Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

234515

Basic self-knowledge and transparency

Cristina Borgoni

pp. 679-696

Abstract

Cogito-like judgments, a term coined by Burge (1988), comprise thoughts such as, I am now thinking, I [hereby] judge that Los Angeles is at the same latitude as North Africa, or I [hereby] intend to go to the opera tonight. It is widely accepted that we form cogito-like judgments in an authoritative and not merely empirical manner. We have privileged self-knowledge of the mental state that is self-ascribed in a cogito-like judgment. Thus, models of self-knowledge that aim to explain privileged self-knowledge should have the resources to explain the special self-knowledge involved in cogito judgments. My objective in this paper is to examine whether a transparency model of self-knowledge (i.e., models based on Evans ’ 1982 remarks) can provide such an explanation: granted that cogito judgments are paradigmatic cases of privileged self-knowledge, does the transparency procedure explain why this is so? The paper advances a negative answer, arguing that the transparency procedure cannot generate the type of thought constitutive of cogito judgments.

Publication details

Published in:

Jacot Justine, Pärnamets Philip (2018) Games, interactive rationality, and learning. Synthese 195 (2).

Pages: 679-696

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-016-1235-5

Full citation:

Borgoni Cristina (2018) „Basic self-knowledge and transparency“. Synthese 195 (2), 679–696.