Philosophy of psychology takes various forms. Some philosophers of psychology use psychological findings and theories to develop new answers to tradi­tional philosophical questions.

A smaller number of philosophers of psychology take their cue from the philosophy of science. They describe and evaluate the discovery heuristics, theories, and explanatory practices endorsed by psychologists.

Focusing mostly on this aspect of the philosophy of psychology, I will consider philosophers’ contribution to the theoretical development of psychology in four areas: cognitive architecture and modularity (§2); situated, embodied, and extended cognition (§3); concepts (§4), and mind­reading (§6)? Before doing this, however, I will discuss philosophers’ and psychologists’ views and arguments about the distinctive character of psychology - its mentalistic nature (§1).

¹ Philosophers have contributed to the theoretical development of other areas, such as emotions (e.g., Griffiths 1997, Prinz 2004a), consciousness (e.g., Block 1995, Chalmers 1996, Chalmers 2004, Noe 2004, Block 2007), perception (e.g., Jacob and Jeannerod 2003, Noe 2004), psychopathology (e.g., Murphy 2007), moral psychology (e.g., Doris 2002, Nichols 2004, Doris and Stich 2006, Prinz 2007), the relation between language and thought (e.g., Carruthers 2006), and the scientific value of evolutionary psychology (e.g., Buller 2005, Machery and Barrett 2006, Machery forthcoming). For the sake of space, I will not review these contributions here.

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