In my 'Mind's Eye': : introspectionism, detectivism, and the basis of authoritative self-knowledge

• Autores: Cynthia Macdonald
• Localización: Synthese, ISSN-e 1573-0964, Vol. 191, Nº. 15, 2014, págs. 3685-3710
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one's own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, 'detectivist', position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, 'constitutivist', one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a conceptual matter. I argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative self-knowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states