The Idea of Different Folk Psychologies

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The Idea of Different

Folk Psychologies
Stephen Mills
Published online: 08 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Stephen Mills (2001) The Idea of Different Folk
Psychologies, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 9:4, 501-519,
DOI: 10.1080/09672550110081285
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The Idea of Different
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F r a n c is
2
3
4 Folk Psychologies
5
6
7
Stephen Mills
8
9 Abstract
10
The idea of different folk psychologies is the idea that among the world’s
11 cultures there are those whose folk, or commonsense, psychologies differ in
12 theoretically signicant ways from each other and from western folk
1113 psychology. This challenges the claim that folk psychology is a ‘cultural
14 universal’. The paper looks rst of all at what are called ‘opulent’ accounts
of folk psychology, which employ a wide-ranging and more complex set of
15 psychological concepts, and ‘core’ accounts, which employ a much more
16 restricted set of such concepts. With respect to both kinds of account it is
17 argued that eld studies of the folk-psychological concepts of a number of
18 ethnic groups indicate signicant differences between the concepts used by
19 those groups and those of western folk psychology; and hence do not support
the view that folk psychology is a cultural universal.
20
21 Keywords: psychology; folk psychology; emotion; belief; universals; mind
22
23
24
25 There is, so far as I know, no human group that doesn’t explain
26 behavior by imputing beliefs and desires to the behavior. (And if an
27 anthropologist claimed to have found such a group, I wouldn’t
28 believe him.)
29 (Fodor, 1987: p. 132)
30
31 Certain reports suggest that adults in other cultures are similar to
32 children in EA [European American] culture. . . . However, it is also
33 the case that from the other cultures’ perspective, EA adults might
34 in some ways resemble their children. For example, the . . . notion
35 that one acts in accordance with one’s desires might seem extremely
36 childlike for other cultures.
37 (Lillard, 1998a: p. 9)
38
39
40
41
1142
43 International Journal of Philosophical Studies
ISSN 0967 2559 print 1466 4542 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
44 http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0967255011008128 5
folio
I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES
1 Introduction
2
The idea of different folk psychologies, as I shall employ it in this paper1,
3
is the idea that among the world’s many cultures there are some whose
4
folk, or commonsense, psychologies differ from each other in theoretically
5
signicant ways. By ‘differing in theoretically signicant ways’ I shall under-
6
stand differing in ways that, should they be conrmed, would imply that
7
one or more of certain currently inuential theories, as they stand, are
8
false. Granted the commitments of these theories, which I shall detail later,
9
10 my specic concern will be with the idea that there are cultures whose
11 folk psychologies differ in theoretically signicant ways from what I shall

12 call western folk psychology.
13 The view that folk psychology is a ‘cultural universal’ (Place, 1996) has
14 been challenged, or even queried, only sporadically and never with signif-
15 icant effect.2 Very recently, however, a detailed and systematic challenge
16 has been mounted by Lillard (1997; 1998a; 1998b), and this has drawn
17 several replies (Wellman, 1998; Gauvain, 1998; Scholl and Leslie, 1998).
18 This paper can be viewed as in part an attempt to complement Lillard’s
19 challenge and counter the arguments of her critics.
20 The paper has two parts. This division follows one in the literature
21 between ‘opulent’ and more restricted accounts of folk psychology (Stich,
22 1996), 3 the latter including what I shall call core accounts. In Part 1 I shall
23 argue that there are reasons for supposing that the universalist commit-
24 ments of opulent accounts are mistaken. In Part 2 I shall consider two
25 core accounts and shall question the grounds of their universalism.
26 If the idea of different folk psychologies is correct, then, in my view,
27 fascinating questions arise (Mills, 1998). However, I do not address these
28 questions here, nor do I suppose that I show that the idea is correct. My
29 overall concern is to make out a persuasive case for treating the idea as
30 one which deserves serious investigation.
31
32 1 Opulent Accounts
33
34 Paul Churchland provides a good example of an opulent account of folk
35 psychology:
36
37 ‘Folk psychology’ denotes the prescientic, common-sense concep-
38 tual framework that all normally socialized humans deploy in order
39 to comprehend, predict, explain, and manipulate the behaviour
40 of humans and the higher animals. This framework includes con-
41 cepts such as belief, desire, pain, pleasure, love, hate, joy, fear,
42 suspicion, memory, recognition, anger, sympathy, intention, and so
43 forth.
44 (Churchland, 1994)
502
T H E ID EA O F D IFF ER E N T F O LK P SY CH O LO G I ES
1 The universalism of this account is expressed in the clause that folk

