When a subject has perceptually grounded knowledge, she typically knows how she knows what she knows, and is able to appeal to perceived items and her own experiences in reason-giving practices. What explains this ability? In this paper I focus on vision, and I submit that paradigmatic cases of visual perceptual knowledge are such that, when a subject acquires knowledge that p by seeing that p, she also acquires tacit knowledge that she sees that p; I also argue that the (...) truth of this thesis is grounded in phenomenological facts concerning awareness and self-awareness. (shrink)

It’s a familiar fact that there is something it is like to see red, eat chocolate or feel pain. More recently philosophers have insisted that in addition to this objectual phenomenology there is something it is like for me to eat chocolate, and this for-me-ness is no less there than the chocolatishness. Recognizing this subjective feature of consciousness helps shape certain theories of consciousness, introspection and the self. Though it does this heavy philosophical work, and it is supposed to be (...) relatively obvious to anyone who introspects, it is rather difficult to see just what this phenomenal me-ness is supposed to be; indeed, many philosophers deny it exists. In this paper we try to provide a clear sense of what phenomenal me-ness involves, and then then consider some arguments for the existence of phenomenal me-ness experience as well as some accounts of what gives rise to it. In the end, we argue that the plausible senses of me-ness are a good deal thinner than what often seems to be claimed. (shrink)

An argument is developed for the conclusion that certain neurological conditions and disorders are directly relevant for understanding the self?'s embodiment and the ownership of conscious experience enjoyed by such an embodied self. Since these neurological conditions and disorders provide evidence that there can be shifts of, and compromises to, ownership, they help identify neural substrates and realizers of such ownership. However, even if recent neuroimaging and neuropsychological nominees for neural substrates of ownership unity are core realizers of ownership, they (...) are not its total realizers. Implications of the distinction between core and total realizers are discussed. (shrink)

Can Hart's non-cognitivism be reconciled with his rejection of the predictive and sanction-based explanations of law? This paper analyses Hart's notion of the internal point of view and focuses on the notion of acceptance of a rule along the lines of a non-cognitivist understanding of intentional actions. It is argued that a non-cognitivist analysis of acceptance of rules is incomplete and parasitic on a more basic or primary model of acceptance that does not involve mental states. This basic or primary (...) model of acceptance explains actions in terms of other actions and in terms of reasons for actions that are both presented as good-making characteristics and transparent to the agent. If Hart's internal point of view is able to work as the key argument to reject predictive and sanction-based explanations of law, it needs to make the outward approach of intentional action basic or primary rather than rely on an inward approach such as the one advanced by non-cognitivism. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I reconcile our knowledge of our own minds with philosophical naturalism. Philosophers traditionally hold that our knowledge of our own minds is especially direct and authoritative in comparison with other domains of knowledge. I introduce the subject in the first chapter. In the second and third chapters, I address the idea that we know our own minds directly. If self-knowledge is direct, it must not be grounded on anything more epistemically basic. This creates a puzzle for all (...) epistemologists. For the naturalist, the puzzle is especially tricky. To say that self-knowledge has no epistemic ground threatens the naturalist's ability to understand it as psychologically real. I argue that the idea that self-knowledge is direct is not well motivated and that models of direct self-knowledge have fundamental problems. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine first-person authority. I distinguish between epistemic authority, or being in a better position than others to know, and non-epistemic authority, or being immune to challenge according to some conventional norm. I argue that we have only limited epistemic authority over our own minds. I then consider whether there may be an interesting non-epistemic authority attached to the first-person perspective. This would locate first-person authority in connection with our responsibility for our own minds. I argue that this sort of authority may exist, but is unlikely to threaten naturalism without further anti-naturalist commitments in the philosophy of mind. In the final two chapters, I explore the possibility that the underlying disagreements between naturalists and anti-naturalists are about the nature of belief. I consider what failures of self-knowledge might demonstrate about the nature of belief. I show how, with the proper understanding of belief, a theory of self-knowledge can assuage some of these worries. Having adopted a conception of belief that makes sense for philosophy and empirical psychology, I outline a positive theory of self-knowledge and suggest directions for future research. (shrink)

Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...) and "epigenetic exceptionalism" are analyzed and critically discussed. The remarks on the ethical discourse on epigenetics show that the notion of "epigenetic determinism" can sometimes be discerned not only in popular scientific discourse but also in ethical discourse. Ethical debates on epigenetics, however, have distanced themselves from this deterministic understanding. As a result, the focus in the ethical discourse on epigenetics shifts from responsibility for one's own health and that of subsequent generations to justice. What is meant here is justice, for example, in terms of access to healthy environmental conditions, regardless of whether these contribute to health with or without epigenetic agency. An analysis of the discourse on genome editing reveals that it is primarily germline interventions that are being ethically examined, with a concentration on the aspect of inheritance. The question is whether this is accompanied by an implicit "genetic determinism" or even a "genetic essentialism": the determinism could lie in the centrality of the aspect of heritability, since only genetic information is inherited. Does the aspect of heritability and genome modification play a more decisive role in debates on genome editing than the safety issue? Is the problem of embryos and their potential offspring not being able to consent to germline intervention given such a high priority because it is a genetic intervention? Under such a premise of "strong genetic determinism" supplemented by "epigenetic determinism," not only genome editing but also epigenome editing would be ethically relevant precisely because it too would have an influence on the genome. How this influence of genome editing and epigenome editing is ethically evaluated in each case therefore depends initially on whether the assumptions of "genetic" and "epigenetic determinism" are advocated. These assumptions are increasingly viewed critically in ethical discourse because they cannot be confirmed from a scientific perspective. In popular scientific debates in particular, however, they seem to persist, which ultimately also influences the public discussion. Since a broad public discussion is required especially on genome editing, a reflective approach to the various "-isms" analyzed in this chapter is central. DOI: 10.5771/9783748927242. (shrink)

Um dos grandes desafios da era da informação consiste em filtrar informações claras, rigorosas e atualizadas sobre tópicos importantes. O mesmo vale para a filosofia. Como encontrar conteúdo filosófico confiável em meio a milhares de artigos publicados diariamente na internet? Para ir ainda mais longe, como encontrar uma introdução a algum tópico com uma lista de referências bibliográficas atualizadas e que seja organizada por um especialista da área? Já que você começou a ler este livro, é provável que tenha ouvido (...) falar em algum momento da Enciclopédia Stanford de Filosofia, disponível gratuitamente na internet desde 1995. A página da Stanford faz exatamente isso. Ela cobre inúmeros verbetes sobre quase tudo em filosofia, oferecendo informação confiável sobre temas como feminismo, filosofia na América Latina, zumbis, metafísica e milhares de outros tópicos. A sugestão típica aos profissionais da filosofia que têm interesse em começar a estudar algum tópico, mas não sabem sequer por onde começar, é procurar pelo verbete relevante da Stanford. Infelizmente, o grande empecilho da página para o nosso contexto é que todos os verbetes estão disponíveis apenas em inglês, algo que cria um obstáculo a inúmeros estudantes e interessados que não dominam a língua. Neste sentido, acreditamos que esta publicação preencha um hiato importante na filosofia brasileira. Embora a filosofia no Brasil tenha se profissionalizado e expandido ao longo dos anos, há ainda lacunas em diversas áreas, e os verbetes foram aqui selecionados cuidadosamente no intuito de preencher ao menos algumas dessas lacunas. Este livro apresenta quatro verbetes cruciais para a filosofia, aqui divididos em quatro capítulos: (1) condições necessárias e suficientes, (2) referência (3) causação e (4) consciência. (shrink)

