Basic Self-Knowledge: Answering Peacocke's Criticisms of Constitutivism

Author: Zimmerman, Aaron

Source: Philosophical Studies, Volume 128, Number 2, March 2006 , pp. 337-379(43)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Constitutivist accounts of self-knowledge argue that a noncontingent, conceptual relation holds between our first-order mental states and our introspective awareness of them. I explicate a constitutivist account of our knowledge of our own beliefs and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Christopher Peacocke. According to Peacocke, constitutivism says that our second-order introspective beliefs are groundless. I show that Peacocke's arguments apply to reliabilism not to constitutivism per se, and that by adopting a functionalist account of direct accessibility a constitutivist can avoid reliabilism. I then argue that the resulting view is preferable to Peacocke's own account of self-knowledge.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-004-7797-y

Affiliations: 1: Email: azimmerman@philosophy.ucsb.edu

Publication date: 2006-03-01