Antonia Peacocke will give a talk titled "How to Answer a Question (in Thought)," the second Philosophy talk of the 2024-25 academic year.

Abstract:  When we narrate our occurrent conscious thoughts, we usually narrate one thought content at a time. You might reflect about how odd it is that "dreamt" is spelled "d-r-e-a-m-t," and then you might muse that "dreamt" rhymes with "preempt," and then you might decide that it's time for lunch. While it's common to narrate our thoughts in this way, this also misses a whole further layer of the significance of our thoughts to us, subjectively. Some of our thoughts aren't just individual musings or realizations. They also respond meaningfully to questions we've been asking for some time. For instance, if you had been bothered by the question "what English words rhyme with 'preempt'?" for about a day, your thought that "dreamt" rhymes with "preempt" would strike you in connection with that question, and give that thought much more significance than it would have as a mere idle musing. What does it take for a thought to have this extra layer of significance? I examine this question in particular with philosophical discussions of inquiry, which is the activity of answering a question, and I challenge philosophers working on inquiry to explain what it takes to give a thought the additional significance of answering a question. I draw an analogy between a question about what it takes to answer a question and what it takes to reason from one thought to another. Then I offer a promising direction for research into this additional layer of significance of our thoughts. This direction involves seeing your thoughts not just as things that happen to you, but as things that you do—actions of yours, which you intend to perform. 

Antonia Peacocke is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. She is writing a book entitled Mental Means. It's about the way that you can do things intentionally in thought, and how some thoughts that you think intentionally take on additional significance for you. She has also written papers about aesthetic value, how literature expands your imagination, how you gain self-knowledge about your own beliefs, and how judgment can be intentional. She was formerly a Bersoff Faculty Fellow at NYU, and she received her PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley.