Mind Workshop: Smith

Joel Smith, How is Intersubjectivity Possible?, took issue with Strawson’s well-known idea that behaviour constitutes logically adequate criteria for mental state attribution rather than being just a sign of mentality. In his view, this is not simply due to Strawson’s generality constraint on the ascription of mental states to certain entities, but results from Strawson’s conviction that the “sign” view cannot tell consistently how subjects develop the ability to deploy mental concepts. What undermines this argument, however, is that “sign” views are not committed to first person developmental accounts. Joel’s alternative is based on the phenomenological notion that what is perceived in visual experience is not just the (presented) front aspect of an object, but includes (co-presented) invisible aspects of the entire object as well. Similarly, he suggests, mentality is co-presented in seeing others. There are reservations against the idea of a visual experience of mentality--it is intuitive to treat mentality as an invisible function--and against the idea of a mere co-presence of mentality--co-presentation implies that we can get a better view of it. If certain mental states can be picked out by their functions, however, co-presenting them means anticipating the structure of the functional roles that the appropriate mental properties have. By merging co-presentation and functional accounts, Joel concludes, we can get a better view of mental co-presence without making mental functioning present, and thus we get logically adequate criteria for mental state attribution.

Mind Workshop: Avramides

Anita Avramides, "Knowing vs. Acting with Others: Some Background", argued that an otherwise promising approach to knowledge of others, exemplified by early knowledge externalists such as Goldman and Dretske, fail to account adequately for the relations we bear to others. This is for the reason that they attempt to account for knowledge of others against a background that leaves open as a possibility the sceptical hypothesis that we lack knowledge of others - we can have knowledge of what another is thinking without knowledge that another is thinking. Anita argued that a recent view, proposed by Quassim Cassam, that we can see that others are in mental states, does not really progress very far from this basic externalist position. Instead, she argued, we should look to Wittgenstein who conceives of the background to our knowledge of others in terms a kind of social interaction that leaves no room for the sceptical possibility to take root. In this way, we can take a more satisfactory view of what is wrong with the sceptical arguments.