An account of the source of first-person knowledge is essential not just for phenomenology, but for anyone who takes seriously the apparent evidence that we each have a distinctive access to knowing what we experience. One standard way to account for the source of first-person knowledge is by appeal to a kind of inner observation of the passing contents of one’s own mind, and phenomenology is often thought to rely on introspection. I argue, however, (...) that Husserl’s method of phenomenological reduction was designed precisely to find a route to knowledge of the structures of consciousness that was independent of any appeal to observation of one’s own mental states. The goals of this essay are to explicate Husserl’s method of phenomenological reduction in contemporary terms that (1) show its distance from all inner-observation accounts, (2) exhibit its kinship to and historical influence on outer-observation accounts of selfknowledge popularized by Sellars, and (3) demonstrate that a contemporary ‘cognitive transformation’ view based on Husserl’s method may provide a viable contribution to contemporary debates about the source of self-knowledge. (shrink)

Levine suggests the following criticisms of my book. First, the absence of a positive account of first-person knowledge in it makes it vulnerable to eliminativist refutation. Second, it is a relative strength of the higher order representation accounts of consciousness I reject that they offer explanations of the subjectivity of conscious states and their special availability to first-person knowledge. Further, the close connection I draw between the phenomenal character of experience and intentionality is (...) unwarranted in the case of both color perception and conceptual thought. In response to Levine's critique, I argue that the eliminativist can be rebutted and higher-order representation theories found wanting, even without offering a positive account of first-person knowledge. Also, I note that I actually have begun to offer an account of this based on my conception of phenomenal consciousness. Finally, it will be seen that Levine's concerns do not undermine my views on color experience, conscious thought, and intentionality, once their justification and character are made clear. (shrink)

Let us call a thought or belief whose content would be expressed by a sentence of subject-predicate form (by the thinker or someone attributing the thought to the thinker) an ‘ascription’. Thus, the thought that Madonna is middle-aged is an ascription of the property of being middle-aged to Madonna. To call a thought of this form an ascription is to emphasize the predicate in the sentence that gives its content. Let us call an ‘x-ascription’ an ascription whose subject is x, (...) that is, an ascription such that the subject of the sentence which would express its content is x. Let us call a ‘self-ascription’ an ascription whose subject is identical with the ascriber. Let us call a ‘reflexive ascription’ a selfascription such that either (i) in the sentence the ascriber would use to attribute correctly the ascription to himself he would use the first person pronoun to refer to himself both as the ascriber and as the subject of the ascription, as in a sentence of the form, I believe that I ö. (shrink)

The recent publication of The New Wittgenstein signals the arrival of a distinctive "therapeutic" reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein"s philosophical enterprise. As announced in its Preface, this collection presents the "nonsense" of philosophy as the subject of Wittgenstein"s therapeutic work. The simple, plain nonsense of many philosophical remarks is revealed under the scrutiny of Wittgenstein"s investigations, according to this interpretation, leading us to see that such remarks "fail to make any claim at all" (Crary 6). This view of Wittgenstein"s use of (...) "nonsense" as a term of criticism begins with the work of Stanley Cavell, on this account, and has extended more recently to work on a wide area of Wittgenstein"s concerns, elevating "nonsense" to a central position in his philosophy. This paper argues that, in at least one case of Wittgenstein"s talk of nonsense, this "therapeutic reading" (Crary 7) oversimplifies the subtlety of Wittgenstein"s writing. Indeed, one of the most prominent cases of "nonsense" in the later Wittgenstein concerns the remark "I know I am in pain". Though Wittgenstein repeatedly treats this remark as nonsense, this treatment is not final in his philosophy of psychology. Rather, though his rich discussion in the later manuscripts of the indeterminacy of psychological judgments, the relation of these judgments to knowledge, and the role of first-person psychological descriptions, Wittgenstein is able to find what sense a remark such as "I know I am in pain" might perhaps have. "I know I am in pain" may be called nonsense, but this is not the last word on the matter in Wittgenstein"s text: as Cavell says, ""it makes no sense to say these things" (in the way we think it does)" (Cavell 70). Wittgenstein is able to find what sense our remarks of first person psychological knowledge might have, contrary to what the therapeutic reading in The New Wittgenstein would have us suppose. Therefore, at least in one case, the therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein goes wrong. (shrink)

