Past Events

Abstract:
The problem of dream skepticism is one of the most familiar in philosophy: the problem of how we can ever know that we are awake and not asleep and dreaming. I offer a partial solution to the problem: a solution which depends on certain background commitments and which is not applicable to all mental states (though it is applicable to many). I will suggest that, if my argument is successful, it may also open up a path for dealing with external world skepticism more generally.

Abstract:
Psychoanalysis is usually thought of as a context in which people who are patients have the maximum amount of expressive freedom. One way of thinking of the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, the injunction to free association, is as the throwing off limitations on self-expression. But I argue that, somewhat surprisingly, psychoanalysis in general, and free association in particular, bring their own forms of expressive limitations. I consider a few different ways of understanding free association through the lenses of speech act theory and Gricean conversational analysis to highlight these limitations that patients must struggle with, and against.