Jessie Munton
Associate Professor in Philosophy, University of Cambridge
I'm an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. I'm also a fellow at St John's College, and Director of Studies for Philosophy there. My core areas of research are philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of psychology. I also enjoy thinking and writing about philosophy of psychiatry. I am a 2023 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. I've become increasingly interested in what I think of as negative epistemology: how do we evaluate ignorance, forgetting, or the failure to undertake inquiry or collect evidence? Some of my other research is in philosophy of perception.
EXPs by Jessie Munton
On the one hand, we have that sense of really close identification with our minds. On the other hand, we are often surprised at the ways in which they operate.
I am interested in the beliefs that we are not forming, the evidence that we are not attending to or using, the belief states that perhaps we form. What I think of as negative epistemology is the project of coming up with resources that let us say a bit more about that.
I think prejudice is best conceptualized as a phenomenon that can be supported by a whole range of mental states that will include beliefs, habits, emotions and also attentional dispositions.