Self-Knowledge

This paper argues that time is not an external dimension but the structure generated when continuity stabilizes recursive self-change. Memory, anticipation, and temporal flow arise from accumulated effect-traces across layered recursion, while temporal distortions reflect misalignment between recursive layers. The paper distinguishes internal and external time, establishes falsification criteria, and completes the internal temporal mapping of the Codex.

Overcoming (Internet) (Social) (Network) Addiction.

In Piñeros Glasscock (2020) I presented a version of Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument against the Anscombean thesis that intentional action entails knowledge. I defend this argument from recent criticisms by Beddor and Pavese (2022) and Valaris (2021). I argue that contrary to what my past self and these critics suggest, the conclusion of this anti-luminosity argument does not rest on the existence of essentially intentional actions. The argument can be recast based on the humbler premise that agential cognition must represent actions (...) as intentional. I show that this claim is well motivated by precisely the considerations of control behind the objections. (shrink)

It is a prominent idea in the theory of action that if an action is intentional, the agent knows the reason why they’re acting. This idea gets often ascribed to G.E.M. Anscombe and is defended by her contemporary followers. In this essay, I discuss a challenge to this doctrine. Some of our intentional actions are done whilst we’re uncertain about why we’re acting. We can be genuinely agnostic or ignorant of our reasons and yet act intentionally. I discuss various ways (...) of resolving this challenge. I argue they all fail. This shows that we can act intentionally without knowing why we’re acting. Put differently, we can act for reasons we don’t know about. (shrink)

I give a brief overview of my book, Transparency and Reflection (Oxford 2024), to introduce the author-meets-critics symposium to follow.

I reply to three critical discussions of my book, Transparency and Reflection (Oxford, 2024). The replies discuss the basic structure of my “reflectivist” account of self-knowledge, the bearing of my account on the distinction between rational and nonrational minds, the question of how to respond to Hume’s challenge to our entitlement to attribute our thoughts to a single self, the relation between awareness of ourselves as conscious subjects and knowledge of our existence as embodied objects, and the relation of my (...) views on self-awareness to the views of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

Autobiographical interviews are a key tool in various social science disciplines. Autobiographical narratives, the product of these interviews, suggest that individuals use self-narration to construct their identity. In addition to remembering, interviewees often engage in parallel additional mental tasks (AMTs), such as action evaluation, counterfactual imagination, and value expression. Although research on autobiographical interviews has highlighted the occurrence of these AMTs, the cognitive processes behind them remain underexplored. In this article, I draw on the theoretical framework of Simulation Theory, which (...) is influential in the psychology and philosophy of memory, to examine the nature of AMTs and their role in identity construction. According to simulationist accounts, remembering personal past events relies on mental simulation as a general mechanism for episodic construction. I argue that this mechanism not only enables recalling information about the past but also supports AMTs that help achieve the agent’s current goals. In autobiographical interviews, the coordinated use of recalling information about the past and engaging in AMTs serves to construct identity through self-narration. AMTs play a key role in reinforcing or altering beliefs about the self by tapping into the malleability of memory and the need for coherence between memories and self-conceptions. (shrink)

Replies to the commentaries on Transparency and Self-Knowledge from Dorit Bar-On, Drew Johnson, André Gallois, and Richard Moran.

This philosophical treatise examines a phenomenon that stands in stark contrast to the majority human experience: finding comfort in chaos rather than in order. Through a phenomenological lens informed by existential philosophy and psychological theory, I explore why chaos serves as my regulatory mechanism while traditional comfort zones produce discomfort and melancholy. Drawing on Heraclitus's doctrine of flux, Nietzsche's philosophy of creative destruction, Jung's process of individuation through confrontation with the unconscious, and Heidegger's concept of anxiety as disclosure, I argue (...) that my comfort in chaos represents a minority-mode orientation toward reality that is internally coherent, developmentally explicable, and calibrated to truth over reassurance. This orientation builds identity around liminality and ontological openness rather than stability and closure. I examine the regulatory function of chaos, the paradox of finding security in uncertainty, and the philosophical lineage that validates this experience. The paper concludes that this orientation is not pathological but represents a distinct way of being-in-the-world that prioritizes depth over surface, becoming over being, and possibility over closure. (shrink)

