Abstract
The paper illustrates and clarifies the distinction between first-personal and third-personal self-knowledge. It is argued that the characteristic traits of first-personal self-knowledge are groundlessness, transparency and authority. It is maintained that each of these characteristics is a necessary and a priori aspect of first-personal self-knowledge.
The thesis that there is first-personal self-knowledge is then defended from challenges coming from cognitive science, which are taken to show that we may fail to know dispositional (sometimes causal) elements of our mental states. Yet, this does not impugn the fact that, regarding the non-dispositional aspects of our mental life, we can and do have first-personal knowledge of them.
It is then argued that third-personal self-knowledge is achieved through a plurality of methods, which vary from inference to the best explanation, to induction, simulation, testimony and inferential conceptual deployment. The ensuing self-ascriptions are therefore neither groundless, nor transparent or authoritative and are the result of substantive cognitive achievements.
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- 1.
Cf. Wright (1998), p. 16.
- 2.
Similar considerations are advanced in Shoemaker (1996).
- 3.
To be rational agents does not mean acting necessarily for good reasons. It means, however, to have knowledge of the actions one is performing and of their motivations, at least for the most part, so as to be in a position to be held responsible for them.
- 4.
For instance, in the case of belief one cannot believe as a commitment that P while also knowingly and willingly assenting to its negation or remaining agnostic about P.
- 5.
Whether, in turn, they are also constitutive elements of what it means to be a self or a subject at all, insofar as they are constitutive of being critical reasoners and subjects of moral norms as Burge (2011) maintains, is a further issue, which would need a separate treatment.
- 6.
See Gertler (2011), pp. 70–86.
- 7.
Gilbert (2006).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
It depends on which theory of testimonial justification and knowledge one adopts, whether Humean in kind or Reidian.
- 11.
Cf. Wittgenstein (1953, II, xi).
- 12.
See Coliva (2012) for a discussion of seeing and seeing-as and the role of concepts in it.
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Coliva, A. (2018). Self-Knowing Interpreters. In: Pedrini, P., Kirsch, J. (eds) Third-Person Self-Knowledge, Self-Interpretation, and Narrative. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 96. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98646-3_2
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