THE “IT SERVES QUITE DIFFERENT PURPOSES” OBJECTION

4 THE “IT SERVES QUITE DIFFERENT PURPOSES” OBJECTION

This line of argument was first pressed by Wilkes (1984), and finds further expression in Hannan (1989). Both philosophers claim that the conceptual framework of FP is used for a vast range of “nonscientific” purposes beyond the pro to typically “theoretical purpose of describing the ultimate nature of human psychological organization” (Hannan). The idea here is that FP is up to a different game, is deployed in pursuit of different goals, from the game or the goals of a typical scientific theory. The leading examples of FP’s “nontheoretical” functions concern the many practical activities that humans engage in and the many mundane purposes they address.

These premises about the manifold practical functions of FP are all true. Yet the conclusions drawn therefrom betray a narrow and cartoonish conception of what theories are and what they do. The stereotype of an abstract prepositional description invented for the purpose of deep explanation far from the concerns of practical life may be popular, but it is not remotely accurate. Theory is regularly an intimate part and constituting element of people’s second-by-second practical lives. Consider the role of circuit theory in the practical day of an electronics engineer designing radios, TVs, and stereos. Consider the role of geometry in the working day of a carpenter. Musical theory in the working day of a composer or jazz musician. Chemical theory in the working day of a drug engineer. Medical theory in the day of a physician. Optics in the day of a camera lens designer.

182 POSTSCRIPT

Such cases should not be set aside as the exceptional and occasional intrusions of theory into the alien realm of practice. Our best (Kuhn 1962) and most recent (Churchland 1989, ch. 9) accounts of what learning a theory amounts to portray the process as much less the memorizing of doctrine and much more the slow acquisition and development of a host of diverse skills—skills of perception, categorization, analogical extension, physical manipulation, evaluation, construction, analysis, argument, computation, anticipation, and so forth. Becoming a physical chemist, for example, is very much a matter of being socialized into a community of practice with shared goals, values, techniques, and equipment. Sustaining enhanced practice is what theories typically do, at least for those who have internalized the relevant theories.

Once they have been internalized, of course, they no longer seem like theories, in the sense of the false stereotype here at issue. Yet theories they remain, how ever much they have become the implicit engine of intricate mundane practice. In the case of FP, we have what is no doubt the most thoroughly internalized theory any human ever acquires. Small wonder it serves the diverse practical purposes mentioned by Wilkes and Hannan. Idle spectators excepted, that is what theories are for.

In sum, the claim that FP is an empirical theory is entirely consistent with — indeed it is explanatory of—the intricate practical life enjoyed by its adepts. It is typical of theoretical adepts that their practical activities, and their practical worlds, are transformed by the relevant acquisition of knowledge. So it is with children who master FP in the normal course of socialization.

As regards immunity to elimination, we should observe that practices can be displaced just as well as theories, and for closely related reasons. Becoming a medieval alchemist, for example, was a matter of learning an inseparable mix of theory and practice. But when modern chemistry began to flower, the medieval practice was displaced almost in its entirety. Current chemical practice would be unintelligible to an alchemist. And given the spectacular power of modern chemistry, no one defends or mourns the passing of the alchemist’s comparatively impotent practice, intricate and dear to him though it was.

This intimate connection of theory with practice has another side. The objection at issue wrongly characterizes the eliminativist as willing to turn her back on the intricacies of social practice in favor of an austere concern with new and abstract theory. But nothing could be further from the truth. The positive idea behind the projected displacement of FP is the hope of a comparably superior social practice rooted in a comparably superior account of human cognition and mental activity. If better chemical theory can sustain better chemical practice, then better psychological theory can sustain better social practice. A deeper understanding of the springs of human behavior may thus permit a deeper level of cognitive interaction, moral insight, and mutual care. Accordingly, a genuinely worthy scientific replacement for FP need not be

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ordeal, purification by fire, absolution by ritual, and rehabilitation by exorcism or, currently, by long imprisonment in the intimate company of other sociopaths. Against such dark and impotent practices, any source of light should be welcomed.