Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind

✍ Scribed by Matthew Boyle

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 305
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The topic of self-knowledge has been central to philosophy since antiquity--but if self-knowledge deserves to be not just a goal that each of us should privately pursue, but a topic that philosophers should investigate in general terms, on what basis does it claim our attention? Much contemporary work in philosophy and cognitive science treats human cognition and perception as processes of representation manipulation, unaffected by our capacity for self-awareness. In Transparency and Reflection Matthew Boyle challenges this paradigm by urging a reconsideration of the classical idea that the capacity for reflective self-knowledge is an essential feature of human mindedness.

Boyle argues that our ability for reflective self-knowledge is a byproduct of the "first person perspective" on our own lives that all human beings possess, as rational animals, and he seeks to defend this perspective against influential forms of skepticism about its soundness. Once we appreciate the connection between having a first person perspective on our own minds and having the capacity for self-knowledge, Boyle suggests, we can see a link between debates about how we know our own minds and the dark but intriguing idea that Jean-Paul Sartre expressed in his remark that, for a human being, "to exist is always to assume its being" in a way that implies "an understanding of human reality by itself."

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Transparency and Reflection
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Introduction
I.1. Why Study Self-​Knowledge?
I.2. Self-​Knowledge and the First-​Person Perspective
I.3. The Stakes in These Debates
I.4. Epistemic versus Metaphysical Approaches to Self-​Knowledge
I.5. Kantian versus Sartrean Conceptions of Self-​Consciousness
I.6. Plan of the Chapters
Part I: Self-​Knowledge and Transparency
1. Transparency and Other Problems
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Standard Formulations
1.3. Three Observations about Self-​Knowledge
1.4. Generalizing the Problem of Transparency
1.5. Conclusion and Prospect
2. Contemporary Approaches
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Transparency versus Alienation: Moran
2.3. Transparency as Inference from World to Mind: Byrne
2.4. Transparency as Inference from Judgment to Belief: Peacocke
2.5. Transparency and Expression: Finkelstein and Bar-​On
2.6. Conclusion
3. The Reflectivist Approach
3.1. Reflectivism and Its Problems
3.2. Sartre and Reflectivism
3.3. Nonpositional Consciousness and Transparency
3.4. The Structure of the Sartrean Account
3.5. Conclusion
Part II: Self-​Consciousness and the First-​Person Perspective
4. Consciousness-​as-​Subject
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Imagining-​as-​Subject
4.3. Representing-​as-​Subject in General
4.4. Subjective versus Objective Attitudes: Some Contrasts
4.5. Consciousness-​as-​Subject and Self-​Knowledge
4.6. Consciousness-​as-​Subject and Nonpositional Consciousness
5. Self-​Consciousness
5.1. Introduction
5.2. The Anti-​Egoist Challenge
5.3. Egocentric Thought: Monadic versus Relational
5.4. Consciousness-​as-​Subject versus Self-​Consciousness
5.5. Introducing the First Person
5.6. The Reflectivist Approach to the First Person
5.7. The First Person and Others
5.8. Implications
5.8.1. Referentialism versus Anti-​Referentialism
5.8.2. Essentialism versus Inessentialism
5.8.3. Egoism versus Anti-​Egoism
6. Bodily Awareness
6.1. Introduction
6.2. The Subject-​Object Problem
6.3. Sartre’s Enigmatic Intervention
6.4. Positional versus Nonpositional Consciousness Again
6.5. Nonpositional Bodily Awareness
6.6. The Primacy of Nonpositional Bodily Awareness
6.7. Conclusion
Part III: Reflection and Self-​Understanding
7. Reflection and Rationality
7.1. Introduction
7.2. A Budget of Difficulties
7.3. Rationality and the Taking Condition
7.4. Taking and Reflection
7.5. Self-​Reflection
7.6. Responses to Difficulties
7.7. Rational versus Nonrational Minds
8. Armchair Psychology
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Two Kinds of Armchair Psychology
8.3. First Illustration: Intentional Action
8.4. Second Illustration: Perception
8.5. Modes of Presentation and Implicit Understanding
8.6. The Nature of Reflection
8.6.1. The Mode-​to-​Content Shift
8.6.2. Aristotle’s Principle
8.6.3. Systematicity
8.7. Implications
9. Self-​Understanding
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Skepticism about Self-​Understanding
9.3. Processualism about Self-​Understanding
9.4. Processualism and Skepticism
9.5. Transparency and Self-​Understanding
9.6. Conclusion: Intelligibility and Intelligence
10. The Examined Life
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Refining the Claim
10.3. Reflection in Good and Bad Faith
10.4. The Point of Self-​Reflection
10.5. Socratic and Cartesian Self-​Knowledge
10.6. Human Beings as “Beings for Themselves”
Bibliography
Index