Moral norms inform mental state ascriptions

Norms inform mental state ascriptions: A rational explanation for the side-effect effect.

Theory of mind, the capacity to understand and ascribe mental states, has traditionally been conceptualized as analogous to a scientific theory. However, recent work in philosophy and psychology has documented a "side-effect effect" suggesting that moral evaluations influence mental state ascriptions, and in particular whether a behavior is described as having been performed 'intentionally.' Th...

Commonsense concepts of phenomenal consciousness: Does anyone care about functional zombies?

It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many dispute...

Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge

Self-ascriptions of mental states, whether in speech or thought, seem to have a unique status. Suppose I make an utterance of the form “I have a terrible headache”. This is a self-ascription of a mental state. It is true or false, depending on whether I am indeed having a terrible headache or not, which is a contingent matter. However, when self-ascriptions like this are made from a first perso...

Interpretivism and the meaning of mental state ascriptions

Two Types of Belief Report

Ascriptions of belief and other doxastic propositional attitudes are commonly interpreted as quantifying over a set of possible worlds constituting doxastic alternatives for the belief experiencer. Katz (2000, 2003, 2008) has argued that belief predicates and other stative attitude predicates, along with stative predicates generally, lack a Davidsonian event argument and therefore do not report...