2 psychology is deployed ‘by all normally socialized humans’; its opulent
3 nature is expressed in the open list of concepts the framework is held to
4 embrace. Churchland holds further that these concepts are embedded in
5 a framework of thousands of ‘laws’, of which he gives many examples.
6 These ‘laws’ are ‘at least tacitly appreciated by those adept in [the frame-
7 work’s] . . . use . . . [and they] sustain common-sense explanations and
8 predictions’ (1994: pp. 309 10).
9 Churchland’s reference to ‘laws’ is controversial, single quotes notwith-
10 standing, but I shall assume that a fairly non-controversial treatment of
11 the kind of generalizations he has in mind can be arrived at. In that case
12 what is noteworthy is the richness and complexity of folk psychology on
13 this account: a vast number of concepts and conceptual interrelationships
14 is involved.
15 What kinds of differences would need to exist between folk psycholo-
16 gies, opulently conceived, for problems to arise for the universalism of
17 opulent accounts? I shall begin my answer by considering two kinds
18 of differences which are likely to be thought unproblematic. These are
19 introduced by Robert Solomon (1978) in his discussion of a distinct, though
20 interestingly related, issue, viz., whether ‘ “all people are basically . . .
21 emotionally . . . the same” ’ (p. 181). Solomon’s view is that, relative to
22 that issue, the differences are supercial.
23 The two kinds of cases are, rst, ‘that emotional expressions may differ
24 from society to society’, and secondly, ‘that different causes will evoke
25 different responses in different societies’ (p. 182). For Solomon they can
26 be dismissed since ‘[t]he question is whether there are “deep” emotional
27 structures underlying these . . . differences which are indeed universal’
28 (ibid.). Can such differences be as easily dismissed where the issue is
29 whether folk psychology, opulently conceived, is universal? If one thinks
30 that they can, this presumably is because one holds that differences of
31 these kinds are obviously compatible with the universality of the concepts
32 within the rich framework comprising folk psychology.
33 It is not my intention to labour a reply to this view. What I will suggest,
34 however, is that even where these ubiquitous kinds of differences
35 are involved, a facile dismissal is not in order for opulent accounts.
36 Consider a few briey described examples. As a case of a difference
37 of expression, Solomon reports that an American friend, serving in
38 Vietnam,
39
40 watched a group of young Vietnamese women bursting into peals of
41 laughter when they were shown photographs of a recent bomb explo-
42 sion in their town, an explosion which killed or maimed a dozen or
43 so children, many of them relatives.
44 (p. 181)
folio 503
1 His illustration of the second kind of difference is that

2
3 in one [society], what we would call ‘adultery’ causes jealousy; in
4 another guilt: and in still another, mutual delight and a strengthened
5 friendship.
6 (p. 182)
7
8 Finally, an example, together with an interpretation, which can be read as
9 illustrating both kinds of difference is provided by Paul Harris (1990):
10
11 among the Lohurung [of Nepal] it is expected that a child should

12 be shy among older male relatives.. . . Shyness is regarded, to some
13 extent, as a mark of respect. . . . Since the child is expected to feel
14 shy, and since that shyness is approved, it is likely that the Lohurung
15 child experiences shyness quite differently from his or her Western
16 peer. Shyness is not something that invites further feelings of shame
17 or anxiety; it is something that the child might even feel proud to
18 show since it will elicit approval from adults. This brief example illus-
19 trates the way in which culture . . . can, in principle, shift the relations
20 among . . . emotions, placing some in close causal conjunction and
21 dissociating others.
22 (pp. 228 9)
23
24 What I wish to say about cases such as these is limited, but not, I think,
25 without point, particularly for what is to follow. If one considers the criteria
26 for our application of folk-psychological concepts, particularly those which
27 are taken as concepts of internal states, it is clear that these consist
28 primarily of what we regard as typical causes, which include social envir-
29 onmental factors, and typical effects, which include behavioural expression
30 and other folk-psychological states. It is such factors which feature in the
31 ceteris paribus generalizations, or ‘laws’, of folk psychology; they are impli-
32 cated in the conceptual framework identied with folk psychology on
33 opulent accounts. That being the case, the fact that there are cultures with
34 marked differences among the criteria for applying what are held to be
35 the same concepts as we employ cannot be regarded, at least in the
36 abstract, as obviously unproblematic for the universalist case. One does
37 not need to be an extreme holist to see the possible legitimacy of the
38 query as to whether the same concepts are involved in all these cases.
39 Moreover, this query will be seen to have more point if there are cases
40 and Harris’ seems to be the beginning of one of these where the
41 effects of a specied difference spread, as it were, to other parts of the
42 conceptual network.
43 I have no doubt that, in practice, there will be many cases in which it
44 can be shown plausibly that, the above kinds of differences notwith-
504
1 standing, the concepts involved in the respective cultures are the same as
2 ours. However, to suppose that they may not be the same in all such cases
3 is not mere idle speculation. A decision that a culture possesses the same
4 concept as we do, certain differences in criteria of application notwith-
5 standing, must be based upon sameness of other criteria, and the judgment
6 that the latter are more important than those where differences exist.
7 However, there are increasingly frequent complaints in the literature that
8 earlier decisions about the sameness of concepts have been arrived at
9 prematurely (e.g. Needham, 1981; Schwarz, White and Lutz, 1992), the
10 basis of such decisions having been, in my terms, that certain criteria of
11 application were similar. Thus Hallen and Sodipo (1986), following a