It is encouraging that, in their commentaries, Sarah Carr and Timothy Kelly do not bring the discussion back to the conventional treatment of personal narratives in psychiatry and mental health, but rather take the ideas presented in my paper forward. We seem to agree about the need to disrupt the ultimate interpretative authority of the researcher. This is the point from which both commentaries depart, taking off in their own directions through the thorny questions of how—and indeed whether—any of this (...) can be achieved. This sense that we share at least a point of departure complicates the task of writing a reply, because I would much prefer to engage in a conversation about some of the key issues... (shrink)

This paper argues that, given the representational theory of mind, one cannot know a priori that one knows that p as opposed to being incapable of having any knowledge states; but one can know a priori that one knows that p as opposed to some other proposition q.

SummaryThe apparent conflict between first person authority and externalism arises only from needlessly thinking of first person authority in terms of “knowing what.”.

Abstract: There is much that I admire in Richard Moran's account of how first-person authority may be consistent with self-knowledge as an achievement. In this paper, I examine his attempt to characterize the goal of psychoanalytic treatment, which is surely that the patient should go beyond the mere theoretical acceptance of the analyst's interpretation, and requires instead a more intimate, first-personal, awareness by the patient of their psychological condition.I object, however, that the way in which Moran (...) distinguishes between the deliberative and the theoretical attitudes is ultimately inconsistent with a satisfactory account of psychoanalytic practice; mainly because, despite Moran's claims to the contrary, such a distinction is still inspired by a Cartesian picture of the self. I argue that, in the light of his distinction, Moran may emphasize that an agent's psychological dispositions should be permeable to her decisions and projects, but is forced to reject the idea that permeability could go the other way too. I explore Bernard Williams' notion of acknowledgment and Simone Weil's distinction between two notions of necessity, in order to articulate a notion of receptive passivity which may help us to characterize this second direction of permeability. I finally outline why receptive passivity (and, thereby, the double direction of permeability) is crucial in order to identify the goal of psychoanalytic treatment and, derivatively, to understand how a certain kind of awareness may have a significant therapeutic effect. (shrink)

What is the relation between first person authority and knowledge of one’s own actions? On one view, it is because we know the reasons for which we act that we know what we do and, analogously, it is because we know the reasons for which we avow a belief that we know what we believe. Carlos Moya (2006) attributes some such theory to Richard Moran (2001) and criticises it on the grounds of circularity. In this paper, I (...) examine the view attributed to Moran. I rebut the charge of circularity, but also reject the theory as an adequate interpretation of Moran. (shrink)

There is much that I admire in Richard Moran's account of how first‐person authority may be consistent with self‐knowledge as an achievement. In this paper, I examine his attempt to characterize the goal of psychoanalytic treatment, which is surely that the patient should go beyond the mere theoretical acceptance of the analyst's interpretation, and requires instead a more intimate, first‐personal, awareness by the patient of their psychological condition.I object, however, that the way in which Moran distinguishes (...) between the deliberative and the theoretical attitudes is ultimately inconsistent with a satisfactory account of psychoanalytic practice; mainly because, despite Moran's claims to the contrary, such a distinction is still inspired by a Cartesian picture of the self. I argue that, in the light of his distinction, Moran may emphasize that an agent's psychological dispositions should be permeable to her decisions and projects, but is forced to reject the idea that permeability could go the other way too. I explore Bernard Williams' notion of acknowledgment and Simone Weil's distinction between two notions of necessity, in order to articulate a notion of receptive passivity which may help us to characterize this second direction of permeability. I finally outline why receptive passivity (and, thereby, the double direction of permeability) is crucial in order to identify the goal of psychoanalytic treatment and, derivatively, to understand how a certain kind of awareness may have a significant therapeutic effect. (shrink)

