teorema
Vol. XXX/3, 2011, pp. 35-49
ISSN: 0210-1602
[BIBLID 0210-1602 (2011) 30:3; pp. 35-49]
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
Jesús Vega-Encabo
I. HANK’S CASE
At the end of his book Expression and the Inner, David H. Finkelstein
considers whether first-person self-ascriptions are manifestations of knowledge.
He asks us to imagine how three different philosophers would describe the
following situation: Hank is someone who has learned by testimony some
facts about Green’s disease (that people who have a sharp pain in the back of
their knee are more likely than average people to get Green’s disease). Hank
feels such a pain at a moment thereafter. So he draws the conclusion that he
is more likely than the average person to get Green’s disease [Finkelstein
(2002), pp. 148-149]. In principle, if Hank is justified in believing the conclusion of the inference he makes, he should also be justified in holding the
premises. Besides, insofar as he can be said to know the premises of the following argument, he can also be said to know the conclusion:
1. Someone that has a sharp pain in the back of the knee is more likely
to get Green’s disease
2. I feel a sharp pain in the back of the knee
3. I am more likely to get Green’s disease
As it stands, Hank’s case may suggest that knowledge of the first premise is of a piece with knowledge of the second premise, that is, that the selfknowledge exhibited in his being aware of his pain and the knowledge acquired
by other means (perceptual, testimonial, or inferential) are both cognitive
achievements. Finkelstein challenges this supposed epistemic continuity between the premises. Moreover, he claims that epistemological vocabulary is
optional in describing Hank’s self-ascription (as expressed by 2). But this
does not put into question the fact that Hank is entitled to the conclusion of
his obvious inference.
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Finkelstein then proposes three different philosophical descriptions of
Hank’s case:
PH1. It is sheer nonsense to describe Hank’s self-ascriptions in epistemic
terms. Even if he is really in pain and is aware of being in pain, we cannot naturally say of him that he knows or does not know that he is in
pain, whereas it is natural to say of him that he knows by testimony
what the first premise asserts. Epistemic talk is, in the case of authoritative self-ascriptions, “unnatural and misleading and, at worst, sheer
nonsense” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 151].
PH2. It makes sense to describe Hank in epistemic terms; but his selfascription does not represent knowledge because he is not epistemically
justified. This second philosopher claims that knowledge requires epistemic justification and, given that there is no epistemic basis on which
his self-ascription is made, he does not know that he is in pain (even if
he is entitled to draw the conclusion of the obvious inference).
PH3. It makes sense to describe Hank self-ascriptions in epistemic
terms. Epistemic vocabulary can be appropriately applied to describe
Hank’s relation to the propositions expressed by premises 1 and 2 in the
argument. There is a sense in which it can be said of Hank that he really
knows that he is in pain. First-person self-ascriptions represent a kind of
knowledge that does not require epistemic justification. Though other
types of knowledge require justification, they are not of a piece with
self-knowledge. There is no epistemic continuity between both premises,
because self-knowledge is not like knowing by perceptual, testimonial,
or inferential means.
Finkelstein adds the following diagnosis: (i) PH1, PH2, and PH3 do not
disagree “about anything of genuine philosophical import”. (ii) “[A]ll three
of them might agree with everything I’ve said in this book” [Finkelstein
(2003), p. 152]. On the contrary, I will argue firstly that these three philosophers disagree philosophically about whether it is possible to offer a substantive epistemology for self-knowledge and whether this epistemology should
be unified under just one notion of knowledge. And secondly I will suggest
that it is not optional for Finkelstein’s sophisticated expressivism to use epistemic vocabulary in order to describe first-person self-ascriptions. The next
section will be devoted to characterizing the phenomenon of first-person authority and Finkelstein’s expressivist account. In section 3, I will argue that
insofar as one accepts that avowals have an assertoric dimension, it is plausible to claim that self-ascriptions could represent self-knowledge. Section 4
will focus on why Finkelstein’s account is committed to accepting that self-
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
37
ascriptions are manifestations of self-knowledge, even if one is not disposed
to give an epistemic account of the phenomenon of first-person authority. In
any case, PH1, PH2, and PH3 disagree on matters of epistemological import,
and PH3 is more congenial to the kind of sophisticated expressivism Finkelstein is attempting to argue for.