12 careful eld-study and conceptual analysis, argue that the concept
13 expressed by the Yoruba phrase eri okon is complex, involving those of
14 self-consciousness, rst-hand acquaintance, comprehension and judgment.
15 In a footnote they remark tersely: ‘The meaning of this expression in
16 certain areas of Yorubaland has been altered by the Christian habit of
17 making it the equivalent of the English-language “conscience”. We feel
18 that restricting it to a moral sense is not representative’ (p. 69).
19 To summarize these considerations: it is held that the view that folk
20 psychology is universal is perfectly compatible with marked variations,
21 across cultures, in the criteria of application of the concepts which ex
22 hypothesi comprise universal folk psychology; however, there are theo-
23 retical and practical grounds for querying whether, in some cases, what
24 are taken to be variations in criteria for the same concept are not, in fact,
25 grounds for attributing different concepts; furthermore, the practice,
26 admittedly difcult to avoid, of discussing isolated cases militates against
27 exploration of the possibly signicant ramications of specic differences
28 within the sets of concepts.
29 These considerations are unlikely to affect the commitment of a propo-
30 nent of a universalist opulent account. What, then, is required for a
31 stronger case against such an account? Ideally, the requirement is for
32 strongly supported, comprehensive studies of folk psychologies, which
33 display widespread major differences between the concepts of those folk
34 psychologies and those of western folk psychology. Do such studies exist?
35 Until recently, owing to the universalist assumption and other concerns,
36 nothing remotely approximating to such a study was available. However,
37 several works which purportedly meet the requirement, at least partly,
38 have appeared. Needless to say, they cannot be presented briey and are
39 not free of controversy. Accordingly, I shall restrict myself to a few exam-
40 ples from these works, and shall offer what must then be tentative
41 conclusions.
42 Liget is a concept in the folk psychology of the headhunting Ilongot
43 people of the Philippines. The signicance of the concept can be seen
44 from the Ilongot claim, ‘Without liget to move our hearts there would be
folio 505
1 no human life’ (Rosaldo, 1980: p. 47). The important point for this paper
2 is that while liget is the only Ilongot concept at all similar to the western
3 folk-psychological concept anger, the two concepts also differ signicantly.
4 Liget is similar to anger in that it ‘implies not only “energy and irritation,
5 but also a sense of violent action and of intentional shows of force” ’
6 (Wierzbicka, 1992: p. 140) and in that it ‘can generate both chaos and
7 concentration, distress . . . a loss of sense and reason, and an experience
8 of . . . release’ (Rosaldo, 1980: p. 47). Liget is unlike anger in that it ‘has
9 a competitive character and is related to envy and ambition’, does not
10 require the belief that another person, towards whom it may be directed,
11 has done anything wrong, does not need to involve bad feelings towards
12 anyone or anything, and ‘spurs people to action . . . lead[ing] . . . them to
13 achievements and to triumphs’ such as travelling far when hunting or
14 climbing tall trees (Wierzbicka, 1992: pp. 140 2).
15 What I take to be signicant about this example is not merely that
16 prima facie Ilongot and western folk psychologies each lack a concept
17 which is signicant within the other. Rather it is also, as even the brief
18 description offered makes clear, that they cut across each other in ways
19 which set up different connections to other concepts. Thus there is some
20 reason for supposing that the example displays fragments of two different
21 conceptual frameworks.
22 A second example is taken from the folk psychology of the Ifaluk people
23 of Micronesia. Their two primary psychological terms are nunuwan and
24 tip-. Lutz, who has studied their folk psychology in detail, writes:
25
26 Nunuwan refers to mental events ranging from what we consider
27 thought to what we consider emotion. . . . The Ifaluk see mental
28 events as value-laden, ideally moral stances, and they do not, for this
29 reason, separate evaluative and emotional responses from noneval-
30 uative and cognitive responses to an environmental event. Thus,
31 nunuwan may be translated as ‘cold through hot thought’, ‘hot
32 through cool emotion’, or, more simply, as ‘thought/emotion’. . . .
33 Tip- . . . the second major term. . . . Tip- is at once the capacity
34 for emotion and the capacity for will. . . . The fusion of emotion and
35 will in tip- is not the result of a failure to differentiate the concept;
36 rather, the concept is a seamless one because the act of desiring or
37 willing something implies for the Ifaluk either its fulllment or frus-
38 tration. The individual will may be thwarted or not. Emotion is not
39 produced as a result it is inherent in the experience of tip-.
40 (Lutz, 1985: pp. 47 9; cf. Lutz, 1998; D’Andrade, 1987)
41
42 A third example, which I will discuss with the second, is from the folk
43 psychology of the Chewong, an aboriginal people in Malaysia. As
44 described by Howell,
506
1 The liver, rus . . . is the seat of both what we call ‘thoughts’ and
2 ‘feelings’, and they do not make any conceptual distinctions between
3 the two. In fact they have no word for ‘think’ or ‘feel’.
4 (Howell, 1981: p. 139)
5
6 The signicance of these examples, I suggest, is that, prima facie, they
7 show that conceptual distinctions which, at least in the literature, are taken
8 to be fundamental to western folk psychology are absent from some other
9 folk psychologies. Again, one seems to be glimpsing fragments of very
10 different conceptual frameworks.
11 One nal consideration before drawing this section to a close. The

12 phenomenon of one folk psychology possessing a concept which another
13 one lacks is not rare. In itself, this may be of little more than curiosity
14 value. However, disparities of this kind between folk psychologies can be
15 very large. One such disparity seems clearly indicated by the fact that
16 whereas English contains over 2,000 emotion terms, Chewong, the lan-
17 guage of one of the cultures mentioned earlier, contains 8 (Heelas, 1984).
18 Prima facie, conceptual disparities of this order are hard to square with
19 the view that folk psychology, conceived opulently, is universal.
20 The tentative conclusion of this section is that prima facie there are
21 grounds for holding that universalist opulent accounts of folk psychology
22 are mistaken. Consequently, I also hold that theories and practices which
23 assert or presuppose the correctness of these accounts are, prima facie,
24 placed in question. In this paper, however, I shall not pursue this claimed
25 consequence. Rather, I shall turn to other accounts which would claim to
26 be untouched by my conclusion, even should it turn out to be true.
27
28
2 Core Accounts
29
30 Opulent accounts of folk psychology are contrasted with austere accounts
31 (Stich, 1996: p. 16). On austere accounts, folk psychology is severely
32 restricted to a small subset of the concepts and implicit generalisations
33 which comprise folk psychology on opulent accounts. Austere accounts
34 may also strongly resemble members of a further group which I shall call
35 core accounts. However, core accounts typically do not deny that ‘folk
36 psychology’ properly denotes the rich and complex conceptual framework
37 addressed by opulent accounts; rather they postulate and focus upon an
38 alleged core of this conceptual framework. In this section I shall concen-
39 trate upon two core accounts.
40 I shall make two further prefatory points since they will be pertinent
41 later. Proponents of the above-mentioned restricted accounts frequently
42 address an issue which cuts across the distinctions between them, viz., the
43 nativist versus empiricist issue. In this context, the issue, stated simplisti-
44 cally, is whether all or some of the concepts and generalizations of these
folio 507
1 accounts’ restricted focus are, in a strong sense, innate in humans, or

