Philosophy of Mind Seminar

Abstract: Recent developments in the philosophy of mind suggest that for a thought to be access conscious, we must attend to its content (Smithies, 2011; Stoljar, 2019). But in order to attend to the content of a thought, we need a mechanism of attention (see, e.g., Jackendoff, 1996). While in principle there are many such mechanisms, for complex thoughts, the primary such mechanism in creatures like us is language; we attend to contents by attending to or using expressions of a natural language that express those contents, whether in inner or outer speech. But varying patterns of lexicalization both within and across languages show us that languages differ in the ease with which they can express certain contents, and a range of recent empirical work shows us that such variation in lexicalization has significant cognitive effects (Lupyan, 2016; Zettersten and Lupyan, 2020). Together, these facts provide strong evidence that the language we speak shapes and constrains which contents we attend to, and so shapes and constrains what we consciously think. Recognition of this influence provides a unified explanation of a variety of phenomena in the philosophy of language and mind, including hermeneutical injustice and certain forms of silencing.

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.

Philosophy of Mind Seminar convenors: Mike Martin and Matthew Parrott