‘Obsessive Thoughts and Inner Voices’

Philosophical Issues 23 (1):93-108 (2013)
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Abstract

My concern is this paper is to consider the nature of obsessive thoughts with the aim of getting a clearer idea about the extent to which they are rightly identified as passive or as active. The nature of obsessive thoughts is of independent interest, but my concern with the question is also rooted in a general concern to map the extent of mental activity, and to defend the importance and centrality of a view of self-knowledge that appeals to agency. I hold that much of our mental lives is active, and that the distinctive knowledge we have of our own minds is in many cases best explained by appealing to agency. Along with many others, I take knowledge of our actions and activities to be distinctive. We know our actions and activities in a way that we do not know anything else, and in a way that is distinctively and essentially self-conscious.

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Lucy O'Brien
University College London

Citations of this work

XIII—Self‐Knowledge, Transparency, and Self‐Authorship.Sacha Golob - 2015 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 115 (3pt3):235-253.
Agency and observation in knowledge of one's own thinking.Casey Doyle - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):148-161.

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References found in this work

The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
Being known.Christopher Peacocke - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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