Donald Davidson famously offered an explanation of “first-person authority”. However, he described first-person authority differently across different works—sometimes referring to the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions of their current mental states, and sometimes referring to the direct self-knowledge that agents often have of said states. First, I show that a standard Davidsonian explanation of first-person authority can at best, and with some modification, explain the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions. I then develop (...) two Davidsonian accounts of direct self-knowledge—one accounting for its function and another accounting for its source—pushing back in the process against deflationary and quietist rejoinders to these projects. Finally, I relate my Davidsonian accounts of direct self-knowledge back to the modified Davidsonian account of the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions. (shrink)

¿Qué relación existe entre la autoridad de la primera persona y el conocimiento de las propias acciones? Una posibilidad es que gracias al conocimiento de las razones que tenemos para actuar sabemos qué es lo que hacemos y, análogamente, gracias al conocimiento de las razones que tenemos para admitir [avow] una creencia sabemos qué es lo que creemos. Carlos Moya atribuye una teoría de este tipo a Richard Moran y la critica por ser circular. En este trabajo examino la teoría (...) atribuida a Moran, refuto la idea de circularidad, pero también rechazo la teoría como una interpretación adecuada de Moran. (shrink)

As I see it, the science of consciousness is all about relating _third-person data_ - about brain processes, behavior, environmental interaction, and the like - to _first-person data_ about conscious experience. I take it for granted that there are first-person data. It's a manifest fact about our minds that there is something it is like to be us - that we have subjective experiences - and that these subjective experiences are quite different at different times. Our (...) direct knowledge of subjective experiences stems from our first-person access to them. And subjective experiences are arguably the central data that we want a science of consciousness to explain. (shrink)

Davidson and Burge have claimed that the conditions under which self-knowledge is possessed are such that externalism poses no obstacle to their being met by ordinary speakers and thinkers. On their accounts. no such person could fail to possess self-knowledge. But we do from time to time attribute to each other such failures; so we should prefer to their accounts an account that preserves first person authority while allowing us to make sense of what appear (...) to be true attributions of such failures.While the core idea behind Davidson’s and Burge’s accounts appears inadequate to this task, I argue that it can be deployed in such a way as to deliver the desired result. What makes this possible is that two attitude-types can differ as follows: the self-knowledge required for an utterance to be a Φing that p is different from the self-knowledge required for it to be a Ψing that p. (shrink)

Donald Davidson offers an explanation of first‐person authority that “traces the source of the authority to a necessary feature of the interpretation of speech.” His account is explained, and an interpretation is offered of its two key ingredients: the idea that by using the device of disquotation, a speaker can state the meanings of her words in a specially error‐free way, and the idea that a speaker cannot generally misuse her own words, because it is that use that (...) gives her words their meaning. The account is defended against misinterpretations and criticisms. But it is argued that Davidson does not explain what is most puzzling about our knowledge of the meanings of our words, or about the asymmetry between our knowledge of our own minds and our knowledge of others' minds. Finally, Davidson's argument for the compatibility of first person authority and semantic externalism is explained and defended. (shrink)

Davidson and Burge have claimed that the conditions under which self‐knowledge is possessed are such that externalism poses no obstacle to their being met by ordinary speakers and thinkers. On their accounts, no such person could fail to possess self‐knowledge. But we do from time to time attribute to each other such failures; so we should prefer to their accounts an account that preserves first person authority while allowing us to make sense of what appear (...) to be true attributions of such failures.While the core idea behind Davidson's and Burge's accounts appears ioadequate to this task, I argue that it can be deployed in such a way as to deliver the desired result. What makes this possible is that two attitude‐types can differ as follows: the self‐knowledge required for an utterance to be a Oing that p is different from the self‐knowledge required for it to be a Ψfing that p. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker is one of the most influential philosophers currently writing on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds, and with the nature of those mental states of which we have our most direct conscious awareness. Professor Shoemaker opposes the 'inner sense' conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have non-representational features - 'qualia' - that determine what it is (...) like to have them. Amongst the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the 'first-person perspective' gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind. This major collection is sure to prove invaluable to all advanced students of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article tries to show that focusing on why and how subject and object are distinct is of key importance for understanding the nature of knowledge itself. It argues that: 1) cognition starts with an aliud which is present to a felt self in a way fundamentally different from one’s own modes of being; 2) individual human knowledge in its paradigmatic form is essentially first-personal, that is, its object-directedness requires a built-in, implicit awareness of a ‘self’ that (...) provides the unifying perspective from which the aliud is apprehended; 3) this is a first-order awareness which is crucially distinct from the second-order awareness which requires a reflexive cognitive act – a distinction which the author proposes to cash out in terms of ‘first-person knowledge’ versus ‘self-knowledge. (shrink)