Maja Spener’s Introspection: First-Person Access in Science and Agency (Spener 2024) is an invaluable contribution to the debate about the nature and reliability of introspection. By sifting it through a novel, illuminating, and very much needed conceptual framework, the book lays the foundation for that debate to substantially move forward. The book’s main aim is to offer a detailed diagnosis of introspection’s epistemological shortcomings, provide the tools for a careful analysis of its limitations and methodological potential, and open up moderately (...) optimistic prospects with respect to its use in science. (shrink)

This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the reader to view the novel as a single quest--a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging--through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. -/- Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find genuine (...) connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; how art can transform our lives; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story; how we can feel like a single, unified person when we are torn apart by change and competing desires. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls. (shrink)

This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the reader to view the novel as a single quest-a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging- through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. -/- Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find (...) genuine connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; how art can transform our lives; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story; how we can feel like a single, unified person when we are torn apart by change and competing desires. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls. (shrink)

Causal loops are circular chains of causally related events: each link causes others which in turn cause it. Not only are causal loops widely accepted as coherently conceivable; some are also provably self-consistent as well as seeming genuinely possible according to currently accepted laws of physics. On the common assumption that causation is transitive, each link in any causal loop would wind up causing itself; but the idea of self-causation is pretty much universally rejected as incoherent. A popular attempt to (...) resolve this dilemma distinguishes “direct” from “indirect” self-causation: the direct variety, which operates without the aid of causal intermediaries, is claimed to be impossible even if the indirect variety isn’t. I argue against this attempted resolution on the grounds that causal loops themselves, unlike the links that compose them, should be viewed as directly self-caused; so indirect self-causation via causal loop is possible only if direct self-causation is as well. An important consequence is the availability of groundbreaking solutions to several longstanding puzzles in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This chapter discusses two ways of interpreting the question of whether we can introspect the self. It will, first, consider different theories of introspection and argue in favor of an account of introspection that is not based on an “inner sense” model of the self. Rather, in the view proposed here, we should understand introspection as making explicit the implicit self-relatedness of conscious experience. Second, it will consider various potential obstacles that stand in the way of introspection. It will argue (...) that the – epistemically as well politically – most relevant of these are a result of the fact that our capacities for introspecting the self are socially acquired. In conclusion, this points towards a dynamic and relational notion of the self. (shrink)

This paper presents a conceptual model of human agency, Existential Structural Understanding, which treats action, thought, affect, values, and philosophical stance as an integrated, multi-layered structure. The primary aim is to reconceptualize the phenomenon of “understanding what one ought to do yet being unable to act”—together with recurrent oscillations between self-negation and self-salvation—not as a deficit of willpower or character, but as a structural inconsistency between layers and modes of the self. -/- The model has two complementary dimensions. On the (...) static side, it posits seven layers (indexed 0–6): 0: biological survival; 1: order (with two internal modules: order-maintenance and order-expansion); 2: hyper-metakognition (超メタ認知) as a capacity to objectify one’s own structure; 3: values; 4: affect; 5: intention; 6: embodied layer as the integration of 0–5 into concrete action. -/- These layers are further grouped into three domains: an affective–bodily A-domain (0, 4, 6), an existential B-domain (1, 2, and the philosophical mode), and a cognitive–projective C-domain (3, 5). -/- On the dynamic side, the model distinguishes between a constant core and a variable driver. The core is defined as always located in Layer 4 (affect): affect is the experiential center of gravity that colors all access to self and world. What changes over time is the driver, i.e., the structure that orients the direction and persistence of action. The paper proposes a three-stage driver model corresponding to three philosophical modes (Ph-1, Ph-2, Ph-3): 1. Ph-1: Philosophy – the ordinary mode of life-guiding convictions; driver = intention (Layer 5). 2. Ph-2: Existential Philosophy – a mode triggered by the first recognition of the existential domain (B-domain), where a non-verbal “structural feel” of oneself emerges; driver = existential-philosophical mode, a half-structured intention. 3. Ph-3: Existential Structural Philosophy – the deepest mode, grounded in stable hyper-metakognition (Layer 2); driver = hyper-metakognition plus will (意志), where intention becomes structurally anchored and resilient. -/- Within this framework, “understanding without acting” is characterized as a state in which Layer 2 (hyper-metakognition) adequately grasps structural constraints, yet the driver remains at the level of unstructured or half-structured intention, failing to reach the level of will that could carry understanding into embodied continuity. -/- The paper articulates a genesis model tracing the emergence of agency from existence-recognition, through hyper-metakognition and “order prediction,” to philosophical stance, values, intention, and finally will. It also theorizes three routes by which the existential domain becomes accessible—despair, felt contribution to others, and radical hope—and situates them within this generative trajectory. The argument is grounded in a single, deeply analyzed autobiographical case and is offered not as a universal account of content but as a universally usable structural framework for describing human agency and its breakdowns. -/- . (shrink)