There are two kinds of epistemic theories about self-knowledge: the traditional account, and the inferentialist account. According to the traditional view of self-knowledge, we have privileged access to our propositional attitudes. “Privileged access” means that one can gain knowledge of one’s own propositional attitudes directly via an exclusive, first-personal method called introspection. On the other hand, the inferentialist view of self-knowledge postulates that we don’t have privileged access to our propositional attitudes and must infer or self-attribute them instead. In this (...) thesis I argue that the traditional view of self-knowledge, which postulates that we have privileged access to our propositional attitudes, ought to be abandoned in favor of an infernetialist picture of self-knowledge I argue that recent experimental results in social psychology strongly imply that we don’t have privileged access to our propositional attitudes. In the choice blindness paradigm, the majority of participants can be manipulated into becoming oblivious to choices that they made just moments previously. Not only do participants utterly fail to notice that they did not receive what they wanted, but they also provide confabulated reasons as to why they made their “decision.” I maintain that the phenomena of choice blindness and confabulation are very difficult for the traditional theory of self- knowledge to accommodate and explain; whereas, on the other hand, the inferentialist account actually predicts and anticipates these experimental findings. The traditional theorist cannot avoid the threat that choice blindness and confabulation pose by restricting the scope of privileged access even further, to exclude propositional attitudes, because privileged access to propositional attitudes is the very property which distinguishes the traditional view of self-knowledge from an inferentialist account. The traditional theorist might attempt to argue that privileged access to propositional attitudes is conceptually necessary, but I maintain that this argument fails. The traditional theorist’s only option, then, is to adopt a dual-method account whereby we sometimes gain self-knowledge via introspection and sometimes via inference. However, I maintain that the dual-method approach is a much weaker theory in terms of explanatory power when compared to the inferentialist account. On balance, then, the traditional view of self-knowledge should be rejected in favor of the inferentialist account. (shrink)

Gareth Evans famously observed that he can answer the question ‘Do you think there is going to be a third world war?’ by attending to “precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question ‘Will there be a third world war?’”. I argue that this observation follows from two independently plausible ideas in philosophy of mind. The first is about rationality and consciousness: it is that to be rational is in part to be (...) required to believe that you are in a conscious state if you are in one, at least if various background conditions are met. The second is about consciousness and attention: it is that consciousness in a belief state consists in its subject engaging, to a sufficient extent, in a certain sort of world-directed attention. I also argue that this suggestion is superior to others that have been made in the literature regarding Evan’s observation. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel puzzle about desire consisting of three independently plausible but jointly inconsistent propositions: all desires are dispositional states, we have privileged access to some of our desires, and we do not have privileged access to any dispositional state. Proponents of the view that all desires are dispositional states might think the most promising way out of this puzzle is to deny. I argue, however, that such attempts fail because the most plausible accounts of self-knowledge of desires (...) do not explain how we possess privileged access to dispositional desires. I conclude by offering what I take to be a more promising solution to the puzzle, one that involves the rejection of on the grounds that some desires possess phenomenology. (shrink)

Scientists, humanists, and art lovers alike value art not just for its beauty, but also for its social and epistemic importance; that is, for its communicative nature, its capacity to increase one's self-knowledge and encourage personal growth, and its ability to challenge our schemas and preconceptions. However, empirical research tends to discount the importance of such social and epistemic outcomes of art engagement, instead focusing on individuals' preferences, judgments of beauty, pleasure, or other emotional appraisals as the primary outcomes of (...) art appreciation. Here, we argue that a systematic neuroscientific study of art appreciation must move beyond understanding aesthetics alone, and toward investigating the social importance of art appreciation. We make our argument for such a shift in focus first, by situating art appreciation as an active social practice. We follow by reviewing the available psychological and cognitive neuroscientific evidence that art appreciation cultivates socio-epistemic skills such as self- and other-understanding, and discuss philosophical frameworks which suggest a more comprehensive empirical investigation. Finally, we argue that focusing on the socio-epistemic values of art engagement highlights the important role art plays in our lives. Empirical research on art appreciation can thus be used to show that engagement with art has specific social and personal value, the cultivation of which is important to us as individuals, and as communities. (shrink)