2 whether they are learned. The second and, in practice, closely related
3 point is that the same restricted set of concepts and generalizations is
4 frequently viewed from a developmental perspective, such that these
5 concepts and generalizations are held to be (at least among) the earliest
6 folk-psychological elements acquired by individual humans.
7 One common feature of all restricted accounts is that they are assumed or
8 held to be universal in application folk psychology conceived austerely,
9 or the claimed core of folk psychology, is uniform across cultures. While no
10 details of any of the accounts have yet been given, one can envisage, in gen-
11 eral, how such accounts could be held to be immune to the considerations in

12 the last section, viz., by arguing that these considerations concern elements
13 of folk psychologies, opulently conceived, which fall outside the restricted
14 sets of elements that are the focus of the restricted accounts. Any amount of
15 cross-cultural variation among folk psychologies, outside the restricted sets,
16 is perfectly compatible with universalism about the restricted sets.
17 The rst core account I shall consider is presented in a formulation
18 which responds specically to the kinds of folk-psychological differences
19 that featured in the last section. Henry Wellman (1998) writes:
20
21 [C]onsider emotion concepts. One level of analysis concerns types of
22 emotions Are happy, sad, and mad . . . acknowledged worldwide?
23 . . . Beyond types of emotions, a different level of analysis would con-
24 cern whether people worldwide all see themselves as having emo-
25 tional experiences of some sort. A claim that in some societies people
26 do not construe themselves or others in terms of emotions at all is of
27 a different order than the claim that they do not construe self or other
28 in terms of guilt or anger . . . [T]he search for . . . possible core con-
29 struals of persons is a different level of analysis than [e.g.] the search
30 for . . . common emotions. . . . Core psychological construals might
31 exist amid immensely differing cultural positions as to [e.g.] the typ-
32 ing of emotions. . . . I believe that theory of mind research is pitched,
33 fundamentally, at attempting to capture deeper core construals. . . .
34 [S]uch an attempt may be mistaken, but it would not be derailed by
35 the evidence Lillard (1998) amassed.
36 (pp. 33 4)
37
38 Wellman mentions other possible core construals, e.g. ‘perception,
39 meaning, and consciousness’ (ibid.). Lillard’s evidence, to which he refers,
40 while much greater in quantity and variety, is of a similar ‘order’ or ‘level
41 of analysis’ to that which I presented in the last section.
42 On the kind of core account favoured by Wellman, folk psychology has
43 a core comprising a small number of concepts, at a deeper level of analysis
44 than those featuring in everyday detailed psychologizing, and this core is
508
1 postulated as common to all folk psychologies. I suspect that this view

2 will be attractive to many who have assumed universalism but, when they
3 consider it, nd implausible the notion that all, or even most, of our folk-
4 psychological concepts are common to all cultures.
5 My rst response is not to challenge the universality of Wellman’s postu-
6 lated core, but to point out its negative implications for the currently
7 inuential restricted accounts, his own, as expressed elsewhere, included.
8 For as Wellman himself, following up the preceding point, writes:
9
10 I hasten to emphasize that current proposals for what the core person
11 conceptions might be are undoubtedly culturally suspect. For

12 example, a common claim is that a basic . . . framework for everyday
13 conception of mental states is in terms of a belief-desire-emotion
14 system of reasoning. . . . [But a]t the very least, belief, desire, and
15 emotion are English terms with English specics, unlikely to prop-
16 erly capture core conceptual notions. Terms akin to think, want and
17 feel, according to Wierzbicka . . . may be common to all the world’s
18 languages but certainly not belief, desire and emotion.
19 (p. 34)
20
21 My rst response, then, is that if this kind of core account is correct, there
22 is reason to suppose that all principal restricted accounts are mistaken in
23 their universalist claims. For, to my knowledge, one point upon which all
24 accounts agree is that the key folk-psychological universals include, or are
25 even limited to, belief and desire, yet Wellman gives reason to suppose
26 that these would not be among the ‘deeper core construals’ of the kind
27 of account he favours.
28 My second response is to challenge the universality of the core that
29 Wellman postulates, insofar as he offers a view of what it is composed.
30 He holds that
31
32 a better shorthand for a core folk psychology would have to be a
33 think-want-feel system of reasoning rather than a belief-desire-
34 emotion one.
35 (ibid.)
36
37 However, the ‘think-want-feel system’ presupposes conceptual distinctions
38 which I earlier referred to as fundamental to western folk psychology, but
39 possibly absent from others. On Howell’s evidence, the think-feel distinc-
40 tion is absent from Chewong folk psychology, and, according to Lutz,
41 something similar seems true of the Ifaluk. Hence ‘core folk psychology’,
42 as specied by Wellman, albeit tentatively, is open to challenge.
43 These responses are hardly conclusive. However, I shall comment here
44 upon only one of the possible counters, viz., that core accounts of this
folio 509
1 kind are not restricted to Wellman’s suggestions about the constituents of