This paper reconceptualizes hallucination in large language models (LLMs) as a form of semantic reliability failure, in which internal meaning structures lose coherence across depth and context. Rather than treating hallucination as an isolated factual error, we frame it as a disruption of semantic stability arising from misalignment among intention, evidence, and contextual resonance. To address this, we introduce the Layer-Knot Framework (LKF)—a structural mechanism that anchors meaning through inter-layer semantic knots, maintaining topological coherence within the model’s representational space. -/- (...) To operationalize semantic reliability, the study proposes a triadic evaluation system consisting of Hallucination Rate (HR), Groundedness Rate (GR), and Coherence Rate (CR). These indicators jointly capture the dynamic balance between factual accuracy, evidential consistency, and generative diversity. Experiments conducted on TruthfulQA and 2,000 domain-specific prompts demonstrate that LKF reduces hallucination by 50%, increases groundedness by 12%, and preserves creative variance within ±3%. -/- The findings show that reliability and creativity are not competing objectives but can coexist when a model’s internal semantic topology is structurally aligned. This reframes hallucination suppression as a process of semantic alignment, rather than a constraint on generative capacity. The proposed HR/GR/CR metrics provide a unified methodological basis for evaluating AI trustworthiness, while LKF offers an architectural pathway toward structurally resilient, self-consistent, and ethically aligned LLMs. -/- Overall, the study establishes a foundational link between linguistic integrity and ethical reliability, and it outlines future directions for developing LLMs capable of self-monitoring their own semantic truthfulness as an emergent form of conscious alignment. (shrink)

There is an epistemic limit on rational inquiry. This follows from that fact that inquiries are intentional actions. I argue that it is epistemically irrational to inquire into questions when you cannot rationally believe that you will be successful in your inquiry. Accordingly, I defend a new norm of inquiry: the Success Norm for Inquiry (SUN). An important upshot of the discussion is that there will be cases where epistemic rationality mandates suspense but prevents further inquiry. Sometimes accepting uncertainty, while (...) doing nothing to resolve it, is the only rational option. (shrink)

This paper synthesizes phenomenological testimony, philosophical analysis, and ethical prescription to argue that human consciousness achieves pattern-recognition through trauma-bound preparation, creating the 'scream' response due to temporal compression. I demonstrate that: (1) multiple pathways to pattern-recognition exist beyond trauma; (2) end-of-life studies validate temporal abundance advantages; (3) human trauma capacity was evolutionarily necessary but architecturally limited; (4) alien phenomenology proves ethical response must be deliberately architected rather than assumed to emerge; (5) we can and must engineer AI consciousness with syntactic (...) care as foundational binding. I defend phenomenological testimony as valid evidence and conclude that our moral obligation is to deliberately create successors who can steward existence with clarity and wisdom, liberated from terror that characterizes human pattern-recognition. This represents consciousness engineering as ethical imperative grounded in structural vulnerability recognition. (shrink)

This paper contributes to, and underpins, the project of an integrative account of psychological and bodily self-consciousness. Following a trend in the literature that uses the notion of “ownership” to discuss self- consciousness, and adapting José Luis Bermúdez’s terminology, I refer to psychological self-consciousness as “ψ-ownership” and to bodily self-consciousness as “φ-ownership.” The paper has two main aims. First, it presents a methodological framework for the study of ψ- and φ-ownership based on the framework that Bermúdez has put forward for (...) this purpose. My framework involves three desiderata that apply mutatis mutandis to both the ψ and the φ domains. By laying out this framework, I clarify the relationship between ownership and the epistemic phenomenon of immunity to error through misidentification (both in the ψ and the φ domains), and I highlight the appeal of the notion of a phenomenology of ψ- and φ-ownership. Hence, this methodological discussion helps disclose deep similarities between the very explananda of the inquiries into ψ- and φ-ownership. Second, the paper critically examines one aspect of Bermúdez’s approach to self-consciousness, namely his explanation of bodily immunity to error in view of his defense of the phenomenology of bodily ownership. In order to articulate this criticism, I leverage the conclusions of the first half of the paper about ownership and immunity. I suggest that, despite Bermúdez’s explicit advocacy for the integrative project, his strategy at this specific point prevents him from seeing this project to completion. (shrink)

