Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University): 'Identifiers, Consciousness, and Psychological Explanation'
Abstract: I argue that to characterize adequately the way in which our conscious states are given to us, we need to recognize a category of what I call identifiers. Identifiers convey what it is like subjectively to be in the state to which they refer. Identifiers are not demonstratives. Insofar as they have been recognized in the literature at all, they have been misdescribed. I offer a positive account of identifiers, and discuss their role in memory, imagination, and the perception of expressive action, inter alia, and in our understanding of identities between states experienced in different ways. Properly deployed, identifiers and relations to them can also contribute to the empirical explanation of a range of otherwise psychological phenomena.
Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.
Jowett Society Organising Committee: Joshua Loo, Zachary Lang, Xavier Morales Zayas and Sepehr Razavi | Jowett Society Website