2 the core. One feature of Wellman’s suggestions is that, while they purport
3 to be characteristic of a ‘deeper’ level of conceptual analysis, all, in fact,
4 employ ordinary concepts of western folk psychology. I would suggest that
5 if alternative core accounts, of this kind, are to share this feature, then
6 they are likely to be challengeable in just the way that Wellman’s is. If
7 this is correct, it would seem that alternative accounts need to postulate
8 ‘core construals’ which do not employ western folk-psychological concepts.
9 But then the following consideration seems in order: if it turns out that
10 a defensible version, of the claim that folk psychology is universal, requires
11 such an account, is not likely to turn out, also, that most extant versions
12 of the claim are mistaken?
13 I shall now turn to one of the extant versions which I suspect would
14 be so threatened, though, in the main, I shall address it in its own terms.
15 This version has been rened over more than a decade by Alan Leslie,
16 but I shall be concerned with a recent presentation by Leslie and Brian
17 Scholl (Scholl and Leslie, 1998), which, in part, responds to Lillard’s posi-
18 tion and thus to the concerns of this paper. Scholl and Leslie write
19 approvingly of Wellman’s response to Lillard, and they also subscribe to
20 a core account. Their core account, in my view, is different in kind from
21 Wellman’s. The reasons for this assessment will become clear in my discus-
22 sion of the aspects of their position pertinent to this paper.
23 Scholl and Leslie’s position is founded upon a theory of the acquisition
24 of folk psychology in early childhood. According to the theory, there is
25 an innate cognitive module, the Theory-of-Mind-Mechanism (ToMM),
26 which, among other things.
27
28 incorporates innate notions/concepts of propositional attitudes such
29 as B EL IEF and PRE TE NSE , and makes them available to a child.
30 . . . As a result, ToMM will provide the child with early intentional
31 insight into the behaviors of others.
32 (p. 22)
33
34 A child’s early acquisition of ‘the basic metarepresentational concepts (like
35 BE LIEF , PR ET EN SE , and D ESIRE )’ (p. 10) is to be explained in terms of
36 the operation of this module, in conjunction with environmental ‘trig-
37 gering’ and other cognitive mechanisms. It follows not only that folk
38 psychology has a core, involving a set of basic concepts, but that these
39 concepts are innate, and, being innate, will be universal.
40 Scholl and Leslie’s general verdict on Lillard’s claims that there are
41 cross-cultural differences in folk psychology is that ‘these allegations turn
42 out not to be relevant to the modularity account’ (p. 10). The reason they
43 are not relevant is that the character of the differences which Lillard cata-
44 logues means that
510
1 her view . . . pertains only [to] the full-edged mature ToM compe-
2 tence, rather than to its general character in early acquisition.
3 (ibid.)
4
5 The crucial distinction here is between mature folk psychology (folk
6 psychology opulently conceived) and folk psychology as it is acquired in
7 early childhood. Scholl and Leslie’s modular theory concerns the latter,
8 and is thus held to be perfectly consistent with major differences between
9 the mature folk psychologies of various cultures.
10 I shall begin questioning Scholl and Leslie’s account by probing their
11 consistency claim. The differences described by Lillard, which are deemed

12 irrelevant, are summarized as ‘differences in religious beliefs, and beliefs
13 in phenomena such as witchcraft, magic, and karma’ (p. 10). What I take
14 this to refer to is differences, detailed by Lillard, whereby, in certain
15 cultures, the behaviour of others is frequently explained in terms other
16 than those of belief and desire, and, indeed, in terms rarely featuring in
17 our own folk psychology divinities, witches, magical forces, previous exis-
18 tences are cited as causes. The consistency claim involves squaring these
19 with the account of early childhood folk psychology, whereby
20
21 the Theory-of-Mind-Mechanism . . . spontaneously . . . attends to
22 behaviors and infers . . . the mental states which contributed to them.
23 It interprets situations as involving intentional agents, who are repre-
24 sented as holding attitudes to the truth of propositions . . . [and thus]
25 provide[s] the child with early intentional insight into the behavior
26 of others.
27 (p. 22)
28
29 Given this account of the Theory-of-Mind-Mechanism, the obvious ques-
30 tion which the differences described by Lillard raise is how come the same
31 innate module, with its ‘wired-in’ interpretational and inferential mecha-
32 nisms, operating over the concepts of belief and desire, does not provide
33 similar ‘intentional insight into the behavior of others’ to the adults, of
34 certain cultures, at those frequent moments on which they explain others’
35 behaviour quite differently. Scholl and Leslie do not see a problem
36 here.
37
38 The modular account of the acquisition of ToM explains the origin
39 of the basic metarepresentational concepts (like BE LIEF , PRE TE NSE ,
40 and D E SIR E ), and not how these concepts may be employed by
41 different extramodular cognitive processes in mature individuals.
42 (p. 10)
43
44 They add:
folio 511
1 In general, Lillard . . . seems to be looking at differences in specic

2 beliefs, rather than at the concept of belief. Even specic beliefs
3 about the concept of belief are not necessarily relevant: the concept
4 of belief could be universally grounded in a module even though
5 some cultures do not recognize this ‘modular’ account in their folk
6 psychology!
7 (ibid.)
8
9 I suggest that this response is not adequate. The last claim would seem
10 to be either (i) that the universal grounding of the concept of belief in a
11 module is compatible with the mature folk psychology of a culture showing

