Folk Psychology and Law: the Case of Eliminativism

Authors

  • Marek Jakubiec
  • Bartosz Janik

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15633/ss.2489

Keywords:

folk psychology, eliminativism, legal philosophy, philosophy of mind

Abstract

The aim of this paper is very modest. First, we want to assess how different
strategies of naturalization might deal with the need of using folk psychology
in legal domain. Second, we want to check whether folk psychology is indeed
indispensable in the legal domain. Third, we want to describe possible problems
with one strategy of naturalization, i.e. radical naturalization with classical
elimination. Our conclusion will be that despite various attempts, every project
of naturalization of law will have to resolve the tension between law and folk
psychology and such resolution would not be achieved by simple reduction or
elimination of folk psychology. A variety of non-standard solutions might be in
place to resolve this tension. We will only outline those strategies here.

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Published

2018-07-31

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