Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Duration: 2012 - 2015

Code: FFI2011-26853

Principal Investigator

Josefa Toribio (jtoribio@icrea.cat)

All researchers

Pablo Couto (UAB)

Olga Fernández (UAB)

Josep Macià (UB)

Connor McHugh (U. of Southampton)

Manolo Martínez (UAB)

Daniel Quesada (UAB)

Susanna Siegel (Harvard)

Ernest Sosa (Rutgers)

Summary

The aim of this project is to advance the analysis of the complex relations between perceptual experiences, beliefs, and mental actions. The project has three related goals:

1. To advance the theory of content and epistemology of perceptual experiences by addressing, specifically, the issue of how to understand the kind of justification that perceptual experiences provide for beliefs.

2. To provide a detailed analysis of the notion of belief and its epistemology. In particular, to examine the best way to understand the idea that belief aims at truth. We will consider two conflicting contemporary models: the teleological and the normative models. According to the teleological view, the idea that belief aims at truth is taken to mean that the subject, in believing that p, has a certain goal: the goal of accepting p only if p is true. In contrast, according to the normative account, when a subject believes that p, they are abiding by the norm of truth, i.e., they implicitly accept a normative judgment whose content is to believe p only if p is true.

3. To discuss the concept of mental action and to examine the nature and epistemology of mental actions. We aim to critically analyse the arguments for and against the agential nature of key mental phenomena such as judging. Furthermore, the project aims to assess the very assumptions that help to establish the division that is traditionally accepted, albeit tacitly, between passive episodes, such as experiences or beliefs, and other mental episodes where (putatively) the epistemic agent is actively involved.

Total budget: €51.062