Occurrent States

In The Mind’s Construction, Matthew Soteriou argues that some mental states must be occurrent in their nature, owing to the role they play in the general structure of experience. This chapter argues that Soteriou underestimates the difficulties inherent in making it plain how something occurrent could be a state, at any rate on the most natural understanding of what it is for something to be ‘occurrent’. The chapter suggests that Soteriou is mistaken to believe that experientiality cannot be accounted for without invoking the new category. Soteriou’s argument invokes the premise that states must be ‘homogeneous down to instants’. In this chapter distinctions are made between different things which might be meant by the claim that a state is ‘homogeneous’ or ‘homogeneous down to instants’ and it is argued that disambiguation amongst these different meanings reveals that certain stative states are well able to play the role that Soteriou believes we need occurrent states to perform.