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TimS comments on The Need for Universal Experience Classes - Less Wrong
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There are a class of explanatory theories best described as "folk" theories. (E.g. folk psychology, folk economics, folk physics). They are the "everybody knows this" explanatory theories. But every folk X theory that I've encountered is looked at with disdain among actual Xers. For example, academic psychologists think folk psychology is filled with nonsense.
How would the proposed self-taught philosophers avoid concluding that folk philosophy was the best theory?
So, folk theories are the older ideas that have been in the field for a long time? If so, that's correct.
Perhaps those philosophers should keep up with the newest theories so that they realize the conflict of the old and new. I don't think that self-taught philosophers are the problem, though. Autodidacts do not necessarily believe the wrong ideas.
Roughly speaking, folk theories are the theories that an ordinary viewer of Law & Order thinks are true. For daily life, many folk theories are close enough, but they often make nonsensical or wildly wrong claims when applied in any specialized context.
It appears that folk theories are slightly entangled with actual scientific theories, in that I doubt Victorian era common folk thought that the speed of light was a fundamental constant, and most moderately educated people now do have some concept of that idea.