  It has often been argued that people can attribute mental states to robots
without making any ontological commitments to the reality of those states. But
what does it mean to 'attribute' a mental state to a robot, and what is an
'ontological commitment'? It will be argued that, on a plausible interpretation
of these two notions, it is not clear how mental state attribution can occur
without any ontological commitment. Taking inspiration from the philosophical
debate on scientific realism, a provisional taxonomy of folk-ontological
stances towards robots will also be identified, corresponding to different ways
of understanding robotic minds. They include realism, non-realism,
eliminativism, reductionism, fictionalism and agnosticism. Instrumentalism will
also be discussed and presented as a folk-epistemological stance. In the last
part of the article it will be argued that people's folk-ontological stances
towards robots and humans can influence their perception of the human-likeness
of robots. The analysis carried out here can be seen as encouraging a
'folk-ontological turn' in human-robot interaction research, aimed at
explicitly determining what beliefs people have about the reality of robot
minds.
