Monthly Archives: May 2017

Consciousness and Self-Consciousness

Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while: when philosophers characterize conscious mental states, they often do so in terms that seem to imply that those states are self-conscious. In other words, they seem to be conflating consciousness and self-consciousness; assuming, … Continue reading

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Self-Consciousness and the Taking Condition

It’s possible that, in my earlier posts (here and here), I run two distinct things together: (i) the “takings” posited by the Taking Condition and (ii) the belief (in the best case, the knowledge)––acquired in any self-conscious inference––that you’ve come to know … Continue reading

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Kant on Self-Consciousness

At one point in “Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience,” Sellars is summarizing some “familiar Kantian theses” (279), and says: “Even our consciousness of what is going on in our own mind is a conceptual response which must be distinguished from … Continue reading

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How do you know that your premises support your conclusion?

I suggested in an earlier post that any theory of inference needs to be able to distinguish between inferences of the following two forms: (1) q; r; therefore, p (2) q; r; <q> and <r> support <p>; therefore, p. Intuitively, the difference is that, in order to perform … Continue reading

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About this blog

I’ve been meaning for years to start blogging about philosophy, mainly with the idea that it would provide me with an outlet for the kinds of small thoughts, ideas, and questions that arise on a weekly basis. So that’s what this … Continue reading

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Knowing that your premises support your conclusion

My account of inference (see “Inferring as a Way of Knowing”) involves rejecting the view that, when you infer, you come to believe your conclusion in part because you take your premises to support it. In other words, it involves rejecting the … Continue reading

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