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The Limits of Self-Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Audi
Robert Audi*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska
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Extract

Hume maintained that “since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear.” Descartes maintained a very similar doctrine, and Locke and Berkeley held at least part of the doctrine. I shall not try to set out precisely what any of these philosophers thought about self-knowledge; I cite them simply as proponents of the general view which I shall be examining in this paper: namely, that each of us has a special epistemic authority about his own mental life. This view is still widely held, particularly in the form of the thesis that one's sincere avowals of current mental states are incorrigible, i.e., such that, necessarily, no one ever has overriding reason to think them false.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 253 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford, 1888), p. 190.Google Scholar

2 In Meditation II Descartes says such things as that the proposition that it seems to me that I see light “cannot be false“; and that “I see clearly that there is nothing which is easier for me to know than my mind.” See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. (Cambridge, 1931)Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Locke's Essay, Bk. Four, Ch. II, Section 1; and Berkeley's Principles, Section 22.

4 Among the recent proponents of incorrigibility are Malcolm, Norman e.g., in Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, 1964), pp. 84 and 93Google Scholar; Nakhnikian, George “Incorrigibility,” Philosophical Quarterly, XVIII (1968), e.g., p. 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Place, U. T. “The Infallibility of Our Knowledge of Our Own Beliefs,” Analysis, XXXI (1971)Google Scholar.

5 These and other modes of privileged access are lucidly distinguished by Alston, William P. in “Varieties of Privileged Access,” American Philosophical Quarterly, VIII (1971)Google Scholar. For the most part my definitions of the relevant epistemic terms are close to Alston's.

6 See, e.g., “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Feigl, Herbert and Scriven, Michael (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I (Minneapolis, 1956)Google Scholar.

7 See Knowledge, Mind and Nature (New York, 1967).

8 See “Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental,” Journal of Philosophy, LXVII (1970).

9 See Place, op. cit.

10 Quinton, Anthony “The Foundations of Knowledge,” in Williams, Bernard and Montifiore, Alan (eds.), British Analytical Philosophy (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

11 The most plausible attack I know of is by Armstrong, D. M. in “Is Introspective Knowledge Incorrigible?” Philosophical Review, LXXII (1963)Google Scholar, reproduced, in essentials, in his A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London, 1968). Austin has also criticized the doctrine of incorrigibility; but I believe he does not show that anyone other than S could have overriding reason to deny a sincere occurrent MSR. He shows only the weaker point that various considerations might make it unreasonable for S not to retract such a report. Since this still leaves S in a position of ultimate authority, some incorrigibilists might allow it. See, e.g., Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford, 1962), pp. 42, 112, and 114. It appears that Ayer's, A.J. criticisms of infallibility (which he calls incorrigibility) in The Problem of Knowledge (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1956)Google Scholar also show at most that S might have overriding reason to retract a sincere occurrent MSR. See esp. pp. 65–66.

12 For example, by U. T. Place, op. cit.

13 See, e.g., Rorty, Richard “Wittgenstein, Privileged Access, and Incommunicability,“ American Philosophical Quarterly, VII (1970)Google Scholar. Cf. Hamlyn, D. W. The Theory of Knowledge (New York, 1970), esp. pp. 225–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Armstrong has proposed a similar example. But it is sketchy and Jacks cogency. He says only this:

I say, perfectly sincerely, that my hand hurts. But my behaviour seems no more than a perfunctory imitation of a man with a hurt hand. I wring the hand briefly, but the next moment I behave as if it were not hurt at all. Perhaps I only think I am in pain? (A Materialist Theory of the Mind, p. 110)

15 I am grateful to John King·Farlow for pointing out examples of this sort to me.

16 See Armstrong's, A Materialist Theory of the Mind, pp. 108–109Google Scholar; Meehl, Paul E. “The Compleat Autocerebroscopist,” in Feyerabend, Paul K. and Maxwell, Grover (eds.), Mind, Matter, and Method (Minneapolis, 1966)Google Scholar; and Sheridan, Gregory “The Electroencephalogram Argument Against Incorrigibility,” American Philosophical Quarterly, VIII (1971)Google Scholar.

17 Harold Morick makes a stronger claim: the EEG argument “points to the fact that one can deny ultimate epistemic authority to a man's avowal only if one has granted this authority to other avowals.” See “Is Ultimate Epistemic Authority a Distinguishing Characteristic of the Psychological?” American Philosophical Quarterly, VI (1969). My reply to the weaker thesis should show why this claim is too strong.

18 Rorty, “Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental,” p. 417.Google Scholar

19 For example, Malcolm, Norman in, among other writings, “Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations,” Philosophical Review, LXIII (1954)Google Scholar; perhaps Shoemaker, Sydney Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca, 1963)Google Scholar; and perhaps Rorty in his defense of incorrigibility.

20 See, e.g., Pailthorp, Charles “Is Immediate Knowledge Reason Based?” Mind, LXXVII (1969), p. 555.Google Scholar

21 Alston, op. cit., p. 234.Google Scholar

22 For discussion of the distinction between vagueness and open-texture see Waismann, Friedrich “Verifiability,” in Flew, Antony (ed.), Logic and Language, First Series (Oxford, 1951), esp. pp. 120–121Google Scholar; and Alston, William P. Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, 1964)Google Scholar, Ch. V. For arguments intended to show that ‘pain’ and other sensation terms are open-textured see King-Farlow, John “Postscript to Mr. Aune on a Wittgensteinian Dogma,” Philosophical Studies, VIII (1962), pp. 62–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 In writing this paper I have profited from discussions with Martin Perlmutter and Hardy E. Jones, and from comments by readers for the Canadian journal of Philosophy.