Self-knowledge and self-deception : : the role of transparency in first personal knowledge. / / Christoph Michel.

• VerfasserIn: Michel, Christoph,
• Place / Publishing House: Paderborn : : Mentis Verlag,, [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (310 pages ); illustrations
• Notes: Dissertation.

Self-knowledge and self-deception present fundamental problems and puzzles to philosophy of mind. In this book accounts of both phenomena are systematically developed and defended against classical and recent views. The proposed 'cognitive ascent model' offers an explanation of the intuitive peculiarity of self-knowledge as well as of the reach and limits of our epistemic privilege. The model builds on a general transparency principle for attitudes. Transparency can be the key to a genuinely first-personal knowledge of attitudes to the extent that someone’s having a certain attitude is to be identified with his attributing a value property to an intentional object. The offered view rejects the strategies of inner sense, parallelism and constitutivism. Paradigmatic self-deception, rather than being a failure of recognizing one’s own mental states is a failure at the level of metacognitive control over belief-formation. Self-deceptive beliefs are formed or maintained against criterial evidence via pseudo-rational adaptations in belief-systems.

Table of Contents

Cover -- Titel -- Table of Contents -- Introduction: Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception -- 1. Varieties of Peculiarity: Asymmetry, Privilege and Authority -- 1.1 Asymmetries of Access -- 1.1.1 Strong Epistemic Privilege -- 1.1.2 Weak Epistemic Privilege -- 1.2 The Anti-Epistemic Strategy -- 1.2.1 Wittgenstein: Groundlessness and Asymmetry of Doubt -- 1.2.2 Expressivism and the Default View -- 1.3 Transparency and Self-knowledge -- 2. A Criticism of Constitutivism -- 2.1 Shoemaker's Constitutivism -- 2.1.1 Self-Intimation -- 2.1.2 Self-Blindness -- 2.1.3 Moore's Paradox and the Principle of Transparency -- 2.1.4 A Constitutivist Solution to Moore's Paradox? -- 2.1.5 The Impossibility of Self-Blindness and the Anti-Causal Claim -- 2.2 Self-Knowledge and Rationality -- 2.2.1 Rational Norms and Second-Order Beliefs -- 2.2.2 Self-Knowledge and Critical Reasoning -- 2.3 Rationality, Self-Knowledge and Metacognition -- 2.3.1 Extrospective Reasoning -- 2.3.2 Proust's Distinction Between Metacognition and Metarepresentation Applied -- 2.3.3 Conclusions -- 3. Mental Agency and Evaluative Object-Cognition -- 3.1 The Commitment View -- 3.1.1 Rational Self-Constitution versus Self-Recognition -- 3.1.2 Open Questions and Problems -- 3.2 Mental Action-Awareness -- 3.2.1 Non-Perceptual Action-Awareness -- 3.2.2 Mental Action and Evaluation -- 3.3 Evaluative Object-Cognition -- 3.3.1 Basic Features of Evaluative Object-Cognition -- 3.3.2 Constructionism and Our Primary Relation to Our Own Attitudes -- 3.3.3 Conclusions -- 4. Inferentialism and Cognitive Ascent -- 4.1 Dretske's Account of Introspection as »Displaced Perception« -- 4.1.1 »Looking Inward« by »Looking Outward« -- 4.1.2 Disanalogies Between Displaced Perception and Introspection -- 4.1.3 Self-Indication and »Virtual Indication« -- 4.1.4 Connecting Beliefs -- 4.2 Cognitive Ascent for Perceptual States.

4.3 Evaluation-Based Ascent -- 4.3.1 Epistemic Rules -- 4.3.2 The Cognitive Ascent Model (CAM) -- 4.3.3 Implicit Second-Order Belief -- 4.3.4 Cognitive Ascent versus Semantic Ascent -- 4.4 The Justification of Evaluation-Based Second-Order Beliefs -- 4.4.1 Shared Justification and Groundlessness -- 4.4.2 Moore's Paradox -- 4.4.3 The Puzzle of Transparency -- 4.4.4 Conclusions -- 5. Attitudes and Evaluation -- 5.1 What Do We Ascribe? -- 5.1.1 Semantic Symmetry -- 5.1.2 Evaluation and First-Person Authority -- 5.2 Dispositionalist Attribution and »Third-Person Authority« -- 5.2.1 Attitudes and Behaviour -- 5.2.2 Clash and Adaptation -- 5.3 Are There Gaps? -- 5.3.1 »Thinking That« and »Avowed Belief« -- 5.3.2 Dissociations from a Situationalist Point of View -- 5.3.3 In-Between Attitudes -- 5.4 Constructionism About Attitudes -- 5.4.1 Standing Attitudes versus Construction -- 5.4.2 Real Attitudes -- 5.4.3 Evaluation and Self-Interpretation -- 5.4.4 Conclusions -- 6. Self-Deception as »Pseudo-Rational« Regulation of Belief -- 6.1 A Distinction: Auto-Manipulation versus Self-Deception -- 6.1.1 Pluralism -- 6.1.2 Three Constraints on Self-Deception -- 6.2 Criterial Evidence and the Doxastic Dynamics of Self-Deception -- 6.3 What Do Self-Deceivers Believe? -- 6.3.1 The »Pretence« View -- 6.3.2 Motivational Bias -- 6.4 Egocentric Belief Systems and Dual Rationality -- 6.4.1 Adaptation in Egocentric Belief Systems -- 6.4.2 Dual Rationality as a Constitutive Element of Self-Deceptive Pseudo-Rationality -- 6.4.3 Conclusions, Advantages and Scope of the Model -- General Summary and Conclusions -- Abbreviations -- References -- Acknowledgements -- Index.