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.facts, he "just forgot" or "overlooked" a few of them temporarilyThere is no direct relationship between our conscious thought anduntil we reminded him of them.This has the appearance of being athe occasions when we will say something has slipped our mind.modest little psychological hypothesis: something roughly to the ef-Suppose someone asks me to have lunch today and I reply that Ifect that although something or other was stored safe and soundcan't: I have another appointment then, but for the life of me I can'tinside the agent's head where it belonged, its address was temporar-recall what it is it will come to me later.Here although in one regardily misplaced.Some such story may well in the end be supportedmy tennis date has slipped my mind, in another it has not, since mywithin a confirmed and detailed psychological theory (cf.Cherniakbelief that I am playing tennis, while not (momentarily) consciously1983, 1986; Thomason 1986), but it is important to note that at theretrievable, is yet doing some work for me: it is keeping me frompresent time we make these hypotheses simply on the basis of ourmaking the conflicting appointment.I hop in my car and I get to theabhorrence of the vacuum of contradiction.intersection: left takes me home for lunch; right takes me to the tenniscourt; I turn right this time without benefit of an accompanying con-For instance, consider absentmindedness a well-named affliction,scious thought to the effect that I am playing tennis today at lunch-it seems.At breakfast I am reminded that I am playing tennis withtime.It has not slipped my mind, though; had it slipped my mind, IPaul instead of having lunch today.At 12:45 I find myself polishingwould no doubt have turned left (cf.Ryle 1958).It is even possible tooff dessert when Paul, in tennis gear, appears at my side and jolts mehave something slip one's mind while one is thinking of it con-into recollection."It completely slipped my mind!" I aver, blushing atsciously! "Be careful of this pan," I say, "it is very hot" reaching outmy own absentmindedness.But why do I say that? Is it because, as Iand burning myself on the very pan I am warning about.The heightrecall, not a single conscious thought about my tennis date passedof absentmindedness, no doubt, but possible.We would no doubtthrough my head after breakfast? That might be true, but perhaps nosay something like "You didn't think what you were saying!"conscious thought that I was going to lunch today occurred to me inwhich doesn't mean that the words issued from my mouth as from athe interim either, and yet here I am, finishing my lunch.Perhaps if Izombie, but that if I had believed really believed what I was say-had thought consciously about going to lunch as usual, that verying, I couldn't have done what I did.If I can in this manner not thinkthought would have reminded me that I wasn't, in fact.And in anywhat I am saying, I could also in about as rare a case not think what Icase, even if I remember now that it did occur to me in mid-morningwas thinking.I could think "careful of that hot pan" to myself, whilethat I was to play tennis today to no avail, evidently I will still sayignoring the advice.it subsequently slipped my mind.Why, indeed, am I eager to insist that it completely slipped my There is some temptation to say that in such a case, while I knewmind? To assure Paul that I haven't stood him up on purpose? Per- full well that the pan was hot, I just forgot for a moment.Perhaps wehaps, but that should be obvious enough not to need saying, and if want to acknowledge this sort of forgetting, but note that it is not atmy eagerness is a matter of not wanting to insult him, I am not all the forgetting we suppose to occur when we say I have forgottenentirely succeeding, since it is not at all flattering to be so utterly the telephone number of the taxicab company I called two weeks agoforgotten.I think a primary motive for my assertion is just to banish or forgotten the date of Hume's birth.In those cases we presume the90 Making Sense of Ourselves91The Intentional Stancepassages of thought), the arena we properly arrive at is the folk-information is gone for good.Reminders and hints won't help mepsychological arena of thinkings, concludings, forgettings, and therecall.When I say "I completely forgot our tennis date," I don't at alllike not mere abstract mental stores like belief, but concrete andmean I completely forgot it as would be evidenced if on Paul'sdockable episodes or activities or processes that can be modeled byarrival in tennis gear I was blankly baffled by his presence, denyingpsychological model builders and measured and tested quite directlyany recollection of having made the date.in experiments.But as the examples just discussed suggest (thoughSome other familiar locutions of folk psychology are in the samethey do not by any means prove), we would be unwise to model ourfamily: "notice," "overlook," "ignore," and even "conclude." One'sserious, academic psychology too closely on these putative illata ofinitial impression is that these terms are applied by us to our ownfolk theory.We postulate all these apparent activities and mentalcases on the basis of direct introspection.That is, we classify variousprocesses in order to make sense of the behavior we observe inconscious acts of our own as concludings, noticings, and the likeorder, in fact, to make as much sense as possible of the behavior,but what about ignorings and overlookings? Do we find ourselvesespecially when the behavior we observe is our own.Philosophers ofdoing these things? Only retrospectively, and in a self-justificatory ormind used to go out of their way to insist that one's access to one'sself-critical mood: "I ignored the development of the pawns on theown case in such matters is quite unlike one's access to others', but asqueen side," says the chess player, "because it was so clear that thewe learn more about various forms of psychopathology and even theimportant development involved the knights on the king side [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]