I just sent off a new paper of mine on self-knowledge to the editors of a forthcoming collection from Routledge called “New Perspectives on Transparency and Self-Knowledge”. The title of my paper is “Models of Self-Knowledge: From Inference and Self-Scanning to Transparency and Rational Deliberation”. Here is the abstract:
My aim in this paper is twofold: (i) to develop a framework for thinking about different models of self-knowledge and (ii) to offer some considerations in favour of one model. The framework I develop combines two methodologies: Gricean creature construction and model building in philosophy. Together these methodologies constitute a fruitful methodology for exploring questions in the philosophical psychology of self-knowledge. I begin by describing the basic subject that will form the basis for the construction of more sophisticated self-knowing subjects. I will then, largely by way of illustration of the model building approach, describe a model of self-knowledge that our basic subject already satisfies, namely the inferential model, and argue that the model is clearly inadequate as a model of self-knowing subjects like ourselves. I then briefly describe the self-scanning model, primarily as a way of introducing an important desideratum and setting the scene for the rest of the discussion. I then describe several models of self-knowledge which seek to vindicate the “transparency observation”, offering some brief evaluative remarks on each model. I then raise a puzzle about deliberative models of self-knowledge before describing and defending what I take to be the most promising version of the deliberative model of self-knowledge.