What a difference a mind makes: The origin and structure of human intuitive psychology, and its implications for psychological science
David Pietraszewski
October 9, 2023 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/kn8u6 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that psychology's reliance on intuitive concepts like attention and consciousness is a category mistake: these concepts reflect outputs of evolved difference-detecting mechanisms rather than how mental processes work. Contends that propositional statements such as 'I see a bear' do not carve the mind at its joints, and that psychology's theory crisis matches the profile of a science over-reliant on practitioners' intuitive outputs. Proposes integrating these concepts by employing additional difference-detecting mechanisms, including 'artifact psychology'. |
Abstract
Psychology is in the midst of an unidentified problem: it is falling prey to a category mistake delivered by our intuitive psychology. From an evolutionary perspective, intuitive psychological concepts such as attention, consciousness, intelligence and so on reflect the output of difference detecting mechanisms; they describe features of the world that varied and that were beneficial to keep track of, they do not describe how mental processes work. This point may have far-reaching consequences for the psychological sciences, as it suggests conceptual bedrocks of these sciences, including the propositional calculus in which a personal pronoun plies cognitive processes to content, as in ‘I see a bear’ or ’Bob desires a Faustian bargain’, do not carve the mind up by the joints, nor do they even pick out mental mechanisms, per se. Perhaps not coincidentally, the attributes of psychology’s theory crisis closely match the attributes of a science over-reliant on the intuitive outputs of the difference detecting mechanisms of its practitioners, suggesting that correcting for the influence of our evolved psychology will be an important step towards scientific reform. How to integrate—rather than jettison—the intuitive psychological concepts delivered by our evolved psychology’s difference detecting mechanisms will be discussed. This involves using additional, alternative difference detecting mechanisms when doing our science, including our evolved artifact psychology.