12 no trace of this grounding, e.g. the concept is absent or is not employed
13 to explain behaviour, or (ii) that it is compatible with a culture employing
14 the concept of belief to explain behaviour, but being quite ignorant of the
15 modular grounding of the concept. However, if (i) is intended, the problem
16 is compounded how can the module fail to ensure that the concept is
17 present and employed appropriately? On the other hand, (ii), which an
18 analogy (ibid.) suggests is the correct reading, ignores the problem no
19 one would suggest that the correctness of the modular account requires
20 that cultures know about such a module, but that leaves unanswered the
21 question of why the module does not provide adults with the insights it
22 provides for children.
23 Scholl and Leslie’s other point, that the modular account does not neces-
24 sarily explain how the concepts of belief, desire and pretence ‘may be
25 employed by different extramodular cognitive processes in mature indi-
26 viduals’, also seems not to address the problem adequately. The point is
27 not that the modular account ought to be able to explain all employments
28 of the concepts in mature individuals, but rather why a mechanism fails
29 to operate in situations to which it is attuned in a ‘hard-wired’ manner.
30 It is worth noting here that Fodor (1992), who offers a very similar nativist
31 account, makes that account dependent upon the truth of the assumption
32 of ‘the universality of belief/desire folk psychology’.
33 The preceding criticisms are certainly not conclusive. It is hardly justi-
34 able to rule a priori that the operations of an innate module cannot be
35 ‘overridden’ by culturally produced cognitive processes. However, to the
36 extent that mature folk psychology does not vindicate the hypothesis that
37 there is an innate core folk-psychology module, the correctness of the
38 hypothesis is placed in question. Accordingly, I shall introduce several
39 further considerations which, in my view, cast further doubt upon Scholl
40 and Leslie’s nativist account.
41 Immediately following a passage quoted earlier, Wellman (1998) writes:
42
43 a belief-desire-emotion or a think-want-feel characterization of
44 persons calls up a version of independent individuals acting to
512
1 achieve their own individualized goals and pleasures. Without consid-

2 erable revision or adjustment, such a characterization could not
3 properly embrace more interdependent, collectivist notions of person
4 and self.
5 (p. 34)
6
7 Here I shall note, though not pursue, Wellman’s promising reference to
8 ‘more interdependent, collectivist notions’. My main concern is to contrast
9 briey the individualistic and, what does not concern Wellman here,
10 internalistic character of belief-desire explanations with the character of
11 another kind of behaviour explanation, which we shall all recognize, but

12 which is much more prevalent in some other cultures. This is explanation
13 in terms of situation or context, which has a non-individualistic, indeed
14 at times non-personal, and an externalistic character. In a study quoted
15 by Lillard (1997: p. 271), Southern Indian Hindu subjects were shown to
16 be more than twice as likely as American subjects to explain deviant
17 behaviour situationally. While the cross-cultural variation is relevant to
18 my overall thesis, the presently relevant point is the widespread and
19 possibly dominant presence of this alternative form of explanation. How
20 is this to accord with the postulated presence of an innate theory of mind
21 module? It is not an adequate response to point out that, where situa-
22 tional explanations are offered, beliefs and desires will generally be
23 accepted as being present, for the module is held to yield intentionalistic
24 explanations spontaneously. A more appropriate response is that my argu-
25 ment here is just ‘more of the same’ that in principle there is no
26 difference between situationist and, say, magical explanations, as bases for
27 challenging the modular account. However, the fact that it is more of the
28 same means that the modular account is placed more in question.
29 For the remainder of the paper I shall pursue a different tack against
30 Scholl and Leslie’s account, viz., probing it on their chosen ground of the
31 early acquisition of folk psychology.
32 Several of Scholl and Leslie’s commitments, important for subsequent
33 discussion, can be extracted from the following passage:
34
35 a strong modular account of the origin of ToM predicts uniformity
36 in the outcome of maturation. . . . Even cultural non-uniformity could
37 be accommodated in a modular framework by appeal to parame-
38 terization. . . . But the point here is that such extravagant moves
39 are not necessary to account for the actual evidence. Even a very
40 strong modularity position is entirely compatible with the current
41 evidence.
42 (p. 11)
43
44 The commitments I shall be concerned with are these:
folio 513
1 1 if there is cultural non-uniformity in the outcome of maturation, then

2 a very strong modular account, such as Scholl and Leslie’s, is false;
3 2 all current evidence supports the conclusion that there is cultural unifor-
4 mity in the outcome of maturation.
5
(I shall ignore here the claim that a parameterized modular account (see
6
Segal, 1996) might account for cultural non-uniformity.)
7
In what follows, I shall query the second of these commitments. On
8
Scholl and Leslie’s terms, I shall cast doubt on the truth of their modu-
9
larity account, to the extent that I succeed in casting doubt on the second
10
‘evidence’ commitment.
11
12 What Scholl and Leslie refer to as ‘the outcome of maturation’ is what
13 they refer to elsewhere as the ‘end state’ of the theory of mind capacity
14 acquired in early childhood. Hence what is at issue is whether available
15 evidence supports the view that, across all cultures, children acquire the
16 same basic or core theory of mind. For those who take this view, it is
17 quite compatible with the possibility ‘that at some [later] point in devel-
18 opment children will begin to elaborate culture-specic ideas around those
19 core assumptions’ (Avis and Harris, 1991: p. 466).
20 The ‘current evidence’ to which Scholl and Leslie refer is composed of
21 the results of psychological experiments with children on an established
22 series of tasks, including prominently what are called ‘false-belief tasks’.
23 A common example of a false-belief task is that in which (with minor
24 variations) a child, A, watches someone, B, place objects in a container
25 and, after B has gone elsewhere, witnesses another person, C, switch the
26 objects to another place. The child is then asked where B will look for
27 the objects when they return, in the container or in the new location. It
28 is held that this question ‘require[s] . . . children to anticipate the impact
29 of a mistaken belief on action’ (Avis and Harris, 1991: p. 460) and that
30 (non-chance) correct answers indicate possession of the concept of belief.
31 Elaborations of this kind of experiment are taken to ‘require . . . children
32 to anticipate the impact of a mistaken belief on . . . emotion . . . [and] of
33 a frustrated desire on emotion’ (ibid.), and to display/fail to display posses-
34 sion of the relevant folk-psychological concepts. While Scholl and Leslie
35 mention desire, their discussion centres upon possession of the concept
36 of belief. So far as this part of the end state of the ToM capacity is
37 concerned, they claim that it is reached at age 3, though, for reasons we
38 needn’t address, most experimenters would date it at age 4 5.
39 How robust is Scholl and Leslie’s claim that all current evidence
40 supports the conclusion that there is cultural uniformity in the outcome
41 of maturation, specically in the early acquisition of the concept of belief?
42 The rst point to note is one they acknowledge, viz., that even if the
43 claim is true, as they suppose, it has a potential Achilles’ heel. The problem
44 pertains not to the quantity of evidence, which is considerable, but to its
514
1 cultural distribution. Harris, who is frequently cited on this point, puts it

