Muzio, Isabella; (1999) Looking inside: An investigation of introspective self-knowledge. Masters thesis (M.Phil), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Recent discussion of self-knowledge in the philosophy of mind divides the theoretical options as follows: either we know the contents of our own conscious minds inferentially, or we do so observationally through some form of 'inner sense', or we do so not on in any way or on any basis, but rather, in virtue of the holding of some constitutive link between our first-order conscious states and our second-order self-ascriptive judgements. In this thesis, I investigate this special, immediate, authoritative knowledge we seem to have of a certain range of our thoughts, beliefs, desires and other intentional states, and argue that a close examination of the above theoretical lines of approach ultimately shows, contra all three of them, that our knowledge of our own conscious states must be based on these conscious states themselves, considered as states of primitive self-awareness. More specifically, I argue firstly that there are conclusive reasons for rejecting all three of the above lines of approach to introspective self-knowledge; secondly, that these three lines are not in fact exhaustive; thirdly, that recent attempts made to depart from them either fail to be satisfactory given a certain explanatory aim or end up collapsing back into either the second or the third; and finally, that the only way of avoiding the obstacles faced by all three of these options is by taking on the thesis that our second-order abilities are reflected in the very nature of our phenomenally conscious states, that is, that conscious states, in appropriately conceptually equipped beings, are intrinsically (and somehow primitively) self-conscious states; a thesis the details and consequences of which I then outline in the final chapter.

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