On knowing your own beliefs

a representationalist account

Peter Carruthers

pp. 145-165

in: Nikolaj Nottelmann (ed), New essays on belief, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

This chapter first outlines the interpretive sensory-access (ISA) theory of self-knowledge, developed and defended at length in my 2011 book, The Opacity of Mind. It then considers and critiques a pair of competitors, each of which regards the relationship between one's beliefs and one's knowledge of them as constitutive rather than relational. The first is a form of dispositionalism about belief. The second builds on the distinction drawn by cognitive scientists between so-called "System 1" and "System 2" reasoning processes.