Part 2 Mind: Mental Faculties

This is the web page for the Philosophy Part 2 course Mental Faculties given by Richard Holton at the University of Cambridge, Lent term 2025. This page will provide links to papers and other texts that may be useful and to pdf versions of the handouts. If you have suggestions or comments, please let me know by emailing me at rjh221@cam.ac.uk

This year the class will take place on Fridays; I am afraid though that because I will be absent for several Fridays this term, the schedule is complex:

Week 1: Friday 10am, Rm 8; 12 noon Rm.1;
Week 2: No lecture;
Week 3: No lecture;
Week 4: Friday 10am, Rm 8; 12 noon Rm.1;
Week 5: Friday 9am, Rm 1;
Week 6: Friday 10am, Rm 8;
Week 7: Friday 10am, Rm 8;
Week 8: Friday 10am, Rm 8.

Lectures

Lecture 1: Three kinds of intention talk

Handout 1

Primary

For an excellent introduction to some of the themes we shall be covering, have a look at Kieran Setiya’s entry ‘Intention’ in the Stanford Encyclopedia.

Secondary

GEM Anscombe Intention. First published in 1957, and for many years rather neglected, but now very much in vogue again. It is often hard to know where she is going, especially given the welter of distinctions in the early sections, but every page is stimulating.
Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans and Practical Reason. The most influential account that treats intentions as irreducible mental states.

Lecture 2: Intentions as mental states

Primary

Bratman’s book, listed above, is the main source. I give some summary, and discussion of psychological evidence, in the first chapter of my Willing, Wanting, Waiting.