Self-knowledge and communication

Philosophical Explorations 18 (2):153-168 (2015)
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Abstract

First-person present-tense self-ascriptions of belief are often used to tell others what one believes. But they are also naturally taken to express the belief they ostensibly report. I argue that this second aspect of self-ascriptions of belief holds the key to making the speaker's knowledge of her belief, and so the authority of her act of telling, intelligible. For a basic way to know one's beliefs is to be aware of what one is doing in expressing them. This account suggests that we need to reconsider the terms of the standard alternative between “epistemic” and “non-epistemic” explanations of first-person authority. In particular, the natural view that the authority we accord to self-ascriptions reflects a distinctive way we have of knowing our own beliefs should not be conflated with the traditional epistemological thesis that such knowledge reflects a private “mode of access”

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Johannes Roessler
University of Warwick

Citations of this work

Thinking, Inner Speech, and Self-Awareness.Johannes Roessler - 2015 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (3):541-557.
Self‐Knowledge: Expression without Expressivism.Lucy Campbell - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (1):186-208.
Self‐Knowledge: Expression without Expressivism.Lucy Campbell - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (1):186-208.
The Value of Transparent Self-Knowledge.Fleur Jongepier - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1):65-86.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Intention.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1957 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.

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