George Graham

Folk psychology is the psychology deployed by ordinary folk and by scientists in ordinary life. At its most basic level, it consists of deploying the concept of mind to explain and predict behavior. This article (i) considers how folk psychology may have begun, by considering an imaginary race of primitive folk deploying the rudimentary nucleus of the psychology, or a rudimentary concept of mind, and (ii) examines one argument for the evolutionary emergence and adaptivity of folk psychology. The crucial issue emerging from this is how primitive folk could have competently deployed the concept or the psychology in such a way as to survive and proliferate in consequence of successfully predicting behavior. Dennett and others are on the right track when they regard folk psychology as adaptive. But care and caution are needed in resolving the issue of competent deployment

The basic idea motivating this paper is that something can be done intentionally even when it is not done with the intention of doing it. An implication of this idea is that the distinction between doing what one intends and doing something as a foreseen avoidable consequence of doing what one intends cannot be used to exonerate agents for misdeeds.My immediate purpose here is to illustrate these points and show how they pertain to the morally relevant difference between active and passive euthanasia, and to the exoneration of God for the production of evil. In particular, I shall try to show, first, that the American Medical Association's recent attempt to distinguish between active and passive euthanasia is seriously defective. Second, I shall try to show that a popular version of the so-called Free Will Defense of God for Evil is also seriously defective.