II. FIRST-PERSON AUTHORITY AND EXPRESSIVISM
Contrast the two following sets of statements:
(1) I am terribly bored.
My right leg hurts a lot.
I believe that scientists are getting better knowledge of the structure
of matter.
I am afraid of becoming depressed.
(2) The birds are eating all the fruits in the garden.
My table is always full of papers and books.
I am 5 feet tall.
The kind of authority exhibited by the first set of sentences cannot be assimilated to the kind of authority I can claim to have regarding sentences in (2).
In fact, we talk about authority in many different ways. Someone can be
an authority on a certain subject matter, because she is a trustworthy witness
or has acquired an expertise through study and dedication. But we also talk of
“institutional” authority—in cases where someone is entitled to establish certain facts or constraints that others would recognize as legitimate, cases, for
instance, where someone declares that X and Y are married or that this area is
now protected from fishing. It could be claimed that one of the purposes of
Finkelstein’s book is to convince us that these two ways of understanding
“authority” are not good models to account for the authority of the kind of
mental self-ascriptions that figure in (1). If there is any “authority” in firstperson self-ascriptions [Finkelstein (2003), p. 102], it cannot be assimilated
either to the authority of an expert (that inspires a detectivist model of firstperson authority) or to the authority of an institutional entity or a legal representative (that gives support to a constitutivist model). On the one hand, detectivism wrongly assimilates mental state avowals to the description of
physical objects and assumes a detached view of psychological conditions
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(that will be detected by an introspective mechanism) in a way that loses
sight of the characteristic self-intimacy of genuine first-person avowals. On
the other hand, constitutivists misrepresent our responsibility for those mental
states we authoritatively ascribe to ourselves. It is difficult to see how selfascriptions such as “My right leg hurts a lot” could involve any active constitutive moment.
So which is the best characterization of the phenomenon of first-person
authority? Three features are essential to it:
a) Privilege: I have the last word regarding my psychological condition.
b) Groundlessness: I do not need to rely on any behavioral evidence or
evidence of any other kind to be entitled to my self-ascriptions. This
suggests that first-person self-ascriptions are not assessable in ordinary terms: we don’t raise doubts about their veracity, and we don’t
ask for—or provide evidence of– their truth [Bar-On (2004)].
c) Authority: my self-ascriptions are prima facie treated as reliably true;
there is a presumption of truth about them; they come, in a sense,
with a certain guarantee of their truth [Wright (1998), Bilgrami,
(2006)].
In order to account for these three features of first-person selfascriptions, Finkelstein argues for a sort of sophisticated expressivism that
includes the following four theses:
1. First-person self-ascriptions are not, typically, reports; they do not
provide information about a speaker’s psychological condition that
she has learned [Finkelstein (2003), pp. 96-97; 101].
2. First-person self-ascriptions are primarily expressions of that which
they are ascriptions of [Finkelstein (2003), p. 93; 101].
3. First-person self-ascriptions are not mere expressions; they also can
be assertions. They have an assertoric dimension [Finkelstein (2003),
p. 97].
4. First-person self-ascriptions are not just ascriptions; they are interpretations that contextualize what they ascribe [Finkelstein (2003), pp.
111; 113].
Theses 1 and 2 constitute the core of a simple expressivism [Bar-On (2004)]
that is rejected by Finkelstein in the book, both as a reading of Wittgenstein’s
philosophy and as a tenable philosophical position. So thesis 3 and 4 are es-
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
39
sential to move towards a sophisticated expressivism that does not fall prey to
traditional objections.
How does expressivism account for first-person authority? Here is the
start of Finkelstein’s proposal:
(i) Being expressions, self-ascriptions satisfy the first feature of firstperson authority –privilege- because I am in a unique position to
express my mind. I am the best person to ask in order to know my
psychological condition for the same reason that it is better to look
at my face; my mental self-ascriptions express mental states, just as
smiles or grimaces do.
(ii) We are ordinarily entitled to our self-ascriptions even if we do not
have evidence that supports an avowal, for just the same reason that
smiles or grimaces do not require evidence [Finkelstein (2003), p.
101]. If they were reports, my entitlement to avow them would have
to be grounded on evidence. But they are not; they don’t play an informative role based on a previous learning of facts by the speaker.
