The Elusiveness of Mental Acts

Mental phenomena are often said to have an act-object structure, but mental acts seem to elude introspection. Moore famously called them diaphanous or transparent, Russell admitted that he could not detect them introspectively, and Ryle insisted that it is as hard to catch them by introspection as it is to “extract a jellyfish out of the sea from a fast moving boat and with only a knitting needle” (Ryle 2000, 331–32). Call this the transparency phenomenon, or, in Ryle’s phrase, the jellyfish phenomenon. While this phenomenon is widely recognized, there is considerable disagreement about its theoretical implications. In this paper I briefly consider three options, namely: monism, dispositionalism and deflationism about mental acts, and argue for the latter. On the proposed deflationary account, propositions that appear to be about mental acts are best paraphrased as propositions about mentally active subjects. Once it is so Occamized, the talk of mental acts is harmless—or so I will argue.