How to read the Confucian Classics today? Scholars with philosophical training usually emphasize that the philosophical approach, in comparison with the classicist and historical ones, is the best way to read the Confucian Classics, for it can dig out as much intellectual resources as possible from the classical texts in order to show their modern relevance. Briefly, the philosophical approach runs as follows: first, to discover or identify the philosophical question inhered in the text; then to reconstruct the line of (...) thinking, reasoning, and argumentation revealed in the text, which will lead to the answer of the question; and finally evaluate the effectiveness of the answer by any possible criticism. In spite of the fact that the philosophical approach does help showing the Confucian classics are of great significance to modern people, some scholars seriously caution that this theorization would alienate Confucianism from its very practical concern about self-cultivation. Accordingly, traditional Confucian scholars adopted an existential approach to reading, that is using their personal experience to read, question, understand, and comprehend the meanings of the text, making their comprehension as something they find in themselves and thus will be at ease in it. So there seems to be a dichotomy between the modern philosophical approach and the traditional existential approach to reading of the Confucian Classics. In this paper, I shall argue that the dichotomy has never existed. In fact, traditional Confucian scholars read the Confucian canon in both the philosophical and existential ways. Song Confucian Zhu Xi’s ‘Method of Reading’ is a case in point. I shall then argue that these two approaches should be irreducible and inseparable so as to form a proper way of reading as well as teaching the Confucian Classics today. (shrink)

The Sellarsian dilemma is a powerful argument against internalistic foundationalist views that aim to end the regress of reasons in experiential states. Laurence BonJour once defended the soundness of this dilemma as part of a larger argument for epistemic coherentism. BonJour has now renounced his earlier conclusions about the dilemma and has offered an account of internalistic foundationalism aimed, in part, at showing the errors of his former ways. I contend that BonJour’s early concerns about the Sellarsian dilemma are correct, (...) and that his latest position does not adequately handle the dilemma. I focus my attention on BonJour’s claim that a nonconceptual experiential state can provide a subject with a reason to believe some proposition. It is crucial for the viability of internalistic foundationalism to evaluate whether this claim is true. I argue it is false. The requirement that the states that provide justification give reasons to a subject conflicts with the idea that these states are nonconceptual. In the final section I consider David Chalmers’s attempt to defend a view closely similar to BonJour’s. Chalmers’s useful theory of phenomenal concepts provides a helpful framework for identifying a crucial problem with attempts to end the regress of reasons in pure experiential states. (shrink)

This chapter explores the topic of self-knowledge in ancient thought, asking in particular what the ancient concept (or concepts) of knowing oneself amounts to. The chapter begins by contrasting the issues which occupy ancient and contemporary discussions of self-knowledge, and the obvious points of continuity and discontinuity between the two. The author isolates two forms of self-knowledge: cognitive self-knowledge or knowledge of one’s own mental states, and dispositional self-knowledge or knowledge of one’s moral or intellectual dispositions, and traces the treatment (...) of these forms of self-knowledge in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophers, and Plotinus. In the course of discussing the texts of each thinker or school, and the relevant scholarship, this chapter also canvasses the ways in which the chapters in the rest of this volume seek to engage with some of the problems or issues that have emerged. (shrink)

The essay is an attempt to make sense of the apparently special relation between self-knowledge and agency. To achieve that goal, the essay translates the account of what it is like to be a human self offered by Sartre into the language of evolutionary psychology. In L’être et le néant, Sartre describes the phenomenology of the self as a series of inescapable choices in a contingent set of circumstances. This essay identifies Sartre’s description with what Baumeister, Maranges and Sjåstad call (...) a matrix of maybe: the mechanism of nonfactual pragmatic prospection found in humans. Consequently, it defines the self as a matrix of maybe operating within a contingency matrix and reflecting on its own operation. Self-knowledge, the essay concludes, seems special because we routinely and erroneously ascribe to the self features of its contingency matrix. Most of our true first-person claims should not be read as I PREDICATE. Instead, they can be explicated as I have to act in a world where C PREDICATE, where C is the relevant part of the contingency matrix. (shrink)

