Abstract
Folk psychology is a normative phenomenon. When the behavior is explained from a folk psychological perspective, the explanation consists in the ascription of beliefs, desires and intentions it would be rational to have for the agent in her situation. In this chapter it will be argued that law adopts the folk-psychological model of explanation of behaviour and the legal image of the mind corresponds to the image of the mind present in folk-psychology. Both law and folk-psychology presuppose that the mind is reason-responsive, i.e. it is able to recognize reasons and to react to reasons. Furthermore, it will be argued that – at the conceptual level – reason-responsiveness is constitutively supervenient on our understanding of, inter alia, reasons, and the abilities to recognize and to react to reasons. On the other hand, at the cognitive level, reason-responsiveness is causally supervenient on the cognitive mechanisms which generate reasons and underlie our abilities to recognize and to react to reasons. Finally, in the last part of the chapter, some empirical challenges to reason-responsiveness will be discussed.
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