Review of Steven Stich's "From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science"

The amateurish psychological analyses our mothers make and the study of social psychology must each be abandoned by those interested in developing a truly scientific study of cognition. Similarly, any school of psychology which refers to the referents or semantic elements of mentalistic terms must be dismissed as unlikely to contribute to the science of cognition. This would include such additional areas of study as developmental psychology and gestalt psychology. These somewhat audacious claims follow either directly or indirectly from the pronouncements of Stephen Stich's much heralded book, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Stich is not fond of mentalistic accounts of the psychological domain. Curiously enough, however, he is equally disenchanted with the attempts of behavioral psychologists to account for the nature of human behavior. Having disparaged the attempts of most major schools of psychology one wonders what Stich does permit as a legitimate approach for the scientific study of cognitive processes-assuming of course we still want a scientific study of psychology! Surely, even generally critical philosophers and scientists would applaud the efforts of clinical psychologists who are intent on relieving patients of their mental afflictions. However, these same philosophers and scientists may be equally eager to dismiss the claim of psychologists who describe their field of study as a science. Psychology, these critics say, is not really a science, but rather a mere ideology of human well-being. The only real science of human nature they insist is neurophysiology. Stich is not such a critic, nor is he an advocate of a non-psychological reductivist neuroscience. He believes there can be a scientific study of human nature, a sort of science of the mind. Stich describes the science of the mind as cognitive science. However, before the reader gets any hopes up, Stich disclaims association