Self-knowledge in consciousness
Abstract
When you enjoy a conscious mental state or episode, you can knowledgeably self-ascribe
that state or episode, and your self-ascription will have a special security and authority (as
well as several other distinctive features). This thesis argues for an epistemic but nonintrospectionist
account of why such self-ascriptions count as knowledge, and why they have
a special status.
The first part of the thesis considers what general shape an account of self-knowledge must
have. Against a deflationist challenge, I argue that your judgments about your own conscious
states and episodes really do constitute knowledge, and that their distinctive features must be
explained by the epistemic credentials that make them knowledge. However, the most
historically influential non-deflationist account—according to which such self-ascriptive
judgments are based on introspective experiences of your conscious states and episodes—
misconstrues the unique perspective that you have on your own conscious mind.
The second part of the thesis argues that the occurrence in your consciousness of a state or
episode of a certain type, with a certain content, can itself suffice for you to have a reason to
judge that you are enjoying a state or episode of that type, with that content. Self-ascriptions
made for such reasons will count as knowledge. An account along these lines can explain the
special status of self-knowledge.
In particular, I show that a self-ascription of a content, made for the reason you have in
virtue of entertaining that content, will be true and rational, partly because it is an exercise of
a general capacity, which I call “grasp of the first-/third-person distinction”, that is
fundamental to our cognition about the world. A self-ascription of a particular type of
conscious state or episode, made for the appropriate reason, will be true and rational in virtue
of features distinctive of states or episodes of that type—features that contribute to
determining which judgments are rational for a subject, without themselves being reasons
that the subject has. I consider in detail the cases of perceptual experience and of judgment.
The thesis concludes by arguing that this kind of account is well placed to explain how selfknowledge
fulfills its central role in the reflective rationality that is characteristic of persons.