Roughly, behaviorist accounts of self-knowledge hold that first persons acquire knowledge of their own minds in just the same way other persons do: by means of behavioral evidence. One obvious problem for such accounts is that the fail to explain the great asymmetry between the authority of first person as opposed to other person attributions of thoughts and other mental states and events. Another is that the means of acquisition seems so different: other persons must infer (...) my mental contents from my behavior, whereas I need not. In this paper, I articulate a specifically Sellarsian behavioristic account of our knowledge of our own and others’ minds, and defend it against these two obvious objections. I further defend it against objections from Davidson, to the effect that Sellars’ account in particular cannot properly formulate the asymmetry at issue, and that behaviorism in general cannot account for the a priori character of the asymmetry. I argue that Davidson misinterprets Sellars at key points, and also misconstrues his own explanandum: What Sellars account can explain is an asymmetry in the reliability of first and other person attributions, but this asymmetry is not a priori. What is a priori is an asymmetry in the practice of according epistemic authority to such attributions. I argue that this asymmetry is what Davidson can and does explain, by appeal to the constitutive features of radical interpretation. But accepting this explanation does not require the rejection of Sellars’ account of the way that first and other persons in fact arrive at beliefs about their mental contents. The two approaches — one descriptive and empirical, the other constitutive and ideal — are compatible. (shrink)

While first-person methods are essential for a science of consciousness, it is controversial what form these methods should take and whether any such methods are reliable. I propose that first-person experiments are a reliable method for investigating conscious experience. I outline the history of these methods and describe their characteristics. In particular, a first-person experiment is an intervention on a subject's experience in which independent variables are manipulated, extraneous variables are held fixed, and in (...) which the subject makes a phenomenal judgement about the target experience of the investigation. I examine historical and contemporary examples of first-person experiments: Mariotte’s demonstration of the visual blind spot, Kanizsa’s subjective contours, the Tse Illusion, and investigations of the non-uniform resolution of the visual field. I discuss the role that phenomenal contrast plays in these methods, and how they overcome typical introspective errors. I argue that their intersubjective repeatability is an important factor in their scientific status, however, it is not the only factor. That they control for extraneous factors and confounds is another factor which sets them apart from pseudoscience (e.g., the perception of auras), and hence another reason for classifying them as genuine experiments. Furthermore, by systematically mapping out the structure of visual experience, these methods make scientific progress. Praises of such first-person experimental approaches may not always be sung by philosophers and psychologists, but they continue to flourish as respectable scientific methods nevertheless. (shrink)

First-person data have been both condemned and hailed because of their alleged privacy. Critics argue that science must be based on public evidence: since first-person data are private, they should be banned from science. Apologists reply that first-person data are necessary for understanding the mind: since first-person data are private, scientists must be allowed to use private evidence. I argue that both views rest on a false premise. In psychology and neuroscience, the (...) subjects issuing first-person reports and other sources of first-person data play the epistemic role of a (self-) measuring instrument. Data from measuring instruments are public and can be validated by public methods. Therefore, first-person data are as public as other scientific data: their use in science is legitimate, in accordance with standard scientific methodology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a seemingly straightforward argument against physicalism which, despite being implicit in much of the philosophical debate about consciousness, has not received the attention it deserves (compared to other, better-known “epistemic”, “modal”, and “conceivability” arguments). This is the argument from the non-supervenience of the first-personal (and indexical) facts on the third-personal (and non-indexical) ones. This non-supervenience, together with the assumption that the physical facts (as conventionally understood) are third-personal, entails that some facts (...) – namely, first-personal, phenomenal ones – do not supervene on the physical facts. Unlike other arguments against physicalism, the first-personal argument, if successful, refutes not only physicalism but also other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a version of panpsychist idealism on first-person experiential grounds. As things always appear in my field of consciousness, there is prima facie empirical support for idealism. Furthermore, by assuming that all things correspond to a conscious perspective or perspectives (i.e., panpsychism), realism about the world is arguably safeguarded without the need to appeal to God (as per Berkeley’s idealism). Panpsychist idealism also has a phenomenological advantage over traditional panpsychist views as it does (...) not commit perceptual experience to massive error by denying that perceived colours are properties of things. Finally, I argue that the subject combination problem for panpsychism has been motivated by the problematic assumption that consciousness is in things. Thinking about subject combination from the first-person perspective is fruitful for reframing the subject combination problem and for seeing how subjects could potentially combine for the idealist. (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)

