Workshop “Interpretivism, mental fictionalism and folk psychology”

November 7-8, 2024. University of Tartu.

Folk psychology serves as our common conceptual framework for understanding mental phenomena and shaping and regulating behavior. Interpretivism is a view on mental phenomena that considers them to be constitutively bound with interpretation. In some versions, it amounts to the claim that to have a mental state (e.g., a belief) is to be interpretable as having this belief. Mental fictionalism, a more recent position, views folk psychological ascriptions of mental states as fictional statements that are useful but not literally true. It remains an open question whether interpretivism and mental fictionalism are competitors or allies, a question that the workshop aims to explore. Specifically, the workshop seeks to:

• clarify the relationship between interpretivism and fictionalism regarding folk psychology;
• consider the pros and cons of interpretivism and mental fictionalism;
• advance interpretivist and fictionalist positions further.

Thursday, November 7
Jakobi 2–129
 

10.00                Gathering and Opening

10.15-11.00     Tamás Demeter, László Kocsis, Krisztián Pete: The Land of Make-Believe: Metaphor, Explanation, and Fiction in Toon’s Psychological World 

11.00-11.45    Adam Toon: Mental Fictionalism: Disputes Within the Family (Zoom)

12.00-12.45   T. Parent: Is Dennett a Mental Fictionalist? Perhaps He Should Be (Zoom)
 

Jakobi 2–114

14.15-15.00    Rory Harder: Speech Acts and Socially Constituted Mental States

15.00-15.45   Krzysztof Posłajko: In What Sense Are Attitudes Constituted?

16.15-17.00    Gavin R. Foster: Triadic Approaches in Philosophy of Science: Revealing the 'Gloss' of Mental Representations Without Succumbing to Fictionalism

17.00-17.45    Amir Horowitz: Intentional Anti-Realism as Fictionalism

Friday, November 8    
Jakobi 2–114

10.15-11.00    Bruno Mölder: Regulative Interpretivism

11.00-11.45    Agata Machcewicz-Grad: On Interpretivism and Causal (Ir)Relevance of Mental States

12.00-12.45  Jonas Pöld: Illusionism and Virtual Realism

14.15-15.00    Víctor Fernández Castro: Cognitive Diversity and the Evaluative Character of Mental Ascriptions

15.00-15.45   Devin Sanchez Curry: Nonfiction Stories About Minds

16.15-17.00     Heidy Meriste: Interpretivist Developments in the Philosophy of Emotion

17.00-17.45    Lei Niu: Group Believers: Interpretationism and Fictionalism

The workshop follows the Gottlob Frege Lectures in Theoretical Philosophy 2024, delivered by Emma Borg on "Reasons for Action" November 4-6.