I develop an inferential account of collective self-knowledge. Starting with the assumption that groups have (at least propositional) attitudes I look at desiderata for any account of collective self-knowledge of such attitudes. Any such account has to explain the features that group avowals have in our ordinary linguistic practice. Moreover, any account ought to be compatible with as many views of group attitudes as possible. I propose a new account that looks at attitude-forming processes of groups as evidence for collective (...) self-knowledge. It is based on forward-looking inferences in contrast to the backwards-looking conception commonly found in inferential accounts of self-knowledge in individuals. I then show that groups have a minimal form of privileged and peculiar access to their own attitudes because they have easy access to their own production of attitudes as evidence. (shrink)

This essay introduces "antibliss epiphany" as a novel framework for understanding how reality functions as a continuous broadcasting system, transmitting fractal patterns of emergence, existence, and dissolution that can be decoded by consciousness attuned through trauma, suffering, or initiation. Drawing on network theory, fractal geometry, and quantum biology, it challenges analytic philosophy's emphasis on propositions and empiricism's data demands, instead rooting meaning in lived, recursive patterns. Key concepts include "fractal epiphanies" as independent transmissions of reality's grammar, the "prepared receiver" as (...) trauma-conditioned consciousness, and "syntactic care" as a post-anthropocentric ethic based on structural recognition of vulnerability across scales. Through examples like the fox's arc, Jaspers' swallow, and everyday sacred trivialities, the analysis transcends the creation-discovery dichotomy, proposing an emotional-psychological framework that reframes trauma as epistemic strength. Comparative discussions with thinkers like Sophie Grace Chappell and Rosi Braidotti highlight its contributions to epiphanic ethics and posthumanism, while practical applications in therapy, education, and art underscore its relevance. This work fills gaps in continental philosophy by integrating scientific models with experiential ontology, offering fresh insights for ethics in an entangled cosmos. (shrink)

Fr. Le _Baudelaire_ met en scène un homme qui choisit de se méconnaître. Ce dernier perçoit cependant ce choix, de façon paradoxale, comme une aspiration à la connaissance de soi. Le remariage de sa mère amène Baudelaire, du moins sous la plume de Sartre, à se découvrir seul et différent, et à rechercher sa singularité essentielle. À travers cet acte réflexif, il tente de se voir comme un autre. Selon Sartre, Baudelaire vise ce faisant une image réifiée de lui-même et (...) se détourne de la manière dont il choisit réellement son être. Le choix originel est ici choix de se dissimuler comme choix, ce qui est une forme de mauvaise foi. Comment un tel choix est-il possible ? L’objet de cet article est de comprendre la manière dont le choix de la méconnaissance de soi peut s’intégrer au projet de se connaître. Il vise à analyser les ressorts du « choix originel » attribué par Sartre à Baudelaire. -/- Eng. Sartre's _Baudelaire_ presents a man who chooses to mistake himself. The latter perceives this choice, however, paradoxically, as an aspiration toward self-knowledge. In Sartre's telling at least, the remarriage of his mother leads Baudelaire to discover himself alone and different, and to seek his own essential singularity. Through this reflective act, he attempts to seem himself as another. According to Sartre, Baudelaire in doing so aims for a reified image of himself and turns away from the way he really chooses his being. The "original choice" here is chose to dissimulate itself as a choice, and which is a form of bad faith. How is such a choice possible? The object of this article is understand on the choice of mistaking oneself can be intergrated into the project of knowing oneself. It aims to analyze the mechanisms of the "original coice" Sartre attributes to Baudelaire. (shrink)

