Philosophy Research Seminar: 'Thinking, inner speech and self-awareness'
| Dates: | 21 April 2015 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 15:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Johannes Roessler |
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Speaker: Johannes Roessler (Warwick)
Title: Thinking, inner speech and self-awareness
Abstract:
This paper has two themes. One is the question of how to understand the relation between inner speech and knowledge of one’s own thoughts. My aim here is to probe and challenge the popular neo-Rylean suggestion that we know our own thoughts by ‘overhearing our own silent monologues’, and to sketch an alternative suggestion, inspired by Ryle’s lesser-known discussion of thinking as a ‘serial process’. The second theme is the question whether, as Ryle apparently thought, we need some kind of ‘bifurcationist’ or ‘two-component’ approach to the epistemology of thinking, reflecting the contrast between thoughts with respect to which we are active vs passive. I suggest we should be skeptical about the assumption that there is a single contrast here. There are a number of interesting ways in which thinking can involve passivity, but none of them demands a ‘bifurcationist’ explanation.
Speaker
Johannes Roessler
Organisation: The University of Warwick
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
5.206
University Place
Manchester