Context: The use of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews and their productive interaction with third-person physiological data is a challenging and pressing issue in order to offer an effective and fruitful application of Varela’s neurophenomenological hypothesis. Problem: We aim at offering a generative method of analysis of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews using third-person physiological data. Our challenge is to describe this generative first-person analysis with the third-person physiological framework rather than put Varela’s hypothesis into (...) practice in a generative way (as we did in another paper. Method: The present contribution is a first pioneering study as far as the exposition of such an interactive generative methodology is concerned. It is also a new issue insofar as it deals with a case study, surprise in depression, that has not been thoroughly dealt with so far, either in philosophy or in psychopathology. Results: We show that the analysis of first-person data is an intrinsic generative one, insofar as new refined categories and multifarious circular micro- and macro-processes were discovered in the very process of analyzing. They provide the initial structural generic third-person description of surprise inherited both from philosophical phenomenological a priori categories and from the experimental startle setting with a refined micro-segmentation of the dynamic of the experience. Implications: Our article could be of interest to neurophenomenologists looking for an effective application and to researchers in quest of a method of analysis of first-person data. The present limitations are due to the still preliminary data-results we need to complete. Constructivist content: The article is directly linked to Varela’s neurophenomenological program and aims at extending and reforming it with a cardio-phenomenological approach. Keywords: First-person micro-phenomenological interviews, surprise, generative analysis of first-person data, depression, cardio-phenomenology, generative categories. (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)

A discussion of Frege's views concerning the meaning of 'I' and his distinction between the 'I' of soliloquy and the 'I' of conversation.

How are we to explain the authority we have in pronouncing on our own thoughts? A 'constitutive' theory, on which a second-level belief may help to constitute the first-level state it is about, has considerable advantages, for example in relieving pressures towards dualism. The paper aims to exploit an analogy between authority in performative utterances and authority on the psychological to get a clearer view of how such a constitutive account might work and its metaphysical presuppositions.

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)

Intro to what "first person" and "third person" mean. (outline the probs of the first person) (convenience of third person vs absoluteness of first person) (explain terminology) Dominance of third person, reasons. (embarassment with first person) (division of reactions) (natural selection - those who can make the most noise) (analogy with behaviourism) Reductionism, hard line and soft line Appropriation of first person terms by reductionists.

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)

What is the place of coherence, or structural rationality, in good first-personal deliberation? According to Kolodny (2005), considerations of coherence are irrelevant to good first-personal deliberation. When we deliberate, we should merely care about the reasons or evidence we have for our attitudes. So, considerations of coherence should not show up in deliberation. In response to this argument, Worsnip (2021) argues that considerations of coherence matter for how we structure deliberation. For him, we should treat incoherent combinations of (...) attitudes as off-limits in deliberation. Some important questions are left unanswered by both camps. What do we mean by considerations of coherence “showing up” in first-personal deliberation? How do we interpret the divide between reasons-responsiveness and coherence? How should we interpret cases in which considerations of coherence interact with other norms or requirements? In this paper, I show how Haack’s (1993) crossword puzzle analogy sheds light on these questions. Also, the crossword puzzle analogy allows us to evaluate Kolodny’s objection and identify promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, I present one possible way of arguing for the theory of minimal self-consciousness, namely, by an argument by elimination. Central to the argument are the following two claims: a) If a theory of consciousness cannot explain first-person self-reference, then the theory is false, and b) An anonymity theory cannot explain first-person self-reference. Consequently, the anonymity theory is false.

The question asked in this paper is: How can we investigate our phenomenal experience in ways that are accurate, in principle repeatable, and produce experiences that help clarify what we understand about the processes of sensing, perceiving, moving, and being in the world? This sounds like an impossible task, given that introspection has so often in scientific circles been considered to be unreliable, and that first-person accounts are often coloured by mistaken ideas about what and how we are (...) experiencing. The first-person experiments I suggest are different from experiments done in the psychology laboratory in that there is no narrowing down of the experiments to looking at a singular aspect of a question, and that they are to be carried out in most instances in a natural or specially structured environment without strict task controls or statistical experimental design. There is no intent to replace formal second- and third-person investigation, but to use a phenomenological approach to conjoin with hard research, and to suggest ways of awareness training that can enhance the skills of researchers. I take as a model an informal phenomenological approach for experimentation. I also suggest that it is possible through directing and broadening the attention process to turn consciousness towards what is non-conscious or unattended to in order to develop an improved sensory awareness and an ability to be open to experiencing without prejudging and without expectations. The idea is to go back to experience without first creating a theoretical stance from which to interpret what happens. I conclude with some other examples of this approach. (shrink)

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That (...) is, the world that contains us persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality. (shrink)

I argue for the view that some we-thoughts are immune to error through misidentification (IEM) relative to the first-person plural pronoun. To prepare the ground for this argument I defend an account of the semantics of ‘we’ and note the variety of different uses of that term. I go on to defend the IEM of a certain range of we-thoughts against a number of objections.

