Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Explanations of the human capacities for folk psychology and pretend play often assume the existence of sui generis mental states that simulate other mental states. There are said to be 'offline’ counterparts of sensory experiences, desires, emotions, motor representations and decisions, to name just a few. Many of these states are familiar enough that we have words for them in natural language (think of ‘image’ and ‘imagining’). In this talk I will present a new strategy for theorizing about one such state: ‘offline belief’. The strategy exploits the assumption that we use offline beliefs to evaluate conditionals.