2 as follows:
3
4 The data [supporting universality] are encouraging but scarcely over-
5 whelming at this stage. . . . [A]lthough the cultures that have been
6 compared are quite disparate in being drawn from both East and
7 West, the children may have been exposed to certain similar expe-
8 riences. All had been to school or preschool; all lived in
9 industrialized, or semi-industrialized communities with a fairly high
10 literacy rate. We need to know how children in pre-literate, pre-
11 industrial cultures perform, particularly in cultures whose adult

12 members have explicitly different concepts of the mind from those
13 normally held in the West.
14 (p. 222)
15
16 Clearly this state of affairs is consistent with the truth of Scholl and Leslie’s
17 account. However, it also means that the value of the evidence, for the
18 universalist aspect of their account, is much less than might rst be
19 supposed. For, since the case for non-universalism, among mature folk
20 psychologies, is granted on the basis of certain other cultures possessing
21 the kinds of features described by Lillard and in this paper, the assertion
22 that, nevertheless, universalism exists in early folk psychology demands
23 conrming evidence from precisely the cultures which are so different at
24 the mature level. Without that conrming evidence the overall cultural
25 evidence arguably favours overall non-universalism. Scholl and Leslie
26 perhaps come close to conceding as much when their claim that ‘[i]t is at
27 least plausible, prima facie, that we all have the same basic ToM’ is weak-
28 ened to the claim that it ‘is not obviously wrong’ that we do (p. 9, my
29 italics, underlining removed).
30 Harris’ assessment of the cultural evidence appeared in 1990. The
31 following year, Avis and he published a study (Avis and Harris, 1991)
32 which began to address the perceived weakness. Experiments, involving
33 the kind of false-belief task described earlier, were carried out with chil-
34 dren of the Baka, a pre-literate, hunter-gatherer pygmy people of the
35 Cameroon rain forests. Findings were in keeping with those with children
36 of industralized societies, leading to the article’s subtitle, ‘Evidence for a
37 Universal Conception of Mind’. It may seem churlish to recommend one
38 course which the authors mention, but do not favour, viz., to ‘argue . . .
39 that it is too early to extrapolate from the limited amount of develop-
40 mental research conducted hitherto, even if it includes children from
41 preliterate . . . cultures’ (p. 465); and to fault Avis and Harris’ failure to
42 mention whether mature Baka folk psychology is one of those which differ
43 signicantly from their western equivalent. However, in my estimate, both
44 these moves are shown to be eminently reasonable in the light of the
folio 515
1 results of what, to my knowledge, is the only other comparable study

2 carried out with children of a pre-industrial culture.
3 Experiments involving false-belief tasks were conducted, by Vinden
4 (1996) with children of the Junin Quechua, a predominantly subsistence-
5 agricultural people living in the Peruvian high Andes. The experiments
6 yielded the result that, with two groups of children, distinguished by age
7 but with an overall range of 4 8 years, not only was there no improvement
8 with age on false-belief tasks, but in neither group was the performance
9 above chance. In contrast, in experiments designed to disclose under-
10 standing of the appearance reality distinction, improvement with age and
11 excellent performance were established. With respect to the character of

12 mature Junin Quecha folk psychology, one marked difference between
13 Junin Quecha and western cultures seems obviously pertinent. This is the
14 striking absence of an explicitly mental-state vocabulary in the Junin
15 Quecha language. Thus ‘they use phrases that roughly translate as What
16 would he say? for What would he think? and Say no for Deny’ (p. 1708).
17 With respect to the central issue of this paper, there is no obviously
18 correct interpretation of Vinden’s results. However, that this is so, together
19 with the facts that Vinden’s study is only the second in a non-industrial
20 culture and that the culture concerned has some marked differences from
21 ours pertinent to mature folk psychology, argues against condent extra-
22 polation from existing evidence, and for the need for evidence from
23 cultures where differences from ours are seemingly even more striking.
24 With respect to Scholl and Leslie’s position, similar remarks are in order.
25 At least on the face of it, they could employ a distinction they invoke
26 elsewhere to argue that Vinden’s results do not show that Junin Quechua
27 children do not acquire early ToM, only that when they acquire it is much
28 later than for children studied in other cultures. However, the absence of
29 studies of Junin Quechua children older than 8 years is sufcient, on its
30 own, to make even this move insecure. Together with earlier points in this
31 paragraph, therefore, signicant doubts are raised about the robustness of
32 the experimental evidence upon which Scholl and Leslie’s account relies.
33 My nal remarks comprise a brief attempt to question indirectly Scholl
34 and Leslie’s claim that available evidence favours cultural uniformity in
35 the outcome of maturation in childhood. An implication of this attempt,
36 which I will not pursue, is rejection of the assumption that only experi-
37 mental evidence, of the kind just discussed, is relevant to assessing Scholl
38 and Leslie’s account. The attempt consists of three points, each involving
39 reported cultural ndings and a brief comment.
40 First, as noted earlier, the Chewong are reported not to recognize a
41 think feel distinction and the Ifaluk a think emotion distinction. In that
42 case, is it not highly likely that children of these cultures do not recognize
43 the highly analogous belief desire emotion distinctions? To postulate that
44 they do recognize them is to be committed, not to the not implausible
516
1 view that in later development ‘children will begin to elaborate culture-