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)

일인칭적 믿음에 대한 기존의 논의는 일인칭적 믿음의 특수성을 어떻게 기존의 믿음에 대한 견해에서 수용할 수 있는지에 대한 문제에 지나치게 천착하여 막상 핵심적인 물음을 등한시했던 경향이 있다. 핵심적인 물음이란 일인칭적 믿음의 특수성을 이루는 요소의 본성이 무엇인가 하는 물음이다. 본 논문은 이러한 연구 경향을 재정향 해야 할 필요가 있다는 문제의식에서 출발한다. 이를 위해 본 논문은 개릿 에반스가 일인칭적 믿음에 대한 견해를 세우면서 가정했던 관계 R₁(또는 ‘자기-동일시’)의 개념 및 이에 대한 에반스의 분석이 유용하다고 주장한다. 본 논문은 R₁을 규명하는 문제가 일인칭적 믿음의 본성을 규명하기 (...) 위해 핵심적이고 불가피할 뿐만 아니라, 다른 문제들에 비해 우선성을 가진다고 주장한다. 그리고 R₁을 분석하는 실례를 들어 이런 작업이 생산적인 연구 프로그램이 될 수 있다고 주장한다. (shrink)

Abstract: On standard accounts, actions are caused by reasons (Davidson), and reasons are taken to be neural phenomena. Since neural phenomena are wholly understandable from a third-person perspective, standard views have no room for any ineliminable first-personal elements in an account of the causation of action. This article aims to show that first-person perspectives play essential roles in both human and nonhuman agency. Nonhuman agents have rudimentary first-person perspectives, whereas human agents—at least rational agents (...) and moral agents—have robust first-person perspectives. The author concludes with a view of intentional causation, according to which reasons are constituted by (but not identical to) neural phenomena. The idea of constitution without identity allows for a causal account of action that automatically includes first-personal aspects of agency. (shrink)

There are different ways in which imaginings can involve the first-person. I can imagine skiing down a mountain, looking down the slope, the wind whipping me in the face. I can also imagine myself skiing down a mountain from the outside, adopting the point of view of a spectator watching myself fly down the mountain. I can also imagine that I am someone else entirely, say Angela Merkel, skiing down a mountain. In this paper I develop and defend (...) a new account of the content of first-person imaginings. I first look at two existing accounts, one proposed by Francois Recanati (2007a, 2007b) and the other proposed by Dilip Ninan (2008), and I argue that they lack the resources to model the rich and distinct types of first-person imaginings that we can have. I then present and defend a new account that reconstrues the imagining from the inside vs. imagining from the outside distinction and can accommodate the various ways in which imaginings involve the first-person. (shrink)

On the assumption that romantic partners tend to act from a first-person plural perspective, how should the love that binds them be understood? This paper approaches this question by focusing on romantic practical integration, understood as the tendency of romantic partners to integrate their practical perspectives in such a way that allows them to have ‘reasons-for-us’: reasons for action that apply to them as a group, in a collective and non-distributive sense (Westlund Citation2009). After dispelling some reservations about (...) the connection between romantic love and the first-person plural perspective, I argue that the resources offered by one leading account of love, due to Bennett Helm, fall short of accounting for romantic practical integration. Building on Stephen Darwall’s account of romantic love as a ‘second-personal attitude of the heart’, I develop an alternative proposal. The proposed view foregrounds the relational and non-deontic normative character of romantic love, by conceptualizing it as an addressing attitude that intrinsically seeks – but doesn’t demand – reciprocation. On this view, the attitude of romantic love co-involves the addressee of the attitude as a (potential or actual) member of a narratively unified interpersonal community, in light of which putative reasons-for-us may be taken on board or rejected. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the reliability of first-person methods for studying consciousness, and applies first-person experiments to two philosophical problems: the experience of size and of the self. In chapter 1, I discuss the motivations for taking a first-person approach to consciousness, the background assumptions of the dissertation and some methodological preliminaries. In chapter 2, I address the claim that phenomenal judgements are far less reliable than perceptual judgements (Schwitzgebel, 2011). I argue that the main (...) errors and limitations in making phenomenal judgements are due to domain-general factors, which are shared in the formation of perceptual judgements. Phenomenal judgements may still be statistically less reliable than perceptual judgements, though I provide reasons for thinking that Schwitzgebel (2011) overstates the case for statistical unreliability. I also provide criteria for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgements, hence defending phenomenal judgements against general introspective scepticism. Having identified the main errors in making phenomenal judgements, in chapter 3, I discuss how first-person experiments can be used to control for these errors. I provide examples, and discuss how they overcome attentional and conceptual errors, minimise biases, and exhibit high intersubjective reliability. In chapter 4, I investigate size experience. I use first-person experiments and empirical findings to argue that distant things looking smaller cannot be explained as an awareness of instantiated objective properties (visual angle or retinal image size). I also discuss how an awareness of uninstantiated objective properties cannot adequately account for the phenomenal character of size experience. This provides support for a subjectivist account of variance in size experience. In chapter 5, I investigate the sense of self. I distinguish between a weak sense of self (for-me-ness) and a strong sense of self in which there is a polarity between subject and object. I use first-person experiments from Douglas Harding to demonstrate an explicit strong sense of self, specifically when I point at where others see my face. I also argue that this sense of self is not explained by inference, thoughts, feelings, imagination nor the viewpoint. Rather, it is part of the structure of experience that I seem to be looking from here. Even if there is a sense of self, there may be no self. The question of chapter 6 is whether there can be a direct experience of the self. I argue that to function as a bearer of experience the subject must be single and lack sensory qualities in itself. I use Harding’s first-person experiments to investigate the visual gap where I cannot see my head. I argue that it conforms to the above criteria, and hence is a candidate for being the subject. This finding, in conjunction with the fact that I seem to be looking from the same location, provides prima facie evidence for the reality of the subject. I hold then that contrary to Hume and most philosophers since, that there can be a direct self-experience, if one knows which direction to attend. (shrink)

