Abstract

Prima facie, our knowledge of our mental states differs significantly from others’ knowledge of them. This is in some sense correct but fails to provide the whole picture. This paper develops and defends a two explanations account of self-knowledge: that subjects’ capacity for self-knowledge can and should be explained in two ways. Self-knowledge fundamentally differs from other-knowledge, but only at the personal level. This is the level at which we can talk of the subject herself. But the same subpersonal mechanisms underpin self- and other-knowledge alike. In this respect, self-knowledge resembles perception: both are in some way ‘inferential’ at the subpersonal level of explanation but non-inferential at the personal level.