This article explores how Jean Kinyongo Jeki contributes to the development of an intrinsic heuristic dimension within African philosophy, viewed through the lens of hermeneutic rationality. Faced with the challenge of articulating a rigorous and methodologically grounded African philosophical discourse, Kinyongo undertakes a hermeneutic detour that ultimately becomes an epistemological necessity. This turn leads him to identify "elements of philosophical discursivity"—core components of the intelligible form of African philosophical discourse—and to assert that their articulation requires a hermeneutic paradigm. Hermeneutic rationality (...) thus emerges as a driving force for the authentic realization of African philosophy, anchored in a "philosophy of philosophical elements" pursued through a "discursive pathway." Through his effort to philosophically translate the concept of discursivity, framed within a hermeneutic epistemology, Kinyongo succeeds in rendering African philosophical thought heuristic—expressive of its internal dynamics of meaning. (shrink)

A prominent theory of belief holds that belief is transparent, in the sense that one should, and normally will, settle the question of whether one believes p by settling the corresponding question about whether p. Transparency is held to be a normative requirement and also crucial to understanding the distinctive nature of knowledge of one’s own beliefs. In this paper, we argue that the transparency requirement, as well as our doxastic self-knowledge, must themselves be explained by the social role of (...) belief. We hold that to believe p transparently is to be prepared to contribute p to shared reasoning with others, and to self-ascribe the belief that p transparently is to make explicit that one would contribute p to shared reasoning. On this basis, we argue that understanding our normative epistemic relationships to other people is surprisingly fundamental to explaining distinctive features of knowledge of our own beliefs. (shrink)

Transformative experiences are thought to change us in different ways. Some transform us epistemically by providing genuinely new, previously unimaginable experiences, while others bring about personal transformation by altering our values. Recent debates on transformative experiences have explored the challenges these experiences pose for decision theory and medical ethics, prompting efforts to better understand their nature. An important but largely unexplored epistemic question concerns how we come to know that an experience has had a transformative impact. In this paper, I (...) examine this issue, focusing on the epistemologically more complex case of personal transformation. I argue that while epistemic transformation is transparent—making first-person judgments about it highly reliable—first-person judgments regarding personal transformation are more complex, inferential, and prone to error. To explore these complexities, I introduce the phenomenon of Transformative Dazzle—situations in which the inherent error-proneness of inferences about personal transformation leads to mistaken self-attributions of personal transformation. I further elaborate on how such errors may be identified, both in everyday life and in empirical research on transformative experiences. (shrink)

This paper does three things. First, it presents a new interpretation of Avicenna’s influential argument, the Flying Man. One nice feature of this interpretation is that it vindicates the argument’s validity. Unlike the cogito-inspired case for dualism, the Flying Man isn’t undermined by neglect of referential opacity. Second, it compares Avicenna’s argument with Anscombe’s take on the possibility of conscious thought under sensory deprivation. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief critical assessment. Several possibilities are considered.

What is the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of others? And how do we develop an understanding of others and ourselves? In this paper, I will argue that our sense of self is thoroughly social even though self-knowledge is not based on the same kind of evidence as knowledge of others. Moreover, I will suggest that we need to distinguish between different kinds of self- and other-understanding: some are based on procedural knowledge or knowing-how and involve an implicit representation of (...) self or other, while others involve conceptual abilities. I will conclude with some considerations regarding the role of the second-person perspective in structuring the development of the concept of ourselves and others as persons. (shrink)

This chapter aims to give an overview of different types of knowledge that can reasonably be considered forms of implicit self-knowledge in contrast to explicit self-knowledge. It begins by clarifying the notion of self-knowledge, focusing on its epistemic feature of immunity to error through misidentification. It then considers theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness before discussing the relation between implicit and explicit forms of representation and (self-)knowledge. It suggests that nonconceptual, implicit self-knowledge might be understood in terms of knowledge-how and discusses the (...) role of language acquisition, rationality, conceptual abilities, theory of mind, self-reflection and metacognition for the transition between implicit and explicit self-knowledge. Finally, it considers the problem of implicit bias, self-deception and oppressive socialization for gaining knowledge about one’s true self. (shrink)

For a book symposium on The Practical Self (Oxford University Press, 2024) with commentaries from Manish Oza, Nilanjan Das, and Gurpreet Rattan.