The first-person perspective is a challenge to naturalism. Naturalistic theories are relentlessly third-personal. The first-person perspective is, well, first-personal; it is the perspective from which one thinks of oneself as oneself* without the aid of any third-person name, description, demonstrative or other referential device. The exercise of the capacity to think of oneself in this first-personal way is the necessary condition of all our self-knowledge, indeed of all our self-consciousness. As important as (...) the first-person perspective is, many philosophers have not appreciated the force of the data from the first-person perspective, and suppose that the first-person perspective presents no particular problems for the naturalizing philosopher. For example, Ned Block commented, “It is of course [phenomenal] consciousness rather than...self-consciousness that has seemed such a scientific mystery.” And David Chalmers says that self-consciousness is one of those psychological states that “pose no deep metaphysical enigmas.”. (shrink)

Ever since the 1970’s, philosophers of mind have engaged in a lively discussion of Externalism. Externalism is the metaphysical thesis that the contents of one’s thoughts are determined partly by empirical features of one’s environment. Externalism appears to clash with another plausible thesis—the epistemological thesis that one can have knowledge of one’s own thoughts, without evidence or empirical investigation. Many have argued that the conjunction of these theses is incompatible. I have argued elsewhere for their compatibility.1 Here I’ll just (...) assume that they are compatible and explore some consequences of conjoining a particular externalist thesis about the contents of thoughts (Social Externalism) with a particular thesis about self-knowledge (First-Person Authority). (shrink)

What I call “Rorty’s Dilemma” has us caught between the Scylla of Cartesian Dualism and the Charybdis of eliminativism about the mental. Proper recognition of what is distinctively mental requires accommodating incorrigibility about our mental states, something Rorty thinks materialists cannot do. So we must either countenance mental states over and above physical states in our ontology, or else give up altogether on the mental as a distinct category. In section 2, “Materialist Introspectionism—Independence and Epistemic Authority”, I review reasons for (...) being dissatisfied with materialist introspectionism as a way out of the dilemma. In section 3, “Constitutivism”, I outline two constitutivist alternatives to materialist introspectionism. In section 4, “A Neo-Expressivist View”, I offer my neo-expressivist view (defended in Bar-On, Speaking my mind: Expression and self-knowledge. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004 ), according to which the distinctive status of mental self-ascriptions is to be explained by appeal to the expressive character of acts of issuing them (in speech or in thought). This view, I argue, allows us to stay clear of eliminativism without committing to Cartesian substance dualism, thereby offering a viable way of slipping between the horns of Rorty’s dilemma. (shrink)

Richard Moran's Authority and Estrangement offers a subtle and innovative account of self-knowledge that lifts the problem out of the narrow confines of epistemology and into the broader context of practical reasoning and moral psychology. Moran argues convincingly that fundamental self/other asymmetries are essential to our concept of persons. Moreover, the first- and the third-person points of view are systematically interconnected, so that the expression or avowal of one's attitudes constitutes a substantive form of self-knowledge. But (...) while Moran's argument is wide-ranging and compelling, he relies throughout on an overly intellectualized conception of first-person attitudes as attitudes of reflection or deliberation. That conception is at once implausible and unnecessary to the main current of his argument, whose goal is to demonstrate that our self-conception as persons depends on both the distinctness and the interconnectedness of our first- and third-person perspectives on ourselves. (shrink)