2 specic ideas around these core assumptions’ (Avis and Harris, 1991:
3 p. 466), but to the surely implausible view that in later development
4 children will eliminate these innately generated core assumptions in favour
5 of culture-specic ideas.
6 Secondly, in his frequently referenced book Belief, Language, and
7 Experience Needham (1972) elaborates upon the report that the Nuer lack
8 the concept of belief. The concept in question, though, is not the propo-
9 sitional attitude concept, but that of believing in someone or something.
10 However, if a culture can lack that mental-state concept, does this not
11 suggest that it is not as unlikely as many suppose that another culture

12 could lack the closely related propositional attitude concept? If it is not
13 as unlikely, then considerations similar to those offered in the preceding
14 point would suggest that children in such a culture are unlikely to display
15 possession of our propositional attitude concept.
16 Thirdly, Hallen and Sodipo )1986) have argued, in great detail, that the
17 Yoruba terms mo and gbagbo, normally translated into English as know-
18 ledge and belief respectively, actually express quite distinct propositional
19 attitude concepts. To extract a few details: the reference of gbagbo is inher-
20 ently social in most contexts it means something like ‘agreeing to accept
21 what one hears from someone’ (p. 64), but in other contexts it can mean
22 approving of what one is told (e.g. that the speaker will visit your house),
23 or agreeing to do what one is told to do; mo does not have this social
24 character, but one cannot mo what is false, or something one has not visu-
25 ally perceived. Evidently, neither concept is the concept of belief which
26 all children allegedly acquire, owing to the maturation of the ToM module,
27 in which it is innate. Again Scholl and Leslie need to hold that, at a later
28 stage of development, Yoruba children replace the concept of belief with
29 one or both of these concepts of mature Yoruba folk psychology.
30 These nal points are neither uncontentious nor, at best, more than
31 indirect grounds for placing in question Scholl and Leslie’s claim that, on
32 the available evidence, their theory’s prediction is correct. Nevertheless,
33 they give further reason for supposing that thorough investigation of prima
34 facie very different folk psychologies may well show that, just like mature
35 folk psychology, early ToM is not uniform across cultures.
36
37 University of Ulster at Coleraine, Northern Ireland
38
39
Notes
40
41 1 In this paper I ignore such possibilities as the simultaneous existence within
42 one culture of different folk psychologies or the existence, over time, of several
folk psychologies within a single cultural tradition.
43 2 For brief acknowledgements that western folk psychology, or important
44 components of it, may not be culturally universal, see Astington, Harris and
folio 517
1 Olson, 1988: p. 2; Foder, 1992: note 1; Stich and Ravenscroft, 1994: note 5.
2 For most substantial treatments see the papers in Heelas and Lock, 1981; the
nal paragraph of Hacking, 1982; Mills, 1998.
3
3 Stich credits Horgan and Graham (1990) with introducing the contrasting
4 terms ‘opulent’ and ‘austere’ to this area. However, Horgan and Graham’s
5 use of the terms is different from Stich’s, and it is (approximately) the latter
6 that I adopt.
7
8
References
9
10 Astington, J. W., Harris, P. L. and Olson, D. R. (1988) (eds) Developing Theories
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Avis, J. and Harris, P. L. (1991) ‘Belief-Desire Reasoning among Baka Children:
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17 Fodor, J. A. (1987) Psychosemantics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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11 folk psychologies differ in theoretically signicant ways from what I shall

1 The universalism of this account is expressed in the clause that folk

1 His illustration of the second kind of difference is that

11 among the Lohurung [of Nepal] it is expected that a child should

11 application were similar. Thus Hallen and Sodipo (1986), following a

11 One nal consideration before drawing this section to a close. The

1 accounts’ restricted focus are, in a strong sense, innate in humans, or

11 eral, how such accounts could be held to be immune to the considerations in

1 postulated as common to all folk psychologies. I suspect that this view

11 conceptions might be are undoubtedly culturally suspect. For

1 kind are not restricted to Wellman’s suggestions about the constituents of

11 consistency claim. The differences described by Lillard, which are deemed

1 In general, Lillard . . . seems to be looking at differences in specic

11 module is compatible with the mature folk psychology of a culture showing

1 achieve their own individualized goals and pleasures. Without consid-

11 another kind of behaviour explanation, which we shall all recognize, but

1 1 if there is cultural non-uniformity in the outcome of maturation, then

1 cultural distribution. Harris, who is frequently cited on this point, puts it

11 industrial cultures perform, particularly in cultures whose adult

1 results of what, to my knowledge, is the only other comparable study

11 excellent performance were established. With respect to the character of

1 view that in later development ‘children will begin to elaborate culture-

11 suggest that it is not as unlikely as many suppose that another culture

of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schwarz, T., White, G. M. and Lutz, C. A. (1992) (eds) New Directions in

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11 folk psychologies differ in theoretically signicant ways from what I shall

11 One nal consideration before drawing this section to a close. The

1 In general, Lillard . . . seems to be looking at differences in specic