Tuesday 24 November 2015
Ryle Room, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford

Speaker
Anil Gomes, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Trinity College, Oxford

It’s not hard to get oneself in a frame of mind where scepticism about others’ minds can seem to be the human condition, a reflection of our position in a world of others separate from ourselves. But such scepticism is counteracted by the extent to which we take ourselves to know the most basic and mundane truths about one another’s mental lives, knowledge which plays a central role in our relationships with one another. This raises a puzzle about how we are to reconcile these two aspects of our relationship with others ­ the centrality of our knowledge of others’ minds in everyday interaction, and the difficulty we have in accounting for such knowledge. In this talk, Gomes will try to trace the source of this puzzle and say something about its relevance for our relationships with others.

This event is free to attend and does not require registration.