Ordinarily when someone tells us something about her beliefs, desires or intentions, we presume she is right. According to standard views, this deferential trust is justified on the basis of certain epistemic properties of her assertion. In this paper, I offer a non-epistemic account of deference. I first motivate the account by noting two asymmetries between the kind of deference we show psychological self-ascriptions and the kind we grant to epistemic experts more generally. I then propose a novel agency-based (...) account of deference. Drawing on recent work on self-knowledge, I argue that a person normally has a distinctive type of cognitive agency; specifically she is able to constitute her psychological attitudes by making judgments about what they ought to be. I then argue that a speaker expresses this agentive authority when she self-ascribes a psychological attitude and this is what justifies deferentially trusting what she says. Because the notion of expression plays a central role in this account, I contrast it with recent neo-expressivist theories. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the self-knowledge of emotions. I first argue that several of the leading theories of self-knowledge, including thetransparency method(see, e.g., Byrne 2018) andneo-expressivism(see, e.g., Bar-On 2004), have difficulties explaining how we authoritatively know our own emotions (even though they may plausibly account for sensation, belief, intention, and desire). I next consider Barrett’s (2017a) empirically informedtheory of constructed emotion. While I agree with her that we ‘give meaning to [our] present sensations’ (2017a, p.26), I disagree (...) with her that we construct our emotions, as this has some unwelcome implications. I then draw upon recent data from the science of emotions literature to advance a view I call partial first-person authority. According to this view, first-person authority with respect to our emotions is only partial: we can introspect and authoritatively know our own sensations, and beliefs, in ways others cannot; but we still need to interpret those sensations and beliefs, to know our emotions. Finally, I consider self-interpretational accounts of self-knowledge by Carruthers (2011) and Cassam (2014). I argue that while these accounts are implausible when applied to beliefs, desires, and intentions, they are more plausible when applied to our emotions. (shrink)

I propose the hypothesis that our knowledge of our own mental states derives from our knowledge of our intentions, and that our knowledge of our intentions is part of having those intentions. I enumerate various aspects of the question to be answered and various aspects of my answer. The hypothesis begins to explain various aspects of self-knowledge, such as its fallibility and its variability from one kind of mental state to another. Self-knowledge is also grounded (...) in our common antecedent knowledge of the functionalist nature of mental states and the integrity of our mental life and above all mind’s link with action in the world. The hypothesis helps pluck philosophy from the fairy-land of Lockean and Kantian inner sense. (shrink)

Several authors have discussed and defended what is sometimes called the Asymmetry Thesis in social epistemology: that while reliance on testimony is essentially incontrovertible in epistemology, it is uniquely problematic for moral knowledge. This conclusion results, I argue, from considering the wrong sort of moral testimony: namely, ‘third-personal’ rather than ‘first-personal’ testimony. First-personal moral testimony is an inescapable part of the constitution of legitimate moral norms, and its role cannot be deflated as a form of mere information (...) to be taken up in private deliberation. The consequences of this argument for forms of hypothetical contractualism, in particular, are profound. (shrink)

It is a familiar view in the philosophy of mind and action is that for a thought or attitude to constitute a reason for an action is for it to render intelligible, in the light of norms of rationality or reason, that action. However, I can make sense of your actions in this way by crediting you with attitudes that I myself do not hold. Equally, you can do this for my actions. So not all reasons for one’s actions are (...) one’s own reasons. What more is involved in a reason’s being one’s own reason for acting? (shrink)

It is a familiar view in the philosophy of mind and action is that for a thought or attitude to constitute a reason for an action is for it to render intelligible, in the light of norms of rationality or reason, that action. However, I can make sense of your actions in this way by crediting you with attitudes that I myself do not hold. Equally, you can do this for my actions. So not all reasons for one’s actions are (...) one’s own reasons. What more is involved in a reason’s being one’s own reason for acting? (shrink)

