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Tristan offers a defence of a suggestion made by Gilbert Ryle about seeing and knowing in The Concept of Mind and elsewhere. Seeing and knowing are, Ryle argues, to be understood as special sorts of occurrences that Ryle calls 'achievements'. Many philosophers, most prominently Zeno Vendler, have found Ryle's claims about seeing and knowing puzzling, and it is now orthodoxy to hold that both seeing and knowing are types of state rather than occurrence, and fill time by obtaining rather than by unfolding or happening. The suggestion Tristan develops is that Ryle's critics have, by and large, not only failed to appreciate Ryle's category of achievements and the Aristotelian background to Ryle's suggestion that seeing and knowing belong in that category, but that there are significant and tangible philosophical benefits to thinking about seeing and knowing as Rylean achievements - a point Tristan draws out by looking at some remarks made by Austin about whether or not the verb 'to see' is ambiguous.

The talk will be followed by discussion and drinks at The Dirty Duck.