Abstract

In three chapters this thesis seeks to demonstrate that (i) there historically has been no consensus in the use of the term 'mental privacy' and that several problematic doctrines are based on confused accounts of this term; (ii) there are contemporary debates which are maintained, in large order, by the opposing sides subscribing to different notions of mental privacy; and (iii) a preliminary investigation makes clear that both mental states with propositional content and mental states with non-propositional content are private in that both require the agent to have the state