Adaptivity and self-knowledge

Abstract

In this paper the view is presented that self-knowledge has no special status; its varieties constitute distinctive classes, differing from one another more sharply than each does from analogous knowledge of others. Most cases of selfknowledge are best understood contextually, subsumed under such other activities as decision-making and socializing. First person, present tense ‘reports’ of sensations, intentions, and thoughts are primarily adaptively expressive, only secondarily truth-functional. The last section sketches some of the disadvantages, as well as some of the advantages, of being the sort of animal that is capable of treating itself as an object, to be known as others are known. © 1975 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.