|
Self-knowledge: One more constitutive view| old_uid | 2171 |
|---|
| title | Self-knowledge: One more constitutive view |
|---|
| start_date | 2007/02/02 |
|---|
| schedule | 11h-13h |
|---|
| online | no |
|---|
| summary | In this paper I present a new constitutive account of self-knowledge. According to constitutivists, self-knowledge is not really the result of any cognitive endeavor and, to that extent, it is somehow a misnomer to call it “knowledge”. Constitutive positions, on the contrary, hold that what we regard as self-knowledge can in fact be expressed in the form of a biconditional – S believes/desires that p iff S believes that she believes/desires that p – which is in fact a conceptual truth. Various objections can be raised against both sides of the biconditional. In particular, the case of children’s propositional attitudes and of unconscious mental states will seem to compromise the left-to-right side of the biconditional; whereas the case of self-deception would seem to compromise its right-to-left side. In the paper, I will show why none of these phenomena actually compels us to abandon the biconditional, although they will require us to restrict it to a set of suitable conditions C. Their determination will in turn help us show some light on various notions of belief (and other intentional mental states), on the proper account of psychological concepts’ acquisition and on the nature of self-deception. Accounting for the conceptual necessity of the right-to-left side of the biconditional will also require us to take a stance on the possibility that first-order mental states be metaphysically constituted by second-order ones. I think there is a strongly constructivist story that could make sense of this idea, without requiring us to abandon the view that first-person psychological statements have propositional content and without entailing that first-order psychological states may not be real. |
|---|
| responsibles | Stojanovic |
|---|
| |
|