The Writing and Society Research Centre and Philosophy@UWS present:

Dr Talia Morag, Sessional Lecturer of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Sydney)
TITLE: A Naturalized Conception of the Unconscious.

DATE/TIME: Wednesday, June 11th, 3.30-5.00pm

PLACE: University of Western Sydney, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Room 3.G.27  
[How to get to Bankstown Campus] 
http://www.uws.edu.au/campuses_structure/cas/campuses/bankstown

ABSTRACT: The Freudian unconscious has been a topic of much criticism. Some 
skeptics (Adolf Grumbaum, Frederick Crews) rule out the unconscious on the 
ground that it is inevitably mysterious and in any case fails to explain 
scientifically psychological pathologies. Admittedly, Freud presents the 
unconscious in either metaphorically scientific terms (drives, forces) or 
mysterious conceptions such as hidden proto-people within us, or a storage room 
for mental states.  Some philosophers defend the unconscious by showing that 
the explanations that use it comprise an extension to common-sense psychology 
(Nagel, Hopkins, Gardner, Lear). But the literature lacks any positive account 
of what in the psychology of a person can make a mental state unconscious and 
how that process relates to the formation of symptoms. In this paper, I draw 
from the literature on self-deception and on certain Freudian insights about 
associative imagination and propose a new de-mystified but non-scientific 
account of the unconscious.

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Siobhain O'Leary
Administration Coordinator, Philosophy Research Initiative
University of Western Sydney
Bankstown Campus Building 5
Locked Bag 1797
Penrith NSW 2751
+61 2 9772 6190

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