Zhihan Li

This essay argues for a rational agency account of transparent self-knowledge. I argue that self-knowledge, the second-order knowledge of one's intentional and cognitive mental states, is grounded on one's first-order understanding of the relevant world-oriented question. My account improves on the previous transparency theories developed by Richard Moran and others in three respects: (1) it accounts for the epistemic warrant of transparent self-knowledge missing from Moran's view; (2) it extends to self-knowledge of other rational beliefs, whereas most existing theories only apply to deliberation-based self-knowledge; (3) it avoids the charge of “voluntarism” since it does not postulate a rational capacity of “deciding what to believe.” My account also comes with far-reaching implications. Most importantly, it will be the upshot of my argument that second-order self-knowledge is constitutive of the very first-order understanding of the world. Moreover,I suggest that at least in the paradigmatic cases, self-knowledge is primarily about one's understanding and knowledge, rather than one's belief, as scholars have commonly assumed.

Anscombe famously argues that ‘I’ is not a referring expression, otherwise, a ‘Cartesian Ego’ would inevitably appear. She thinks the form of self-consciousness expressed in ‘I’ is ‘subjectless’: it is consciousness that does not involve a self-object (or Ego). Sartre’s theory of consciousness offers a strikingly parallel and mutually illuminating framework. He similarly denies the presence of the Ego within consciousness, arguing instead that the Ego is a transcendent object constructed through reflection. For both of them, the fundamental form of self-consciousness is pre-reflective. I argue that Anscombe’s position encounters two difficulties: (1) how the non-referential ‘I’ can express subjectivity, and (2) how self-consciousness is about an embodied subject. I propose that Sartre’s accounts of (1) the ‘fundamental ipseity’ and (2) the ‘lived body’ offer a phenomenological framework that helps to respond to Anscombe’s difficulties.