Topic. This will be a seminar on self-knowledge. In particular, we will try to understand our (apparent) capacity to have a relatively immediate and privileged kind of access to certain sorts of facts about ourselves. These facts include facts about our perceptual states, our bodily sensations, our thoughts, and our actions.

Inasmuch as epistemology is the study of various sorts of knowledge and justified belief, the study of self-knowledge is a part of epistemology. But the study of self-knowledge will take us outside epistemology into its foundations in the philosophy of mind, for a number of reasons.

First, certain currently prominent doctrines in the philosophy of mind seem to lead to paradoxes about self-knowledge. In particular, it has been argued that externalism in the philosophy of mind -- the doctrine that certain mental states are constituted partly by facts external to the agents in those mental states -- implies, surprisingly, that we are able to have a priori knowledge about certain contingent matters of fact (e.g., that water exists).

Second, some have thought that our immediate and privileged access to facts about our mental states shows that those mental states are not independent of our thinking about them. If this is true, then perhaps by investigating facts about our knowledge of our mental states, we can learn something about the nature of those mental states themselves.

For both of these reasons, we will spend the first part of the course (Units I-II below) considering the nature of one central mental state: belief. We will consider several prominent current accounts of belief, and ask how the beliefs of agents are related to (i) internal connections between their internal states, (ii) causal connections between their internal states and external objects, properties, and facts, and (iii) their membership in linguistic communities. We will focus on the motivations behind externalist theories of belief.

In the second part of the course (Units III-IV), we will consider paradoxes of self-knowledge which arise out of externalist theories of certain mental states.

In the third part of the course (Units V-VIII), we will ask what kind of knowledge self-knowledge is. Is it, for example, a kind of quasi-perceptual introspective knowledge? Is it related to language in some special way? Is it somehow constitutive of the mental states known?

In the fourth part of the course (Unit IX, if we get there), we will shift attention from our knowledge of our own mental states to knowledge of the actions we are pursuing and of our own intentions. We will ask whether this kind of self-knowledge can tell us anything about the nature of intentional action.

Requirements & grading. Undergraduate students will be required to attend and participate in class, do the assigned reading, and write two essays. Each will be approximately 8-10 pages in length, and will be worth 45% of the grade. 10% of the grade will be based on class attendance and participation.

Graduate students will be required to write a substantial term paper, which should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 pages, though length may vary depending on topic. You should expect to meet with me several times about this paper, and should expect to be asked to write several drafts of it. Depending on your topic, you may be required to read material not on the course syllabus. This paper will be worth 80% of the final grade, with 20% allotted to class participation. Some advanced undergraduate students may take the option of writing the longer term paper instead of two shorter papers, but only with my permission.

Prerequisites. I will presuppose competence with introductory logic through quantification. Some background in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind will be very helpful, but is not required.

Texts. Most of the readings will come from a coursepack, available at Paragraphe, and the collection of essays Knowing Our Own Minds, also available at Paragraphe. I will also make Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention available at Paragraphe, though buying this book is less important than purchasing the coursepack and the collection of essays. All of the course materials will also be on reserve at the library.