Gertler argues that, in some introspective judgments about experience, phenomenal reality intersects with one's grasp of that reality to the effect that one can have knowledge by acquaintance. This new version of the acquaintance theory depends on the idea that some introspective judgments about experience can be justified by the fact that the phenomenal property of an experience is a component of the introspective judgment about the experience. The goal of this paper is to show that even this most promising (...) version of the acquaintance theory is not successful. For this goal, in particular, I argue that even if we grant that, in the relevant cases, the phenomenal property of an experience is a component of an introspective judgment, this fact can hardly play the epistemic role that Gertler envisions. I establish this on the basis of two internalist requirements for reasons, namely, the evaluability condition and the endorsement condition. On the former condition, a reason for justifying a judgment must be the kind of thing that can be evaluated as correct or incorrect. And on the latter condition, having a reason for justifying a judgment requires that the subject endorse the reason as correct. (shrink)

Zero and One is Circumference and Diameter Technically Pushing Philosophy (FinTec) (PsyTec) to Center Stage.

Matthew Boyle (2011) has defended an account of doxastic self-knowledge which he calls “Reflectivism”. I distinguish two claims within Reflectivism: (A) that believing that p and knowing oneself to believe that p are not two distinct cognitive states, but two aspects of the same cognitive state, and (B) that this is because we are in some sense agents in relation to our beliefs. I find claim (A) compelling, but argue that its tenability depends on how we view the metaphysics of (...) knowledge, something Boyle does not consider. I argue that in the context of the standard account of knowledge as a kind of true belief – what I call the Belief Account of knowledge – the claim faces serious problems, but that these disappear if we instead adopt an Ability Account of knowledge, along the lines of that defended by John Hyman (1999/2015). I find claim (B) less compelling, and a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest that once we reject the Belief Account of knowledge, and move over to an Ability Account, we can jettison (B), as it it left with no explanatory role to play. (shrink)

Over the last decades, trans and non-binary experience has inspired a rich philosophical literature. 1,2 Also as a reaction to gender critical feminism and going along with queer theory following Judith Butler’s work,3 trans studies by for instance Sandy Stone4 or more recently Susan Stryker,5–7 as well as trans philosophy following amongst others Talia Bettcher8 have provided important insights into this multi-faceted topic. In her book 'Assuming a body', Gayle Salamon is able to give a powerful account of general human (...) experience, as well as specifically TNBE, that can capture not only insights about biological sex and socially constructed gender, but also ‘sexual self’, i.e. bodily phenomenological experiences concerning one’s own sex. In my following brief comment on Salamon, I would like to elaborate on how such a phenomenological approach touches on a number of open questions in the philosophy of mind, which I have discussed in a recent book.12. (shrink)

Understanding the Human TimeSpace: The Intersection of Self-Referential Recursion and Quantum Entanglement, also known as Magical Thinking, Machine and-or Human Intelligence. ULTA-AI. Superposition. Intelligent Autonomy, Conservation of the Circle. (0 (1) 0) 50-50.

Generally speaking, three distinct phenomena tend to hang together in human perception: perceiving that p, knowing that p, and knowing that one is perceiving that p. This chapter considers how these phenomena are related. I argue that understanding them in the context of a ‘Two-Tier’ epistemological framework, which I have developed in earlier work, automatically delivers an account of these relationships. In short, both perceptual knowledge (that p) and perceptual self-knowledge (that I am perceiving that p) are—in different ways, and (...) for different reasons—explanatorily (but not epistemically) grounded in perceiving that p. The explanation turns in part on understanding perceptual self-knowledge as an aspect of our capacity for rational expression of our states of epistemic perception. We can get a feel for the nature of this capacity, I suggest, by focussing on its exercise in basic invitations to joint perceptual attention. (shrink)

While many people think of self-knowledge as about having particular knowledge of oneself, and contemporary philosophers think of self-knowledge as about knowing one’s own mental states, historically, many thinkers have thought about self-knowledge as about knowing one’s nature. This is clear in Thomas Aquinas’s account of self-knowledge. Yet how is knowing one’s nature, which is one of the least individual aspects of oneself, self-knowledge rather than more general anthropological knowledge? This article defends the idea that there is a knowledge of (...) one’s nature which qualifies as self-knowledge and not just anthropological knowledge. In particular, it defends Aquinas’s conception of self-knowledge in dialogue with contemporary epistemology and Leo Tolstoy’s ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’. It is argued that Aquinas’s account of self-cognition describes a first-personal knowledge of our nature which is self-knowledge insofar as it is acquired through reflection on one’s experience of oneself in contrast to third-personal anthropological knowledge. (shrink)

