Self-knowledge and authorship

LAWLER, DIEGO

Atenas

Congreso; 23rd World Congress of Philosophy as Inquiry and Way of Life; 2013

International Philosophical Association. University of Athens, School of Philosophy

the scope of this paper is restricted in two ways. On one hand, it focuses on the authority that the first person manifests in relation to a particular class of mental states: namely, beliefs. Secondly, it analyzes a specific position within the range of positions that appeal to some elaboration of the notion of authorship: namely, the position taken recently by Richard Moran. However, the analysis of this position is not an end in itself but a means to raise and discuss a set of basic questions concerning the epistemology of self-knowledge that is manifested in first-person authority; for example, what kind of knowledge is it? What is the source from which it is derived? How does the subject apprehend it? What is its role and purpose? This work consists of two parts. The following part starts off with a clarification of the phenomenon of first-person epistemic authority through a brief analysis of a suggestion made by Gareth Evans (1982), which has had a widespread impact on the philosophical literature. This step allows us to introduce and discuss, through the viewpoint of Richard Moran (2001), what we call ?the authorship strategy?. In that section we identify the assumptions underlying this strategy, we explain how the problem is presented, we analyze its relevant aspects and outline some of the challenges it faces. Finally, we evaluate the plausibility of taking, as a model of knowledge of our own beliefs, the notion of practical knowledge. We suggest that knowing one?s beliefs through first person authority could consist in acquiring a practical knowledge of what is under the control of our rational agency. Beliefs formed deliberatively are states that we know inasmuch as they are beliefs that are held knowingly. This feature marks them as products of our rational agency and they are known with first-person authority by virtue of this fact. We conclude by discussing some objections to this view and pointing out some interesting lines of development of this central insight.