According to some, such as Carruthers (2009, 2010, 2011, 2015), the confabulation data (experimental data showing subjects making false psychological self-ascriptions) undermine the view that we can know our propositional attitudes by introspection. He believes that these data favour his interpretive sensory-access (ISA) theory—the view that self-knowledge of our propositional attitudes always involves self-interpretation of our sensations, behaviour, or situational cues. This paper will review some of the confabulation data and conclude that the presence and pattern of these data do (...) not substantiate the claim that we cannot introspect our propositional attitudes. As a consequence of this discussion, I conclude that the ISA theory is not well supported by the empirical data. (shrink)

I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer indexically to the contents of our own (...) experiences in a unique way. This allows for the application of ordinary, non-mental concepts in order to arrive at a judgment about what it is that one is experiencing. In a transparent way one can then move inferentially to the self-ascription of an experience with such a content. I compare the demonstrative model with other accounts of introspective self-knowledge. (shrink)

O modelo causal de introspecção tem recebido muitas críticas e, de fato, nos últimos anos, tem caído em desuso no mundo filosófico. Neste artigo defendo o modelo e sustento que ele é um excelente candidato, dado um compromisso realista para com o mental, para explicar o nosso acesso introspectivo peculiar, mas contingente, às crenças.

Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge share a presupposition to the effect that the only way to vindicate so-called first-person authority as understood by our folk-psychology is to identify specific “good-making” epistemic features that render our self-ascriptions of mental states especially knowledgeable. In earlier work, I rejected this presupposition. I proposed that we separate two questions: How is first-person authority to be explained? What renders avowals instances of a privileged kind of knowledge?In response to question, I offered a neo-expressivist account that, I (...) argued, is compatible with a variety of non-deflationary, substantive answers to question. Here I re-evaluate the relative merits of the neo-expressivist account in light of some recent attempts to capture first-person authority by appealing to the so-called transparency of mental self-attributions. I then canvass two recent appeals to transparency that give priority to question. Bearing in mind.. (shrink)

It is a common intuition that I am in a better position to know my own mental states than someone else's. One view that takes this intuition very seriously is Neo-Expressivism, providing a “non-epistemic” account of first-person privilege. But some have denied that we enjoy any principled first-person privilege, as do those who have the Third-Person View, according to which there is no deep difference in our epistemic position with regard to our own and others' mental states. Despite their apparently (...) deep differences, I argue that Neo-Expressivism and the Third-Person View differ in their location of first-person privilege. This difference in the source of first-person privilege allows the key elements of each of these views to be compatible, and can even be combined into a single view about the nature of introspection and self-knowledge. The compatibility of these two views that otherwise appear to be in direct opposition is methodologically significant, highlighting several dialectical lessons that clar.. (shrink)

Reflection on skeptical scenarios in the philosophy of perception, made vivid in the arguments from illusion and hallucination, have led to the formulation of theories of the metaphysical and epistemological nature of perceptual experience. In recent times, the locus of the debate concerning the nature of perceptual experience has been the dispute between disjunctivists and common-kind theorists. Disjunctivists have held that there are substantial dissimilarities (either metaphysical or epistemological or both) between veridical perceptual experiences occurring when one perceives and perceptual (...) experiences involved in hallucination. Common-kind theorists have denied this. In this paper, I examine the nature of introspection – a faculty that has often been compared and contrasted to perception. I reflect on cases where introspection goes wrong in ways analogous to that in which our perceptual faculties can go wrong and formulate, what I take to be, an attractive theory of introspection. The cases that I focus on in which things go wrong are the case of zombies and the case of subjects with Anton’s syndrome. (Anton’s syndrome is a condition in which people who are blind claim that they can see.) I suggest that, just as it is possible to be a disjunctivist about perception, it is possible to be a disjunctivist about introspection. I argue that this is a good view of one type of introspection, namely, introspection of states that have phenomenal character, such as perceptual experiences. It has a good account to give of the cases in which such introspection seems to go wrong and it yields a plausible metaphysical and epistemological view of the nature of introspection. However, while I favour a disjunctive view of introspection, I do not favour a disjunctive view of perception. And, I suspect, that many disjunctivists about perception would not wish to condone my disjunctivist theory of introspection. I therefore go on to examine to what extent.. (shrink)