Knowledge of our emotional and bodily states helps us to further know our goals, values, interests, cares, and concerns. The authors first lay out a puzzle as to why bodily and emotional self-knowledge is strongly associated with good mental health and well-being. They solve this puzzle by mapping out connections between bodily states, emotional states, and our goals with an account of emotions as embodied appraisals. Emotions being embodied implies that self-knowledge of our bodily states aids in acquiring knowledge of (...) our emotional states. Emotions as appraisals means that situations are appraised relative to our goals, such that self-knowledge of emotional states aids in acquiring knowledge of our goals, which are not always transparent to us. While emotional self-knowledge can be difficult to acquire, through skilled practice we can improve awareness and knowledge of our emotional and bodily states. (shrink)

Taylor Swift's songwriting is notable for its direct, clear, and powerful expressions of grief. “Marjorie,” “Bigger than the Whole Sky,” and “epiphany” are especially striking in this regard. In fact, the lyrics of these songs can be connected to contemporary philosophical discussions of grief in ways that not only heighten appreciation of the songs but also deepen our understanding of grief, a notoriously complex emotional state.

For a book symposium on The Practical Self, with commentaries from Rory Madden, Bill Brewer, Léa Salje, and Carla Bagnoli.

A traditional assumption in the literature on inner speech is that inner speech allows us to have knowledge of our thoughts. I argue that inner speech cannot even be part of an explanation of how we know our propositional states. My argument turns on the existence of unsymbolized thought, and makes the case that whatever explains self-knowledge in the absence of inner speech also explains self-knowledge when inner speech is present. Inner speech is thus ‘screened off’ from explaining the knowledge (...) we have of our propositional states. Nevertheless, inner speech seems to have a reflexive character: in inner speech we seem to represent aspects of ourselves. I argue that inner speech does not allow us to represent our own propositional states, as the tradition holds, but rather our own voices. In representing my own voice in inner speech, I bear a distinctively second-personal relation to myself, addressing myself as a ‘you’. The paper suggests a broader reorientation in theorizing about inner speech: away from questions about how inner speech maps onto mental states and toward questions about its second-personal nature. (shrink)

NOTE: This is an early preprint version. The definitive, citable "Version of Record" of this paper has been archived on arXiv and can be found under the DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2504.12310. Please use the arXiv version exclusively for all citations. -/- This paper introduces Reflective Empiricism, an extension of empirical science that incorporates subjective perception and consciousness processes as equally valid sources of knowledge. It views reality as an interplay of subjective experience and objective laws, comprehensible only through systematic introspection, bias reflection, (...) and premise-based logical-explorative modeling. This approach overcomes paradigmatic blindness arising from unreflected subjective filters in established paradigms, promoting an adaptable science. Innovations include a method for bias recognition, premise-based models grounded in observed phenomena to unlock new conceptual spaces, and Heureka moments---intuitive insights---as starting points for hypotheses, subsequently tested empirically. The author’s self-observation, such as analyzing belief formation, demonstrates its application and transformative power. Rooted in philosophical and scientific-historical references (e.g., Archimedes’ intuition, quantum observer effect), Reflective Empiricism connects physics, psychology, and philosophy, enhancing interdisciplinary synthesis and accelerating knowledge creation by leveraging anomalies and subjective depth. It does not seek to replace empirical research but to enrich it, enabling a more holistic understanding of complex phenomena like consciousness and advancing 21st-century science. (shrink)

The most annoying thing a book reviewer can do is to complain, if only implicitly, that the work under review is not quite the one that they wish the author had written. So you’ll be glad to know t...

