Phil quiz Flashcards
Self knowledge
-In general it is natural to think I have some insight into facts about my own mind and/or experience
-Knowledge of our own minds
-Tend to trust my beliefs about my own mental state more than my beliefs about yours
(Non)infallibility of self knowledge
-First view of self knowledge as secure
-We can’t be wrong
-One is infallible about one’s own mental state iff one cannot have a false belief to the effect that one is in a certain mental state
(Non)omniscience of self knowledge
-Second view of self knowledge as secure
-We are omniscient about our own mental states
-We have complete knowledge of them
-On is omniscient about one’s mental state iff being in a mental state suffices for knowing one is in that state
Gertler’s Kate example
-He thinks it is easy to show we are neither omniscient nor infallible about our own mental states
-Consider Kate, she trusts her therapist when they tell her that she distrusts her mother
-Kate then comes to believe this, however her therapist is wrong
-This shows that she is neither infallible (she wrongly believes that she distrusts her mother) nor omniscient ( she fails to believe that she trusts her mother)
Descartes cogito
-Claim that he thinks
-I think therefore I am”
-1) I think 2) I am 3) I think therefor I am
-Claims 2 and 3 don’t fit our definition of self knowledge because they aren’t knowledge of our own
-Claim 1) seem as if one is infallible, ie. there is no way to believe 1) falsely
Introspection as inner sense
-One analogy is that perception and introspection are causal:
-The mental state causes the introspective belief
-Second analogy is that the correlation is contingent:
-I may not have formed beliefs about my own mental state just as I may not have formed beliefs about the external world
-Disanalogies say that inner sense involves no dedicated sense organ, while perception often involves sensory experiences, which is not true of introspection
Introspection
-The examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes
Shoemakers self blindness argument
-Argued against inner sense accounts of introspection
-His argument was that for any sensory capacity, a rational person could lack that capacity
-However someone who is “selfblind”- (lacks the capacity to reliability form beliefs about their own mental states)- would no longer be rational
Introspection as transparency
-Imagine someone asks you if its snowing, you don’t need to introspect, instead it seems natural to just determine if it is snowing
-Idea here is that beliefs about our own mental state are transparent
-In general, to determine whether I believe that P, I look at P itself
-Schema:
-P, therefor I believe that P
-Note that the schema does not yield valid arguments, but conclusion is still true
-If i infer from P that I believe P, then I have to be believing the premise P, so the conclusion will be true
-3 important features
-1. Inferential account: self knowledge comes from via inference not via some direct mechanism
-2. Explains the seemingly infallibility of self knowledge: whenever I use schema it will be successful
-3. Explains the difference between self knowledge and other knowledge: we can’t use the schema on others
-One major worry is that it doesn’t give us insight into our priori beliefs since reasoning may give us new beliefs
Security of introspection
-even if I am not perfectly secure about my own emotional states, I may be nonetheless be perfectly secure in my beliefs about some of my mental states
-in particular it seems to many that we can’t be wrong about our current conscious experience
-for example, I believe that Im experiencing pain or seeing red then the thought goes, there’s no room for error and I have knowledge of these states
schwitsgebbles argument
-argues against the reliability of introspection about conscious experience
-thinks its highly untrustworthy
-think of a red table, I could be wearing tinted glass that mislead me as to its actual colour, so the belief about the external world that I form on the basis of the experiences may be false
-after all even if I am wrong about the colour of the table, it doesn’t seem I can be wrong about what colour it seems to me
-this is what he denies
-he thinks when it comes to our current conscious experiences we are often ignorant and prone to error
Arguments from emotion- schwitzgebble
-argument 1: the general character of emotional presence
- he is arguing that these questions are very difficult to answer
-also thinks that this is incompatible with the claim that introspection is privileged
-argument 2: the very presence of emotion
-we are often mistaken about the very presence of our emotional states ex. pleasure, suffering
-again this would be surprising if introspection was privileged in regard to our emotional states
-argument 3: the character of specific emotional experiences
-previous examples concerned emotional states in very general terms, maybe when we consider very specific emotional experiences introspection is highly effective
-he argues this is not the case
belief, knowledge, and action
-imagine I am thirsty and I believe if I drink water I will quench my thirst
-what will I do?
-drink water!
-so we can see why knowing things matter. If I have lots of false beliefs then I will tend to not get what I want
cases that motivate Gendler to recognize alief
-case 1: refusing to walk on the glass floor of CN tower
-case 2: refusing to drink from the toilet shaped water fountain
-case 3: shrieking at a horror movie
-dont seem to be cases of deliberate deception
-dont seem to be cases of self deception
-dont seem to be cases of doubt or uncertainty
-according to her, these are all cases in which I have an alief that seems to conflict with my beliefs
cn tower example
alief: cliff! danger! stay away!
representational content: cliff
affective content: danger
behavioural content: stay away
