Post-Doc, Philosophy
Thesis Title: The Myth of the Hidden
Tim Crane
Lucy O'Brien
Michael Martin
About
I was awarded my Ph.D. in January 2009. Entitled 'The Myth of the Hidden', this explored the problems thought to endanger our knowledge of others' mental lives.
I argued that scepticism about our knowledge of others' mental lives should be put aside while the question of how we purportedly know what we do is answered.
Normally, that question is answered with the hypothesis that our knowledge is somehow inferential.
My own thesis is that sometimes, we can perceive others' mental states. This claim answers the question of how we can know about others' mental states - we can know such facts perceptually. And the answer makes such knowledge distinct from inferential knowledge. If true, some of our knowledge of others' mental lives could be immediate.
If my thesis is correct, then we can sometimes perceive others' mental states, features or properties. I set up an epistemic test to help decide whether this might be true. If we don't perceive others' mental states, then our knowledge of them must be somehow inferential. But to the extent that a model upon which our knowledge is inferential is implausible, it becomes plausible to maintain that our knowledge must be non-inferential. In turn, this makes it plausible that our knowledge is perceptual.
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