This paper defends a Wittgenstein-inspired conception of the nature of mind and self-knowledge. Thus, it is claimed that the mind is to be conceived as expressive behaviour; and that knowledge of one’s own mind is not to be thought of as a matter of first-person access, i.e. a special sort of access available to oneself alone, but rather as a matter of ordinary access, similar to other people’s. It is also argued that this conception does not undermine the distinctness of (...) the first-person perspective, including the asymmetry with the third-person perspective, which should be construed semantically, rather than epistemically. As a result, an alternative to contemporary conceptions of mind and self-knowledge is provided. (shrink)

Volume 53, Issue 2, February 2021, Page 105-111.

ABSTRACTThis paper relates Kant’s account of pure apperception to the agential approach to self-knowledge. It argues that his famous claim ‘The I think must be able to accompany all of my represent...

The development of autonomous social robots is still in its infancy, but there is no reason tothink that it will not continue. In fact, the robotics industry is growing rapidly. Since this trendis showing no signs of abating it is relevant to ask what type of relations we can have withthese machines. Is it for example possible to be friends with them? In this thesis I argue that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to be friends with (...) robots. To believe otherwise is to be deceived, a trap it is all too easy to fall into since the efforts put on making social robots as human-like as possible and to make the human-robot interaction as smooth as possible are huge. But robots are not always what they seem. For instance, the capacity to enter into a friendship of one’s own volition is a core requirement for a relationship to be termed friendship. We also have a duty to act morally towards our friends, to treat them with due respect. To be able to do this we need to have self-knowledge, a sense of ourselves as persons in our own right. We do not have robots who display these capacities today, nor is it a given that we ever will. (shrink)

Cogito-like judgments, a term coined by Burge, comprise thoughts such as, I am now thinking, I [hereby] judge that Los Angeles is at the same latitude as North Africa, or I [hereby] intend to go to the opera tonight. It is widely accepted that we form cogito-like judgments in an authoritative and not merely empirical manner. We have privileged self-knowledge of the mental state that is self-ascribed in a cogito-like judgment. Thus, models of self-knowledge that aim to explain privileged self-knowledge (...) should have the resources to explain the special self-knowledge involved in cogito judgments. My objective in this paper is to examine whether a transparency model of self-knowledge can provide such an explanation: granted that cogito judgments are paradigmatic cases of privileged self-knowledge, does the transparency procedure explain why this is so? The paper advances a negative answer, arguing that the transparency procedure cannot generate the type of thought constitutive of cogito judgments. (shrink)

In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while her overall automatic behaviour suggests that she believes that not-P. In contrast with several mainstream views, this paper defends the contradictory-belief view of some relevant dissonance cases and explores its consequences regarding Moorean propositions. The paper argues that in relevant cases, the dissonant person is justified in asserting a Moorean proposition on the grounds of her explicit view on the subject matter and the recognition of her (...) opposing beliefs. The person is irrational in being dissonant, but not in asserting a Moorean proposition. (shrink)

Questions about the normative significance of ‘transparency’ do not receive much attention, even though they were central to Richard Moran’s (2001) original account. Instead, transparency is typically studied because of its epistemic and psychological peculiarities. In this paper, I consider three normative conceptions of transparency: teleological rationalism, procedural rationalism, and relational rationalism. The first is a theory about how transparency might relate to flourishing as a rational agent; the latter two are theories about how transparency relates to non-alienated self-knowledge. All (...) three conceptions, I argue, face serious problems. I end the paper by suggesting where the rationalist might go from here and by highlighting the importance of focusing not on the methods but on the broader circumstances in which self-knowledge is gained or lost. (shrink)

