Bar-On on Self-Knowledge and Expression

Matthew Boyle

doi:10.1007/s12136-009-0075-z

Abstract

I critically discuss the account of self-knowledge presented in Dorit Bar-On’s Speaking My Mind (OUP 2004), focusing on Bar-On’s understanding of what makes our capacity for self-knowledge puzzling and on her ‘neo-expressivist’ solution to the puzzle. I argue that there is an important aspect of the problem of self-knowledge that Bar-On’s account does not sufficiently address. A satisfying account of self-knowledge must explain not merely how we are able to make accurate avowals about our own present mental states, but how we can reasonably regard ourselves as entitled to claim self-knowledge. Addressing this aspect of the problem of self-knowledge requires confronting questions about the metaphysical nature of mental states, questions that Bar-On’s approach seeks to avoid.

Highlights

There are various standard ways of making our ability to know our own minds seem puzzling
The problem raised by our capacity for self-knowledge is not primarily epistemological or semantic, but metaphysical
One way to bring out this metaphysical aspect of the problem is to observe that there is in the world a certain person about various aspects of whose condition I know “from the inside,” where this means something like: know by being that person

Summary

Introduction

There are various standard ways of making our ability to know our own minds seem puzzling. BarOn calls self-ascriptions belonging to this privileged class “avowals.” Her question is how to account for their special security, and in particular, how to account for it without compromising their “semantic continuity” with third-personal ascriptions involving the same predicates.[3] Her answer, in brief, is that we can understand both the special security of This approach, if successful, would allow us to remain in the attractive middle ground, holding that I can have substantive knowledge of myself “no how,” by being in the relevant condition. Looking at the problem from this standpoint will highlight its metaphysical aspect, and this in turn will help to bring out its importance: for if the problem of self-knowledge is not merely epistemological but metaphysical, solving it will require us, not merely to account for how mental states are known to their subject, but to rethink our conception of what sorts of things mental states are

Avowals and their security

Expressivism and the first-person standpoint

The notion of expression

Related investigations are pursued in two other recent books