A conception of first-person authority reduced to these two factors remains confined within the limits of traditional expressivism, making too
much of the analogy between self-ascriptions and smiles or facial expressions. Such an expressivism amounts to a denial of the very phenomenon of
first-person authority. Being merely expressions, self-ascriptions cannot be
said to be true of the self-ascriber. So there must be a sense in which selfascriptions are not like smiles and facial expression. Finkelstein acknowledges
this and adds two more factors to his expressivist account.
(iii) Self-ascriptions perform two functions: they express the mental
condition of the psychological subject, and they say something true
about it [Finkelstein (2003), p. 101].
(iv) Self-ascriptions are not mere ascriptions. They are not just answering
to the subject’s psychological condition; they are putting it in context.
They act as glosses that help to contextualize the psychological item,
in such a way that it can be said that the psychological item and the
self-ascription “make sense together” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 109] or
form a “unit of intelligibility” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 108].
It is essential to this account that the relation between a psychological
condition (like my anger) and a self-ascription cannot be viewed in terms of
the self-ascription’s registering the independent psychological condition that
at the same time it manifests or expresses. But what about the authority of
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our first-person self-ascriptions? There is a temptation to disregard the presumption of truth as a feature that has to be accounted for, given the dangers
we face when we talk of getting the truth about the subject’s psychological
conditions: this could lead us back to detectivism. But there is another option:
insofar as self-ascriptions can be true or false, the act of expressing a psychological condition through them guarantees that it is true of the self-ascriber that
she has the ascribed mental state the self-ascription has helped to contextualize.
In the next sections, I will argue that if Finkelstein’s sophisticated expressivism is committed to iii) and iv), then it is not compatible with the kind
of neutrality he is trying to defend with respect to the descriptions of Hank’s
case provided by PH1, PH2, and PH3. But if it rests just on i) and ii), it is not
different from traditional expressivist views and is subject to the same battery
of objections.
III. SELF-ASCRIPTIONS AND ASSERTION
Finkelstein’s expressivism allows for self-ascriptions to function as assertions. In this sense, self-ascriptions are not like smiles; they are truthevaluable and have an assertoric dimension. In fact, it would be strange to
talk about authority in the case of first-person self-ascriptions if they lacked
truth-values. In other words, without this move, Finkelstein’s expressivism
would be subject to traditional criticisms.
But how should we understand this assertoric dimension of selfascriptions? Without committing myself to a particular theory of assertion, I
dare to claim that at least the following two features are proper to asserting:
i) Characteristically, assertions are moves in an epistemic game. An
assertoric utterance represents a knowledge claim by the utterer.
Under certain conditions, an assertoric utterance entitles the audience
to ascribe to the utterer the possible knowledge of the proposition
asserted.
ii) Ordinarily, assertions are backed by judgments or doxastic conditions of the asserter and give voice to a judgment or a doxastic condition. For instance, my assertion that the swimming pool is not yet
full gives voice to my belief, or articulates my judgment, about the
swimming pool. Likewise, when I assert “I am angry”, I am manifesting a doxastic condition about me and my anger.
There are two different strands in this advance over simple expressivism.
First of all, expressivists need to accommodate the so-called “Geach’s point”.
A series of linguistic phenomena suggests that self-ascriptions have truth-
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
41
evaluable content: consider for instance transformations of tense (“I am angry”, “I will be angry”); embedding in certain contexts (“he knows that I am
angry”); logical phenomena like quantification (“I am angry”, “Someone is
angry”), the introduction of negation or their inclusion as antecedents in a
conditional. All these features serve to motivate the thesis that selfascriptions contribute semantically to the truth-conditions of the statements
they are embedded in. As Hank’s case shows, self-ascriptions also enter logical inferences in an unproblematic way. No doubt: they are treated as truthapt and assessable as true or false.
But this fact, by itself, does not say much about whether the most typical
use of self-ascriptions is assertoric. As Wright has shown [Wright (1998), p.
36], self-ascriptions could be viewed more like performative utterances (where
having truth-evaluable content and assertoric use come apart). Sentences like “I
am angry” could be truth-evaluable, but not used as assertions. Expressivists
could claim that their use is primarily expressive. Presence of truth-evaluable
content does not entail use with assertoric force; furthermore, it is the fact of
being truth-apt sentences that provokes the illusion that they have this possible
assertoric use (according to more traditional sorts of expressivism).
