ToM Rules, but It Is Not OK

Abstract

A distinctive part of our everyday adult way of making sense of one another involves making sense of actions performed for reasons. This practice, which has been the focus of intense scrutiny, frequently dons the somewhat unfortunate label ‘Folk Psychology’ (or FP) in the philosophical literature.¹ It travels under many other names too: common-sense psychology; naïve psychology; Homo sapiens psychology; the person theory of humans; belief/ desire psychology — to name but a few.²

It is difficult to write today about understanding people without reference to the words Theory of Mind’. Google Scholar yields an incredible 36,000 publications using the term, 13,000 of which also refer to infants or children. And the manner in which the term is used is awesomely matter-of-fact — with a taken-for-grantedness hitherto reserved for those other staples of psychology such as growth spurt’, toilet training’, short-term memory’ and secure attachment’.

(Reddy and Morris, this volume, Chapter 5, p. 91)