In the debates on phenomenal consciousness that occurred over the last 20 years, Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective consciousness has often been quoted in defence of a distinction between first- and third-personal modes of givenness that naturalists reject. This distinction aims both at determining the specificity of the access one has to their own thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or desires, and at justifying the particular privilege that one enjoys while making epistemic claims about their own mental states. This chapter defends an (...) interpretation of Sartre’s theory of pre-reflective consciousness that does not put him completely at odds with the naturalist critique and stresses that one’s pre-reflective experience should not be understood in terms of first-/third-person differentiation. This pre-reflective dimension of experience nevertheless allows a peculiar access to oneself, which grants no infallible epistemic privilege to the first-person, but lays the ground for a transformative process that makes self-knowledge possible. (shrink)

The first part of the paper focuses on the role played in thought and action by possession of the first‐person concept. It is argued that only one who possesses the I concept is in a position to fully articulate certain fundamental, a priori aspects of the concept of reason. A full understanding of the concept of reason requires being inclined to be affected or immediately motivated by reasons—to form, change or confirm beliefs or other attitudes in accordance (...) with them—when those reasons apply to one's own attitudes. The cases where rational evaluations of acts and attitudes rationally motivate immediate implementation of the evaluations to shape the acts and attitudes are distinguished from cases where they do not, by the use of the first‐person concept to mark those acts and attitudes as one's own. The second part of the paper examines asymmetries between self‐knowledge and knowledge of other minds. The usual view that self‐knowledge has an immediate and a priori warrant, whereas knowledge of others’ minds rests on observation and inference is disputed. A sketch is given of knowledge of other minds that can be non‐inferential and can rest on an intellectual, non‐perceptual entitlement. When one seemingly understands an utterance in interlocution, one is a priori prima facie entitled to suppose that it comes from a rational source, and because knowledge of other minds can be immediate and epistemically grounded in intellectual, non‐empirical entitlements, it is distinguished from self‐knowledge not by being necessarily inferential or by being necessarily grounded in perception, but by being in some known contrast with thought known as one's own. (shrink)

When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first-person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I’m thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio-linguistic convention governing (...) avowals. We reject both approaches. On our proposed account, a full explanation of the privilege must recognize avowals as expressive performances, which can be taken to reveal directly the subject’s present mental condition. We are able to improve on special access accounts and deflationary accounts, as well as familiar expressive accounts, by explaining both the asymmetries and the continuities between avowals and other pronouncements, and by locating a genuine though non-epistemic source for first-person privilege. (shrink)

When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first‐person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I'm thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio‐linguistic convention governing (...) avowals. We reject both approaches. On our proposed account, a full explanation of the privilege must recognize avowals as expressive performances, which can be taken to reveal directly the subject's present mental condition. We are able to improve on special access accounts and deflationary accounts, as well as familiar expressive accounts, by explaining both the asymmetries and the continuities between avowals and other pronouncements, and by locating a genuine though non‐epistemic source for first‐person privilege. (shrink)

What determines the reference of first-person thoughts—thoughts that one would express using the first-person pronoun? I defend a model on which our ways of gaining knowledge of ourselves do, in much the way that our ways of gaining knowledge of objects in the world determine the reference of perceptual demonstrative thoughts. This model—the Demonstrative Model of First-Person Thought—can be motivated by reference to independently plausible general principles about how reference is determined. But (...) it faces a serious objection. There seems to be an explanatory rival to it with a great deal of plausiblility. The rival is The Simple Rule Model, which says that first-person thoughts are governed by the simple rule that any token of one will be about the person whose token it is. I pinpoint a crucial unclarity in The Simple Rule Model, hinging on how we understand the notion of a rule, and argue that no version of the Simple Rule Model is both plausible and a genuine explanatory rival to the Demonstrative Model. I also provide an argument that the Demonstrative Model is extensionally adequate. (shrink)

