Abstract:

Knowing one’s past thoughts and attitudes is a vital sort of self-knowledge. In the absence of memorial impressions to serve as evidence, we face a pressing question of how such self-knowledge is possible. Recently, philosophers of mind have argued that self-knowledge of past attitudes supervenes on rationality. I examine two kinds of argument for this supervenience claim, one from cognitive dynamics, and one from practical rationality, and reject both. I present an alternative account, on which knowledge of past attitudes is inferential knowledge, and depends upon contingent facts of one’s rationality and consistency. Failures of self-knowledge are better explained by the inferential account.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-005-6220-3

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy, Stanford University Building, 90, Room 91-C, Stanford, CA, 94305-2155, U.S.A., Email: klawlor@stanford.edu