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1911Self‐Knowledge and Rational Agency: A Defense of EmpiricismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (1): 91-109. 2018.How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-know…Read more
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518The explanatory gap is not an illusion: A reply to Michael TyeMind 110 (439): 689-694. 2001.The claim that there is an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal properties is perhaps the leading current challenge to materialist views about the mind. Tye tries to block this challenge, not by providing an explanation to bridge the gap but by denying that phenomenalphysical identities introduce an explanatory gap. Since an explanatory gap exists only if there is something unexplained that needs explaining, and something needs explaining only if it can be explained , there is no gap.…Read more
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310Privileged Access: Philosophical Accounts of Self-Knowledge (edited book)Ashgate. 2003.When read as demands for justification, these questions seem absurd. We don’t normally ask people to substantiate assertions like “I think it will rain tomorrow” or “I have a headache”. There is, at the very least, a strong presumption that sincere self-attributions about one’s thoughts and feelings are true. In fact, some philosophers believe that such self-attributions are less susceptible to doubt than any other claims. Even those who reject that extreme view generally acknowledge that there …Read more
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396A defense of the knowledge argumentPhilosophical Studies 93 (3): 317-336. 1999.This paper calls into question the viability of materialist reduction of the phenomenal. I revisit the 'Knowledge Argument', which claims that there is information about the phenomenal which is not reducible to, nor even inferable from, information about the physical. I demonstrate the failure of the two chief strategies for blocking the Knowledge Argument: analyzing phenomenal knowledge as an ability, and construing it as knowledge of facts which are ontologically reducible to physical facts. M…Read more
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44The World Without, the Mind Within (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1): 235-238. 2000.In self-attributing beliefs and desires, we exploit a method that is different from our methods for attributing such states to others. On one traditional diagnosis, this difference stems from the subject’s exclusive access to introspective evidence. Gallois rejects the “access to evidence” model of the epistemic difference between self-knowledge and other-knowledge; in this ambitious book he provides a non-introspectivist alternative account of first-person authority. His intriguing proposal is …Read more
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611Self-KnowledgeStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015."Self-knowledge" is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one's particular mental states, including one's beliefs, desires, and sensations. It is also sometimes used to refer to knowledge about a persisting self -- its ontological nature, identity conditions, or character traits. At least since Descartes, most philosophers have believed that self-knowledge is importantly different from knowledge of the world external to oneself, including others' thoughts. But there is little agre…Read more
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210Conscious states as objects of awareness: on Uriah Kriegel, Subjective consciousness: a self-representational theoryPhilosophical Studies 159 (3): 447-455. 2012.Conscious states as objects of awareness: on Uriah Kriegel, Subjective consciousness: a self - representational theory Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9763-9 Authors Brie Gertler, Corcoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116
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1378The Knowledge ArgumentIn The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan. 2005.The definitive statement of the Knowledge Argument was formulated by Frank Jackson, in a paper entitled “Epiphenomenal Qualia” that appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly in 1982. Arguments in the same spirit had appeared earlier (Broad 1925, Robinson 1982), but Jackson’s argument is most often compared with Thomas Nagel’s argument in “What is it Like to be a Bat?” (1974). Jackson, however, takes pains to distinguish his argument from Nagel’s. This entry will follow standard practice in focusin…Read more
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