In recent work on context­dependency, it has been argued that certain types of sentences give rise to a notion of relative truth. In particular, sentences containing predicates of personal taste and moral or aesthetic evaluation as well as epistemic modals are held to express a proposition (relative to a context of use) which is true or false not only relative to a world of evaluation, but other parameters as well, such as standards of taste or knowledge or an agent. (...) Thus, a sentence like chocolate tastes good would express a proposition p that is true or false not only at a world of evaluation, but relative to the additional parameter as well, such as a parameter of taste or an agent. I will argue that the sentences that apparently give rise to relative truth should be understood by relating them in a certain way to the first person. More precisely, such sentences express what I will call first­person­based genericity, a form of generalization that is based on or directed toward an essential first­person application of the predicate. The account differs from standard relative truth account in crucial respects: it is not the truth of the proposition expressed that is relative to the first person; the proposition expressed by a sentence with a predicate of taste rather has absolute truth conditions. Instead it is the propositional content itself that requires a first­personal cognitive access whenever it is entertained. This account, I will argue, avoids a range of problems that standard relative truth theories of the sentences in question face and explains a number of further peculiarities that such sentences display. (shrink)

Science aims to transform the subjectivity of individual observations and ideas into more objective and universal knowledge. Yet if there is any area in which first-person experience holds a particularly special and delicate role, it is the sciences of the mind. According to a widespread view, first-person methods were largely discarded from psychology after the fall of introspectionism a century ago and replaced by more objective behavioral measures, a step that some authors have begun to (...) criticize. To examine whether these views are sufficiently informed by actual scientific practice, we conducted a review of methodological approaches in the cognitive science literature. We found that reports of subjective experience are in fact still widely used in a broad variety of different experimental paradigms, both in studies that focus on subjective experience, and in those that make no explicit reference to it. Across these studies, we documented a diverse collection of approaches that leveraged first-person reports, ranging from button presses to unstructured interviews, while continuing to maximise experimental reproducibility. Common to these studies were subjects acting as sensors, intentionally communicating their experience to the experimenter, which we termed “second-person” methods. We conclude that, despite views to the contrary, first-person experience has always been and is still central to investigations of the mind even if it is not recognized as such. We suggest that the conversation ought to be reframed: instead of debating whether to accept subjects’ first-person knowledge we should discuss how best to do so. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have put forth views in the epistemology of disagreement that emphasize the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective in disa- greement. In the first part of the paper, I attempt a rational reconstruction of these views. I construe these views as invoking the first-person perspective to explain why it is rational for parties to a disagreement to privilege their own opinions in the absence of independent explanations for doing so—to privilege without independent explanations. (...) I reconstruct three ways privilege might be thought to arise: by demotion, through self-trust, and through the epistemic immediacy in the first-person perspective. I argue that none of these ways, and none of the views that make use of them, clarify a compelling account of the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective. In the second part of the paper, I try to discern some lessons and outline an alternative approach. According to this approach, the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective is not to explain privilege without independent explanations but to explain the epistemic limits of intersubjective understanding. These limits are manifest in reflective disagreement and explain how other minds matter for one’s own mind in the pursuit of knowledge. The resulting view about the epistemology of disagreement is neither skeptical nor dogmatic, but dialectical, involving an active mental state that conceptualizes not only the subject matter but also one’s own and others’ minds in thinking and rational interaction at the epistemic limits of intersubjective understanding. (shrink)

In the debates on phenomenal consciousness that occurred over the last 20 years, Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective consciousness has often been quoted in defence of a distinction between first- and third-personal modes of givenness that naturalists reject. This distinction aims both at determining the specificity of the access one has to their own thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or desires, and at justifying the particular privilege that one enjoys while making epistemic claims about their own mental states. This chapter defends an (...) interpretation of Sartre’s theory of pre-reflective consciousness that does not put him completely at odds with the naturalist critique and stresses that one’s pre-reflective experience should not be understood in terms of first-/third-person differentiation. This pre-reflective dimension of experience nevertheless allows a peculiar access to oneself, which grants no infallible epistemic privilege to the first-person, but lays the ground for a transformative process that makes self-knowledge possible. (shrink)

I argue that the distinction between first-person present and other-directed contexts of justification throws new light on epistemology. In particular, it has implications for the relations between justification, knowledge and truth, the debate between externalism and internalism, and the prospects for reflective equilibrium. I suggest that to focus on the third-person questions about knowledge or justification is to risk missing the main point of epistemology, namely to help us make reflective judgments about what to believe.

