Self-Knowledge: Entitlement, Privilege, and Authority

FAIN: FB-51967-05

Cynthia MacDonald
University of Canterbury (Christchurch 8020 New Zealand)

This monograph develops and defends a distinctive account of authoritative self-knowledge based on the key idea of direct epistemic access. It makes use of an observational analogy in order to defend a position on authoritative self-knowledge, but not by appealing to something like an inner sense. Rather, it appeals to more abstract and general features of observation of external things, specifically, features of observable properties, which help to explain our direct and immediate access to them. It is developed for a particular class of intentional states, the current, conscious thinkings, but is applicable to the sensations and to other cases of self-knowledge (say, of beliefs), where there isn’t a presumption of authority.

Associated Products

Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge (Article)
Title: Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge
Author: Cynthia Macdonald
Abstract: In this paper I outline and defend an introspectionist account of authoritative self-knowledge for a certain class of cases, ones in which a subject is both thinking and thinking about a current, conscious thought. My account is distinctive in a number of ways, one of which is that it is compatible with the truth of externalism—the view that the contents of subjects’ intentional states are individuation- dependent on factors external to their minds. It is thus decidedly anti- Cartesian, despite being introspectionist. My argument proceeds in three stages. A virtue of the position I develop is that the epistemic features on which it is based also apply to sensations and to non-episodic intentional states, to the extent that one has authoritative knowledge of them. However, despite the appeal to analogies with observable properties of objects of perception, the account is not a ‘perceptual’ model of such knowledge in the sense that those such as Shoemaker, Burge and others have in mind. Because the features on which the analogy is based are abstract and general, they are not tied to cases of observation alone. Those who appeal to such phenomena as ‘intellectual experience’ (Burge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 96, 91–116, 1996) or ‘intellectual intuition’ (Bealer, Philosophical perspectives, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 29–55, 1999) in their accounts of authoritative self-knowledge may well appeal to such features. This, amongst other factors, distinguishes the position from other introspectionist ones in a way that makes it immune to standard objections to perceptual models of self-knowledge.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27667918
Primary URL Description: JSTOR
Access Model: Susbsciption only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Erkenntnis Vol 67 no.2
Publisher: Springer

Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Authoritative Self-Knowledge (Article)
Title: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Authoritative Self-Knowledge
Author: Cynthia Macdonald
Abstract: Many recent discussions of self-consciousness and self-knowledge assume that there are only two kinds of accounts available to be taken on the relation between the so-called first-order (conscious) states and subjects’ awareness or knowledge of them: a same-order, or reflexive view, on the one hand, or a higher-order one, on the other. I maintain that there is a third kind of view that is distinctively different from these two options. The view is important because it can accommodate and make intelligible certain cases of authoritative self-knowledge that cannot easily be made intelligible, if at all, by these other two types of accounts. My aim in this paper is to defend this view against those who maintain that a same-order view is sufficient to account for authoritative self-knowledge.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pash.2008.108.issue-1pt3/issuetoc
Primary URL Description: Wiley Online
Access Model: Susbsciption only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Publisher: Wiley

Introspection (Book Section)
Title: Introspection
Author: Cynthia Macdonald
Editor: Ansgar Beckermann, Brian P. McLaughlin, and Sven Walter
Abstract: ‘Introspection’ is a term used by philosophers to refer to a special method or means by which one comes to know certain of one's own mental states; specifically, one's current conscious states. It derives from the Latin ‘spicere’, meaning ‘look’, and ‘intra’, meaning ‘within’; introspection is a process of looking inward. Introspectionist accounts of self-knowledge fall within the broader domain of theories of self-knowledge, understood as views about the nature of and basis for one's knowledge of one's own mental states, including one's beliefs, desires, conscious thinkings, and sensations. Theories of self-knowledge are motivated by the apparent need to account for a number of striking features of at least some such knowledge, which ordinary empirical knowledge, including knowledge of the mental states of others, is typically thought to lack.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199262618.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199262618
Primary URL Description: Oxford University Press online
Access Model: Subscription only
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind
ISBN: 97801992

‘In My ‘Mind's Eye’: Introspectionism, Detectivism, and the Basis of Authoritative Self-Knowledge’ (Article)
Title: ‘In My ‘Mind's Eye’: Introspectionism, Detectivism, and the Basis of Authoritative Self-Knowledge’
Author: Cynthia Macdonald
Abstract: It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, ‘constitutivist’, one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a conceptual matter. I argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative selfknowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-014-0487-1
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Synthese
Publisher: Springer

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