Abstract

Mental properties and so their instantiations in substances, mental events, are ones to which one substance has a privileged access; physical properties and so physical events are ones to which everyone has equal access. No mental event is identical to or supervenes on a physical event. Mental events include pure mental events (among them conscious events). Pure mental events include beliefs, thoughts, intentions, desires, and sensations. We can have well justified beliefs about the mental lives of others. The chapter ends by analysing in detail the failings of one physicalist theory, that of Papineau.