The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept (...) of the self in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we think and talk about ourselves in a wide range of circumstances. The topic has been discussed in numerous articles during the last decades, but rarely in the form of a monograph. I felt the need for a book of this kind while working on my dissertation. The manuscript is the result of many years of reflection on the self and indexicals. Some of the theories that I advance have developed as a result of my teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of language the last couple of years. (shrink)

The central claim of this book is that I is a deictic term, like the other singular personal pronouns You and He/She. This is true of the logical character, inferential role, referential function, expressive use, and communicative role of all and only expressions used to formulate first-personal reference in any language. The first part of the book shows why the standard account of I as a ‘pure indexical’ (‘purism’) should be rejected. Purism requires three mutually supportive doctrines which (...) turn out to be myths: a) that a simple rule is sufficient to give the meaning of I (‘rule theory’); b) that one can use I to express thoughts without having to identify what is being referred to (‘independence’); and c) that as a matter of the meaning of I, any use of the term is logically guaranteed against failure to refer (‘the guarantee’). The second part of the book shows why the radically new account of I should be endorsed as a deictic term. Substitution instances and the behaviour of I in inference reveal that it has an obligatorily deictic logical character and inferential role. I fulfils its referential function in the deictic way, providing determinacy of reference by making an individual referentially salient in the extra-sentential context. The discriminability of the referent of an I-use depends on recognizing the referentially salient individual. This is true of its discriminability both to the reference-maker and to the audience. So I has the expressive use and communicative role of a deictic term. The conclusion of the book directs research towards the next step, showing how the meaning of I may be used to elucidate the thoughts expressed by the term, and from there questions relating to self-knowledge, practical reasoning, belief-acquisition, and belief-ascription. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective’ evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of (...) some perspectival thought and talk is relative to the perspective of an evaluating subject or group. In Part I, I argue that the realm of ‘subjective’ evaluative thought and talk whose truth is perspective-relative includes attributions of knowledge of the form ’S knows that p.’ Following a brief introduction, chapter 2 presents a new, error-theoretic objection against relativism about knowledge attributions. The case for relativism regarding knowledge attributions rests on the claim that relativism is the only view that explains all of the empirical data from speakers' use of the word "know" without recourse to an error theory. In chapter 2, I show that the relativist can only account for sceptical paradoxes and ordinary epistemic closure puzzles if she attributes a problematic form of semantic blindness to speakers. However, in 3 I show that all major competitor theories - forms of invariantism and contextualism - are subject to equally serious error-theoretic objections. This raises the following fundamental question for empirical theorising about the meaning of natural language expressions: If error attributions are ubiquitous, by which criteria do we evaluate and compare the force of error-theoretic objections and the plausibility of error attributions? I provide a number of criteria and argue that they give us reason to think that relativism's error attributions are more plausible than those of its competitors. In Part II, I develop a novel unified account of the content and communication of perspectival thoughts. Many relativists regarding ‘subjective’ thoughts and Lewisians about de se thoughts endorse a view of belief as self-location. In chapter 4, I argue that the self-location view of belief is in conflict with the received picture of linguistic communication, which understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. I argue that understanding mental content and speech act content in terms of sequenced worlds allows a reconciliation of these views. On the view I advocate, content is modelled as a set of sequenced worlds - possible worlds ‘centred’ on a group of individuals inhabiting the world at some time. Intuitively, a sequenced world is a way a group of people may be. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on sequenced worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. In chapter 5, I show that one of the advantages of this model is its compatibility with both nonindexical contextualism and truth relativism about taste. I argue in chapters 5 and 6 that the empirical data from eavesdropping, retraction, and disagreement cases supports a relativist completion of the model, and I show in detail how to account for these phenomena on the sequenced worlds view. (shrink)