How to Be a Pluralist About Self-Knowledge

Abstract

This chapter presents a pluralist account of self-knowledge —that is, knowledge of our own mental states—and connects it to discussions regarding epistemic pluralism in general. The first, existential thesis, at the heart of this kind of pluralism, is that there is an asymmetry between first- and third-personal cases of self-knowledge . The second is a meta-epistemological thesis: A complete account of self-knowledge needs to address both first- and third-personal cases. The third thesis is an axiological one: Both kinds of self-knowledge are equally epistemically interesting and existentially important. The fourth thesis is that pluralism about self-knowledge is philosophically committal: Even though it makes room for the compatibility of different accounts of self-knowledge by re-configuring their proper boundaries, it does not entail that all extant accounts of self-knowledge are in good standing. In particular, the proposed account endorses constitutivism with respect to first-personal self-knowledge and defends it from the prima facie devastating objection of rendering it a misnomer to call that kind of self-knowledge thus. Moreover, it embraces methodological pluralism with respect to third-personal self-knowledge and draws attention to the epistemologically different, so far largely unexplored ways in which we can gain it.

Special thanks are due to Delia Belleri for very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Many thanks also to people in attendance at the Pluralism and Normativity workshop held at Cogito Research Center in Bologna in October 2015, as well as those in attendance at the Southern Epistemology Network workshop held in April 2016, at the European Epistemology Conference held in Paris in July 2016, at the SIFA conference in Pistoia in September 2016, and at the Mindgrad Conference held in Warwick in December 2016 for useful comments on the presentations in which I first broached some of the main ideas developed in this paper.