The Unobservability Thesis
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The Unobservability Thesis. / Overgaard, Søren.
In: Synthese - An international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Vol. 194, No. 3, 2017, p. 743-460.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The Unobservability Thesis
AU - Overgaard, Søren
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The unobservability thesis (UT) states that the mental states of other people are unobservable. Both defenders and critics of UT seem to assume that UT has important implications for the mindreading debate. Roughly, the former argue that because UT is true, mindreaders need to infer the mental states of others, while the latter maintain that the falsity of UT makes mindreading inferences redundant. I argue, however, that it is unclear what ‘unobservability’ means in this context. I outline two possible lines of interpretation of UT, and argue that on one of these, UT has no obvious implications for the mindreading debate. On the other line of interpretation, UT may matter to the mindreading debate, in particular if we think of it as a thesis about the possible contents of perceptual experience. The upshot is that those who believe UT has implications for the mindreading debate need to be more specific about how they understand the thesis.
AB - The unobservability thesis (UT) states that the mental states of other people are unobservable. Both defenders and critics of UT seem to assume that UT has important implications for the mindreading debate. Roughly, the former argue that because UT is true, mindreaders need to infer the mental states of others, while the latter maintain that the falsity of UT makes mindreading inferences redundant. I argue, however, that it is unclear what ‘unobservability’ means in this context. I outline two possible lines of interpretation of UT, and argue that on one of these, UT has no obvious implications for the mindreading debate. On the other line of interpretation, UT may matter to the mindreading debate, in particular if we think of it as a thesis about the possible contents of perceptual experience. The upshot is that those who believe UT has implications for the mindreading debate need to be more specific about how they understand the thesis.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Mindreading
KW - Observation
KW - Perception
KW - Inference
KW - Other minds
U2 - 10.1007/s11229-015-0804-3
DO - 10.1007/s11229-015-0804-3
M3 - Journal article
VL - 194
SP - 743
EP - 460
JO - Synthese
JF - Synthese
SN - 0039-7857
IS - 3
ER -
ID: 140707821