Past Event: ELLMM City: Brice Bantegnie (UC Riverside)

Title: Let’s Get Personal! How to not Theorize about Thoughts.

Abstract: A popular, if not dominant view in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, is that thoughts are mental representations (internal particulars with representational properties). This view is not well-grounded, however, and, in this paper, I intend to show why. More specifically, I argue that recent talk of formats of thoughts has no inferential role over and above the inferential role person-level psychological talk has and that such a talk is not explanatory. Finally, I reply to potential objections.