Brueckner and Ebbs debate whether a person can coherently doubt that she knows what thoughts her utterances express.

In Self-Knowledge and Resentment, Akeel Bilgrami argues that self-knowledge of our intentional states is special among all the knowledges we have because it is not an epistemological notion in the standard sense of that term, but instead is a fallout of the radically normative nature of thought and agency. Four themes or questions are brought together into an integrated philosophical position: What makes self-knowledge different from other forms of knowledge? What makes for freedom and agency in a deterministic universe? What makes intentional states of a subject irreducible to its physical and functional states? And what makes values irreducible to the states of nature as the natural sciences study them? This integration of themes into a single and systematic picture of thought, value, agency, and self-knowledge is essential to the book's aspiration and argument. Once this integrated position is fully in place, the book closes with a postscript on how one might fruitfully view the kind of self-knowledge that is pursued in psychoanalysis.

A study of Aquinas's theory of self-knowledge, situated within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature.

Human beings are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless and uncritical, and our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes aren't always as they ought rationally to be. Our beliefs can be eccentric, our desires irrational and our hopes hopelessly unrealistic. Our attitudes are influenced by a wide range of non-epistemic or non-rational factors, including our character, our emotions, and powerful unconscious biases. Yet we are rarely conscious of such influences. Self-ignorance is not something to which human beings are immune. In this book Quassim Cassam develops an account of self-knowledge which tries to do justice to these and other respects in which humans aren't model epistemic citizens. He rejects rationalist and other mainstream philosophical accounts of self-knowledge on the grounds that, in more than one sense, they aren't accounts of self-knowledge for humans. Instead he defends the view that inferences from behavioural and psychological evidence are a basic source of human self-knowledge. On this account, self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement and self-ignorance is almost always on the cards. As well as explaining knowledge of our own states of mind, Cassam also accounts for what he calls 'substantial' self-knowledge, including knowledge of our values, emotions, and character. He criticizes philosophical accounts of self-knowledge for neglecting substantial self-knowledge, and concludes with a discussion of the value of self-knowledge. This book tries to do for philosophy what behavioural economics tries to do for economics. Just as behavioural economics is the economics of homo sapiens, as distinct from the economics of an ideally rational and self homo economics, so Cassam argues that philosophy should focus on the human predicament rather than on the reasoning and self-knowledge of an idealized homo philosophicus.

What does it mean to know oneself? What makes self-knowledge such an intriguing issue? This collection of specially commissioned essays, by some of the top philosophers in the field, offers lucid and well-argued answers, which enhance our understanding of the nature and the limits of knowledge of our own beliefs and desires.

How do you know your own thoughts and feelings? Do we have ‘privileged access’ to our own minds? Does introspection provide a grasp of a thinking self or ‘I’? The problem of self-knowledge is one of the most fascinating in all of philosophy and has crucial significance for the philosophy of mind and epistemology. In this outstanding introduction Brie Gertler assesses the leading theoretical approaches to self-knowledge, explaining the work of many of the key figures in the field: from Descartes and Kant, through to Bertrand Russell and Gareth Evans, as well as recent work by Tyler Burge, David Chalmers, William Lycan and Sydney Shoemaker. Beginning with an outline of the distinction between self-knowledge and self-awareness and providing essential historical background to the problem, Gertler addresses specific theories of self-knowledge such as the acquaintance theory, the inner sense theory, and the rationalist theory, as well as leading accounts of self-awareness. The book concludes with a critical explication of the dispute between empiricist and rationalist approaches. Including helpful chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, Self Knowledge is essential reading for those interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and personal identity.

This book addresses the problem of self-knowledge in Kant’s philosophy. As Kant writes in his major works of the critical period, it is due to the simple and empty representation ‘I think’ that the subject’s capacity for self-consciousness enables the subject to represent its own mental dimension. This book articulates Kant’s theory of self-knowledge on the basis of the following three philosophical problems: 1) a semantic problem regarding the type of reference of the representation ‘I’; 2) an epistemic problem regarding the type of knowledge relative to the thinking subject produced by the representation ‘I think’; and 3) a strictly metaphysical problem regarding the features assigned to the thinking subject’s nature. The author connects the relevant scholarly literature on Kant with contemporary debates on the huge philosophical field of self-knowledge. He develops a formal reading according to which the unity of self-consciousness does not presuppose the identity of a real subject, but a formal identity based on the representation ‘I think’.

A team of leading experts investigate a range of philosophical issues to do with the self and self-knowledge. Self and Self-Knowledge focuses on two main problems: how to account for I-thoughts and the consequences that doing so would have for our notion of the self; and how to explain subjects' ability to know the kind of psychological states they enjoy, which characteristically issues in psychological self-ascriptions. The first section of the volume consists of essays that, by appealing to different considerations which range from the normative to the phenomenological, offer an assessment of the animalist conception of the self. The second section presents an examination as well as a defence of the new epistemic paradigm, largely associated with recent work by Christopher Peacocke, according to which knowledge of our own mental states and actions should be based on an awareness of them and of our attempts to bring them about. The last section explores a range of different perspectives—from neo-expressivism to constitutivism—in order to assess the view that self-knowledge is more robust than any other form of knowledge. While the contributors differ in their specific philosophical positions, they all share the view that careful philosophical analysis is needed before scientific research can be fruitfully brought to bear on the issues at hand. These thought-provoking essays provide such an analysis and greatly deepen our understanding of these central aspects of our mentality.

Explores the relationship between self-knowledge, individuality, and personal development by reconstructing Kant's account of personhood.