Folk psychology is standardly characterised as the (quasi-)theoretical implicit system of empirical generalisations we each possess that makes possible our negotiation of the ‘world of persons’ through prediction and explanation of our own and others’ intentional acts. However, there are some rather troublesome implications of this picture. How should we understand our own expressions of intention; are they ‘predictions’ of what we are about to do as if we might be wrong about what we are about to try to accomplish? When we ‘predict’ other’s actions, are we doing so with the aid of a (quasi-)theory; in the sense that others tend to act in this way in these situations because of certain nomological regularities that are captured by these (quasi-)theoretical generalisations?
My concern is that the normative aspects of mental concepts (those things which are considered to be ‘theoretical constructs’ of our folk psychological (quasi-)theory) seem to be entirely lost or ignored in the above account. What kind of conception of rule is being deployed here? That certain concepts are partially constituted by the social practices in which they are used is not given an adequate place in the characterisation of what we do due to the account of folk psychology as a (quasi-)theory. It seems that those folk psychologists who subscribe to this characterisation are somehow presuming a picture of mental concepts, then reading this conception back into the description of the behaviour they are trying to characterise.
