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Jun 2008
55 m

2007 Lecture 1: Starting in the middle

OXFORD UNIVERSITY
About this episode
Our topic is a subject's knowledge of his own phenomenal experience and of the content of his thought, but I will approach the topic from the outside, treating the subject as an object in the world. The first lecture will characterize, in a general way, this externalist strategy, and look at some familiar examples of it in the recent philosophical tradition. 
Up next
Jul 2008
2007 Lecture 2: Epistemic possibilities and the knowledge argument
The second lecture will begin with Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. The argument and the responses to it turn on assumptions about the nature of the contents of belief and the objects of knowledge. I will argue that one cannot escape the anti-materialist conclusion of the know ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 2008
2007 Lecture 3: Locating ourselves in the world
One strategy for responding to the knowledge argument exploits an analogy between knowledge of phenomenal experience and essentially indexical or self-locating knowledge. I think this is a promising analogy, but I will argue that before we apply it, we need to get clearer about t ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 2008
2007 Lecture 4: Phenomenal and epistemic indistinguishability
The fourth lecture will begin with a variation on the thought experiment about Mary that is the focus of the knowledge argument, using it to develop the analogy between self-locating knowledge and knowledge of phenomenal experience. The success of the analogy will turn on the rej ... Show More
55 m
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