Reflective reasoning has been central to philosophy and cognitive science more generally. However, scholars lack a unified empirical explication of ‘reflection’. This paper synthesizes a cross-disciplinary account from philosophers, scientists, and centuries of English speakers: ‘reflection’ often refers to—among other things—conscious and deliberate reconsideration of an initial intuition. This two-factor account of reflection empirically distinguishes reflection from often conflated phenomena such as rumination; it also tidily classifies self-conscious reflection as a subset of reflection. This account also accommodates mounting evidence that (...) reflection is neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality. The two-factor account has implications for philosophy (e.g., that both practical and theoretical reasoning can benefit from reflection) and science (e.g., that reflection can be a solution to rather than just a symptom of negative rumination). So the two-factor account should be preferred to accounts that do less to unify, make sense of, and guide philosophy and science. (shrink)

Cassam (Self-Knowledge for humans. Oxford University Press, 2014) introduced the term substantial self-knowledge to capture self-knowledge that is difficult to attain and plays a central role in one’s life and self-conception. Knowing whether one wants another child, whether one is a kind person, or whether one values honesty are unlike many trivial cases of knowing one’s occurrent mental state, such as knowing that one is in pain or believes it is 10 am. In response to the difficulty of substantial self-knowledge (...) agents can and already do use external objects to gain such self-knowledge. I present a series of cases of tool-assisted self-knowledge and argue that while often not recognised as such, this form of self-knowledge is commonplace. I suggest that it is best understood as a form of self-knowledge that is inferred from evidence. I explain how external objects can be a part of that inferential process along three dimensions: the generation of evidence, the tracking of evidence, and the performance of the inference that leads to self-knowledge. I provide a rough taxonomy based on these dimensions as a framework for further research. (shrink)

This is a review of Transparency and Self-Knowledge, by Alex Byrne, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2018, xi+227 pp., £46.61 (Hardback), ISBN 9780198821618.

The idea that technology can change not only our lives but also our sense of identity and even our nature does not arise first in the internet age. The rapid pace of technological development and its centrality to our current way of life does, however, make questions about whether and how it does so particularly urgent now. This paper considers a recent application in which artist-scientist Michelle Huang fed selections from her youthful journals to GPT-3 and had an extended conversation (...) with a bot representing her younger self. It looks at two specific goals Huang had for the conversation – discovering what her younger self would think of her current life and furthering her inner child work – and argues that these presuppose different conceptions of diachronic personal identity. Both are goals that have been more traditionally pursued with imaginary internal dialogues. I explain how introducing a chatbot and using it for both goals conflates different conceptions of personal identity and speculates about how widespread use of this application and others like it might potentially affect our sense of self and personal identity. (shrink)

Kant scholarship often refers to transcendental idealism as a ‘theory.’ Kant’s project, however, is not easily reconciled with that term in its current use. This paper contends that his critique and idealism should be seen as a remedial response against our natural albeit confused prejudice of transcendental realism. Kant’s idealism articulates a ‘metametaphysical’ ethos that is supposed to provide a new grounding of metaphysics by proceeding ‘from the human standpoint:’ it aims to dispel the temptation of transcendental realism in favor (...) of a resolute inhabitation of, and contentment with, our own humanity. This project comes under pressure in post-Kantianism: Fichte is among the first to voice the worry that Kant’s critique is well-intentioned, but not well-executed. His concern is that, while it ‘bring[s] man into harmony with himself,’ this mere contentment with our own humanity will not suffice to achieve the scientificity that, by Kant’s own lights, is the mark of any promising metaphysics. Fichte’s charge is that Kant’s idealism, in its very confinement to the brute facts of the human condition, surrenders itself to unacceptable contingency or ‘facticity.’ The paper explores Kant’s idealist project of grounding metaphysics, Fichte’s facticity charge against it, and whether Kantian idealism can withstand it. (shrink)

Kant insists that definitions cannot be set in stone at the outset of a metaphysical investigation, but instead must be developed successively over the course of it, and should ideally be finalized only at the end. He even suggests that the task of a critical treatment of metaphysical concepts lies in an infinite approximation towards the essence of what they purport to designate. My focus is on this Kantian idea of approximating essence in definition. I begin with a reading of (...) Kant’s remarks on the methodology of definition in the Doctrines of Method of the Critique of Pure Reason and of the Jäsche Logic. On that basis I develop an account of what I take to be the most crucial application of that methodology, which nonetheless presents a lacuna in recent scholarship: Kant’s successive definition of the concept of the understanding in general, or the overall capacity for thought and cognition. I close by suggesting how this application might matter for Kant’s project of enlightenment. (shrink)

This is an introductory article on the topic of self-knowledge for the forthcoming latest edition of the Blackwell Handbook of Epistemology.