A first-person proposition is a proposition that only a single subject can assert or believe. When I assert ‘I am on fire’ I assert a first-person proposition that only I have access to, in the sense that no one else can assert or believe this proposition. This is in contrast to third-person propositions, which can be asserted or believed by anyone.

Alphonso Lingis’s singular works of philosophy are not so much written as performed, and in The First Person Singular the performance is characteristically brilliant, a consummate act of philosophical reckoning. Lingis’s subject here, aptly enough, is the subject itself, understood not as consciousness but as embodied, impassioned, active being. His book is, at the same time, an elegant cultural analysis of how subjectivity is differently and collectively understood, invested, and situated. The subject Lingis elaborates in detail is the (...) passionate subject of fantasy, of obsessive commitment, of noble actions, the subject enacting itself through an engagement with others, including animals and natural forces. This is not the linguistic or literary subject posited by structuralism and post-structuralism, nor the rational consciousness posited by post-Enlightenment philosophy. It is rather a being embodied in both a passionate, intensifying activity and a cultural collective made up of embodied others as well as the social rituals and practices that comprise this first person singular. (shrink)

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)

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)

I agree with Siewert's claims about the special character and importance of phenomenal consciousness and the impossibility of providing a satisfactory functionalist reduction of it. I question, however, his dismissal of a representational theory of conscious experience. I also question his account of how conscious agents are supposed to know, or enjoy first person warrant, for their belief that they are conscious.

In the Social Contract Rousseau gives what could be called a philosophical rule of recognition for law in Modernity: a law is law if and only if 'the whole people rules over the whole people'. Thus, he defines self-legislation as, at bottom, collective intentional action. I will first map out the speech act structure [LEX] underlying self-legislation on this account. In particular, I argue for a first person plural counterpart of the reflexive structure inherent to intentions generally: (...) the notion of a collective self. Then I take issue with Bratman's analysis of shared intentional activity in terms of mutuality, submitting that it misses out on the specifically political presupposition involved in 'doing something together'. I will show why 'mutuality' requires representation of the unity of a polity, and how this representation can take form without either external authority or mutual responsiveness. (shrink)

According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of (...) lacking prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Descartes made vivid that my certainty as to which psychological states are mine seems to outrun by far my certainty about which body is mine, or even that I have a body. This can make it seem compelling that in our ordinary use of the first person, we are referring to purely psychological subjects, which just so happen to be specially related to particular bodies. This would explain why your certainty about your ownership of a particular psychological life (...) can outrun your certainty about your ownership of a body. The problem is that it is difficult to make sense of this notion of the self as a purely psychological subject. (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)

First-person reports are central to the study of subjective well-being in contemporary psychology, but there is much disagreement about exactly what sort of first-person reports should be used. This paper examines an influential proposal to replace all first-person reports of life satisfaction with introspective reports of affect. I argue against the reasoning behind this proposal, and propose instead a new strategy for deciding what measure is appropriate.

