Matthew Soteriou

This chapter introduces some of the main issues and themes addressed by the contributors to this book. It provides an overview of debates concerning the scope of our mental agency — i.e. which aspects of our mental lives should be regarded as mental actions. There is a discussion of some of the different structures mental agency may take, and whether any such structures are distinctive of mental, as opposed to bodily, action. The chapter also highlights some of the connections that have been forged between accounts of mental agency and debates about self-knowledge, and the ontology and phenomenology of mind.

In what respects is episodic recollection active, and subject to the will, like perceptual imagination, and in what respects is it passive, like perception, and how do these matters relate to its epistemological role? I present an account of the ontology of episodic recollection that provides answers to these questions. According the account I recommend, an act of episodic recollection is not subject to epistemic evaluation—it is neither justified nor unjustified—but it can provide one with a distinctive source of warrant for judgements about the past when it is accompanied by knowledge that one is recollecting, as well as knowledge of what one is recollecting. While the account concedes that when one recollects one's attitude to what is recollected cannot be one of observation, it nevertheless accommodates the notion that episodic recollection involves a form of mental time-travel—a case of re-visiting, or re-acquaintance with, some past episode.