Response to Crispin Wright

McDowell, John H.

doi:10.1093/0199241406.003.0003

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The distinction can be observed by recognizing the fact, suggested by McDowell (1998), in response to Crispin Wright, that when someone's (self-)report is psychologically non-inferential, one is usually "not open to request for reasons or corroborating evidence", whereas when a report is epistemically non-inferential or baseless, one is not open to (or cannot answer) the question "How do you know?" or "How can you tell?".…”

Section: Immediacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: self-knowledge in perspective

Jongepier

Strijbos

2015

Philosophical Explorations

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The question of asymmetryTo ask what is special about self-knowledge is to ask how self-knowledge is different from other kinds of knowledge. More specifically, it is to ask how self-knowledge differs from our knowledge of the minds of other people. This is the topic of this issue. There are at least two possible motivations for focussing on the asymmetries between these two forms of knowledge. One might, for instance, be interested in epistemology generally, and knowledge of mental states specifically, and be drawn into the debate of self-knowledge to get clearer on the different (or similar) ways in which beliefs, desires, emotions, pains and so on can be known by a subject. To take this route is to have an intrinsic interest in some of the special features of self-knowledge. Consider, for instance, Christopher Peacocke (1998), who begins an article on the topic by asking what is involved in the consciousness of an occurrent propositional attitude, and goes on to say: "I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them" (1998, 63). Alternatively, one might want to explore self-knowledge in order to get a better understanding of some of our prudential and/or moral practices and concerns. Self-knowledge, on this view, is not interesting in and of itself, but rather deserves our interest because of something else (Cassam 2014).At first blush, philosophers in the debate on self-knowledge, whatever their motivation, all seem interested in the same phenomenon, and hence appear to address the very same question, formulated in different ways. And in a sense they do, in so far as the question is a general one of what distinguishes self-knowledge from other kinds of knowledge. We might call this "the question of asymmetry".We can learn a great deal from seeing these philosophers as being in some sense engaged in the same project, but only "in some sense", for the explanandum of "asymmetry" is not unambiguous -there are, in fact, a variety of asymmetries at stake, which call out for different explanations. The literature on self-knowledge is diverse, and the current issue is no exception.We first of all need to distinguish between the claim that we are epistemically privileged with respect to our own states and the claim that we have first-person authority over them. The distinction is subtle but important. Being epistemically privileged means that our second-order beliefs about our first-order states are more likely to result in knowledge, compared, for instance, to the way in which we gain knowledge of others' mental states or the external world (sometimes also referred to as "first-person privilege" or "privileged access"

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Section: Immediacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: self-knowledge in perspective

Jongepier

Strijbos

2015

Philosophical Explorations

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“…347-350, 410-412). For other discussions of the default view, see Boghossian (1989), McDowell (1998), Fricker (1998), Bilgrami (1998), and Moran (2001). Zimmerman (2006) describes it as 'anti-realist constitutivism' and contrasts it with Shomeaker's 'realist constitutivism'.…”

Section: Constitutivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-Expressivism

Bar‐On¹

2009

Erkenn

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“…Much of the time, when they are asked what they think or believe, they either respond by (a) looking outward (literally or metaphorically) to inspect the world beyond to determine what they think or believe, (b) making up their minds by forming and endorsing a thought (perhaps as a result of (a)), at least sometimes as a consequence of a process of deliberation, or (c) 6 See, for example, Wittgenstein (1953Wittgenstein ( , 1958, Sellars (1956Sellars ( , 1962, Lyons (1986), McDowell (1986 and Wright (1998). 7 See, for example, McDowell (1986McDowell ( , 1994McDowell ( , 1998. 8 The reason is that one can know what it is that one is thinking without knowing that one is thinking it.…”

Section: Motivating the Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If it were, there would be no need for an epistemology of self-knowledge, no need for an account of the kind that is here being offered. For more on this, see Wright (1998) and McDowell (1998). 17 See Macdonald (1998a, b).…”

Section: Direct Epistemic Access and First-person Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge

Macdonald

2007

Erkenn

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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 antiCartesian, 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.

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Response to Crispin Wright

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Introduction: self-knowledge in perspective

Introduction: self-knowledge in perspective

First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-Expressivism

Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge

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