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

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)

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible characterisation of the first-person shooter videogame genre. After providing an overview of the history of the first-person shooter videogame genre, Alberto Oya comments on the various defining peculiarities of this genre, namely the first-person perspective, the shooting gaming mechanics, the heroic in-game narrative or background story, and multiplayer gaming. Oya also argues that educators can use first-person shooter videogames to encourage their students to reflect on (...) historical and philosophical issues. (shrink)

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects (...) of the We, but fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness. “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life. (shrink)

Trans studies constitute part of the coming-to-voice of transpeople, long the theorized and researched objects of sexology, psychiatry, and feminist theory. Sandy Stone’s pioneering, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” sought the end of monolithic medical and feminist accounts of transsexuality to reveal a multiplicity of trans-authored narratives. My goal is a better understanding of what it is for transpeople to come to this polyvocality. I argue that trans politics ought to proceed with the principle that transpeople have (...) class='Hi'>first-person authority (FPA) over their own gender, and I clarify what this means. (shrink)

First person thoughts are the sort of thought one may express by using the first person ; they are also thoughts that are about the thinker of the thought. Neither characterization is ultimately satisfactory. A thought can be about the thinker of the thought by accident, without being a first person thought. The alternative characterization of first person thought in terms of first person sentences also fails, because it is circular (...) : we need the notion of a first person thought to account for the reference rule governing the first person in language. The paper offers a new characterization of first person thought. A first person thought is a thought which deploys the first person concept, where the first person concept is construed as a special kind of ‘mental file’. Mental files are based on, and their reference determined by, epistemically rewarding (ER) relations in which the subject stands to entities in the environment. In the case of the SELF file, the relevant ER relation is identity. This guarantees that the first-person concept refers to the thinker of the thought in which it is deployed. (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)

Digital phenotyping will potentially enable earlier detection and prediction of mental illness by monitoring human interaction with and through digital devices. Notwithstanding its promises, it is certain that a person’s digital phenotype will at times be at odds with their first-person testimony of their psychological states. In this paper, we argue that there are features of digital phenotyping in the context of psychiatry which have the potential to exacerbate the tendency to dismiss patients’ testimony and treatment preferences, (...) which can be instances of epistemic injustice. We first explain what epistemic injustice is, and why it is argued to be an extensive problem in health and disability settings. We then explain why epistemic injustice is more likely to apply with even greater force in psychiatric contexts, and especially where digital phenotyping may be involved. Finally, we offer some tentative suggestions of how epistemic injustice can be minimised in digital psychiatry. (shrink)

This paper replies to the first 36 commentaries on my target article on “Is human information processing conscious?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences,1991, pp.651-669). The target article focused largely on experimental studies of how consciousness relates to human information processing, tracing their relation from input through to output, while discussion of the implications of the findings both for cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind was relatively brief. The commentaries reversed this emphasis, and so, correspondingly, did the reply. The sequence of (...) topics in the reply roughly follows that of the target article. The discussion begins with a reconsideration of the details of the empirical findings, whether they can be extrapolated to non-laboratory settings, and the extent to which one can rely on their use of subjective reports. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of what is meant by “conscious processing” and of how phenomenal consciousness relates to attentional processing. We then turn to broader philosophical and theoretical issues. I point out some of the reasons why I do not support epiphenomenalism, dualist-interactionism, or reductionism, and elaborate on how first- and third-person views of the mind can be regarded as complementary and mutually irreducible. I suggest how the relation of conscious experiences to their neural correlates can be understood in terms of a dual-aspect theory of information,and how this might be used to resolve some of the paradoxes surrounding the causal interactions of consciousness and brain. I also suggest that, viewed from a first-person perspective, consciousness gives purpose to existence, which allows a different way of viewing its role in evolution. (shrink)

In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans describes the acquisition of beliefs about one’s beliefs in the following way: ‘I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.’ In this paper I argue that Evans’s remark can be used to explain first person authority if it is supplemented with the following consideration: Holding on to the content of a (...) belief and ‘prefixing’ it with ‘I believe that’ is as easy as it is to hold on to the contents of one’s thoughts when making an inference. We do not, usually, have the problem, in going, for example, from ‘p’ and ‘q’ to ‘p and q’, that one of our thought contents gets corrupted. Self-ascription of belief by way of Evans’s procedure is based on the same capacity to retain and re-deploy thought contents and therefore should enjoy a similar degree of authority. However, is Evans’s description exhaustive of all authoritative self-ascription of belief? Christopher Peacocke has suggested that in addition to Evans’s procedure there are two more relevant ways of self-ascribing belief. I argue that both methods can be subsumed under Evans’s procedure. (shrink)