This colloquium talk is planned as an online event on Zoom. In case you would like to join the event, please request the details by email.
Abstract
This talk explores the significance of a distinction in mental ontology for the epistemology of mind and, in particular, for the epistemology of one’s own mind. The ontological distinction is that between occurrent and non-occurrent aspects – aspects of mind that involve something happening (e.g. judging ‘Lima is in Peru’) vs those that involve an ongoing state that could persist through dreamless sleep (e.g. believing ‘Lima is in Peru’). The claim about the significance of the distinction is that all introspective knowledge (all knowledge of one’s own mind that relies neither on inference nor observation of behaviour) is knowledge of what is happening in one’s mind. I argue that this rather restrictive claim about the scope of introspective knowledge makes it less mysterious that there should be introspective knowledge.