CFS Lecture by Christopher Peacocke: "Interpersonal Self-Consciousness: What it is, and what it is not."

Lecture by Christopher Peacocke, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, USA.

Christopher Peacocke has been Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and held a Leverhulme Personal Research Professorship. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His most recent book is The Mirror of the World: Subjects, Consciousness, and Self-Consciousness (Oxford, 2014).

Abstract: "Intersubjectivity: What it is and what it is not"

I distinguish global from restricted intersubjectivity. The former, if true, would apply to all states with intentional content. I argue against global intersubjectivity, and then turn to the characterization of more restricted forms of intersubjectivity. I argue that a proper characterization of the more restricted forms must make use of the distinction between using and referring to the first person way of thinking. When properly deployed in the characterization, intersubjectivity does not involve any irreducible second person notions. I give some preliminary discussion of the role of such intersubjectivity in aesthetics.

The talk is open to all.