A central feature in contemporary discussions of selfknowledge concerns the epistemic status of mental selfascriptions, such as “I have toothache” or “I believe that p”. The overall project of such discussions is to provide an account of the special status of mental self-ascriptions vis-à-vis other knowledge-claims, including ascriptions of mental states to others. In this respect, two approaches have gained currency in contemporary philosophy. Some authors have focused on the notion of expression, stressing that self-ascriptions are expressions of one’s mental (...) life; whereas others have singled out the notion of transparency as crucial, since self-knowledge involves self-beliefs, and the latter are transparent to one’s available evidence. This critical notice explores one instance of each approach, in order to assess their prospects of success. It concludes that both approaches fail to articulate an account that satisfactorily accommodates the first-person component in the notion of self-knowledge. (shrink)

It is a widely held view that persons have privileged knowledge about their own minds, although numerous different views on what this privilege exactly consists of exist. One possible way of interpreting it is to claim that persons can refer to their own mental states in a privileged way. I will argue that this view has to be extended. Our common-sense view about reference to mental states implies that besides privileges of first-person reference to one's own mental states, there also (...) exist privileges of third-person reference to the mental states of others: Other persons can refer to all of the mental states of a person in a way that the person cannot. In a next step, I will explain that persons can take two perspectives towards their own mental states: a first-person perspective and a third-person perspective. I will conclude that the possibilities of first-person reference from a third-person perspective are limited. (shrink)

Chalmers (The character of consciousness, 2010) argues for an acquaintance theory of the justification of direct phenomenal beliefs. A central part of this defense is the claim that direct phenomenal beliefs are cognitively significant. I argue against this. Direct phenomenal beliefs are justified within the specious present, and yet the resources available with the present ‘now’ are so impoverished that it barely constrains the content of a direct phenomenal belief. I argue that Chalmers’s account does not have the resources for (...) explaining how direct phenomenal beliefs support the inference from ‘this E is R’ to ‘that was R.’. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate two interesting parallels between views discussed in John Wilkins’ Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion and positions developed by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The first parallel pertains to a faculty of inner sense. Both authors carve out a central role for this introspective perceptual modality. The second parallel pertains to volition and free will. Both authors employ an investigative methodology which privileges first-personal experiences of choosing and (...) willing. I also discuss the relationship between these two parallels and speculate about their significance. (shrink)

According to Positioning Theory, participants in narrative interaction can position themselves on a representational level concerning the autobiographical, told self, and a performative level concerning the interactive and emotional self of the tellers. The performative self usually is much harder to pin down, because it is a non-propositional, enacted self. In contrast to everyday interaction, psychotherapists regularly topicalize the performative self explicitly. In our paper, we study how therapists respond to clients' narratives by interpretations of the client’s conduct, shifting from (...) the autobiographical identity of the told self, which is the focus of the client’s story, to the present performative self of the client. Drawing on video-recordings from three psychodynamic therapies (tiefenpsychologisch fundierte Psychotherapie) with 25 sessions each, we will analyze in detail five extracts of therapists‘ shifts from the representational to the performative self. We highlight four findings: • Whereas clients’ narratives often serve to support identity-claims in terms of personal psychological and moral characteristics, therapists rather tend to focus on clients’ feelings, motives, current behavior and ways of interacting. • In response to clients’ stories, therapists first show empathy and confirm clients’ accounts, before shifting to clients’ performative self. • Therapists ground the shift to clients’ performative self by references to clients’ observable behavior. • Therapists do not simply expect affiliation with their views on clients’ performative self. Rather they use such shifts to promote the clients’ self-exploration. Yet, if clients resists to explore their selves in more detail, therapists more explicitly ascribe motives and feelings that clients do not seem to be aware of. The shift in positioning levels thus seems to have a preparatory function for engendering therapeutic insights. (shrink)