Nonfiction Stories about Minds
摘要
According to mental fictionalists, folk psychological ascriptions of mental states are a kind of storytelling that does not commit ascribers to the existence of mental states. Interpretivists about the mental agree with fictionalists that folk psychological ascriptions are a kind of storytelling. Nevertheless, reflection on a fundamental insight underlying the principle of charity should lead interpretivists to reject fictionalism. The stories we tell about each other do commit us to the existence of mental states. And if even interpretivists ought to be nonfictionalists, then everybody less inclined to understand folk psychological ascriptions in terms of storytelling should be nonfictionalists too.