Dictionary

mentalistic en · ADJ

Etymology

From mentalist + -ic.

Meanings

1. Characterized by appeal to mental states (such as beliefs, desires, intentions, feelings) in describing, explaining, or predicting behaviour or other phenomena; employing or pertaining to vocabulary or predicates about such states (often contrasted with behaviorist or purely physicalist approaches).
   • In this respect, our familiar mentalistic vocabulary (viz. our talk of thoughts, feelings, and expectations) would be similar in important respects to other theoretically embedded vocabularies. 2021, Daniel D. Hutto, “Folk Psychology as a Theory”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
   • Mentalistic explanations allay curiosity and bring inquiry to a stop. 1974, B. F. Skinner, About Behaviorism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, page 15:
   • Predicate dualism is the theory that psychological or mentalistic predicates are essential for a full description of the world and are not reducible to physicalistic predicates. 2020, Howard Robinson, “Dualism”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
   • The findings … show that syntactic information is a more reliable indicator of mentalistic interpretations than even the most cooperative contextual cues. 2007, Anna Papafragou, Kimberly Cassidy, Lila Gleitman, “When we think about thinking: The acquisition of belief verbs”, in Cognition, volume 105, number 1, →DOI, pages 125–165:
2. Of or relating to mentalism or mentalists.

Forms

Deriveds

nonmentalistic