fictionalism is an undermotivated theory, so there is no good reason to give up the realist approach to the folk psychological discourse. The core of Bács’s criticism consists in that our argumentation rests on an equivocation concerning the folk psychological concepts of conscious experiences. In our present argumentation, at first, we shortly recapitulate our earlier argumentation and Bács’s main objection to it. After that, we argue against the case of equivocation, claiming that it rests on a highly implausible and unsupported verificationist approach. Lastly, in answering another remark of Bács’s, we discuss the possibility of a realist mental fictionalism and conclude that it is an incoherent standpoint.