So Finkelstein needs to say more about the assertoric dimension of our
self-ascriptions, because his point is that they are not only sentences with
truth-evaluable content. He explicitly claims that they are expressions and
assertions. Moreover, it is by asserting that I am angry with my brother that I
express my anger. One possible way of understanding this is by identifying a
double illocutionary force in our self-ascriptive utterances. On the one hand,
self-ascriptions are expressions; they give voice to the self-ascribed mental
condition itself. On the other hand, self-ascriptions are assertions; they give
voice to a doxastic condition on the part of the self-ascriber. The only caution
that an expressivist must have is that of not accounting for the authority of
avowals in terms of the epistemic basis the subject recognizes for the doxastic
condition that her self-ascriptions articulate.
If this is true, then our self-ascriptions can be made with an informative
intention in view and constitute a report in its more ordinary sense.2 This report expresses the first-order mental condition of the self-ascriber, but at the
same time it involves “a judgment about one’s state of mind and the special
responsibilities of asserting that judgment” [Moran (2001), p. 104]. The kind
of sophisticated expressivism that Finkelstein is trying to defend cannot deny
this possibility without falling back to more simple versions of expressivism.
Otherwise, self-ascriptions would become mere expressions.
Nonetheless, Finkelstein is far from being clear about whether selfascriptions could involve such judgments. Remember his main thesis: it is by
asserting that I am angry with my brother that I express my anger. When he
discusses McDowell’s reading of some paragraphs in the Philosophical Investigations, he notes that the relation between a pain and the subject’s self-
Jesús Vega-Encabo
42
ascriptions is neither a matter of epistemic justification nor a matter of mere
causation. Then he adds: “When someone complains of a splitting headache,
she does not judge on this or that basis that she is in pain. Rather, she expresses her pain”. And in footnote he adds: “She does not judge at all” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 135]. For sure, our avowals are not preceded by, and based
on, acts of judging. McDowell agrees on that. This is not the point. In avowals, are we “expressing an epistemically justified belief”? [Finkelstein (2003),
p. 135]. Finkelstein rejects the idea that the avowals express epistemically justified beliefs and that someone judges or believes that she is in pain “on this or
that basis”. By itself, this does not mean that avowals cannot be at the same time
an expression of the second-order belief that one is in a certain psychological
condition. The most plausible claim seems to be that the judgment is made on
no basis whatsoever, but that the self-ascription as such involves a belief that is
given expression in the very act of ascribing to oneself a certain mental condition. That is why self-ascriptions could be used assertorically.3
But if this is so, then it is plausible to claim that self-ascriptions represent self-knowledge. One of the basic functions of assertions is to transmit
possible knowledge. So if self-ascriptions are also assertions, nothing is more
natural than to consider them as manifestations of knowledge. Simple expressivism rejects the idea that self-ascriptions manifest self-knowledge. Sophisticated expressivism seems to be committed to accepting that self-ascriptions
manifest self-knowledge. This is contrary to what PH1 is claiming. PH1, who
holds that epistemic vocabulary is nonsense in characterizing avowals, will
have a hard time articulating the assertoric dimension of self-ascriptive utterances. PH2, on his part, recognizes that self-ascriptions are not justified, because they are not ordinarily controlled by evidence. So if we applied
epistemic vocabulary, we should say that Hank does not know. PH3 articulates a position in which self-ascriptions are manifestations of knowledge,
even if a sui generis sort of knowledge, not governed by the very same conditions as ordinary knowledge. In principle, they exhibit a clear philosophical
disagreement about the legitimacy of epistemic vocabulary.
IV SELF-KNOWLEDGE
In the previous section, I implicitly made use of an important distinction. It is not contradictory to reject epistemic accounts of first-person authority and at the same time accept that self-ascriptions and avowals do really
articulate self-knowledge. Finkelstein’s account of first-person authority denies that this authority derives from the working of an epistemic method of
detection of the subject’s mental states. Nonetheless, by itself, this does not
say anything about whether self-ascriptions can be coherently viewed as ma-
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
43
nifestations of self-knowledge. As I have suggested, this seems a matter of
disagreement between our three philosophers.
There is certainly a way of posing the problem of self-knowledge that
Finkelstein would not be disposed to accept: how do our second-order beliefs
about our first-order mental states (about our psychological conditions)
amount to knowledge? This formulation (which wouldn’t make sense either
for PH1, and would raise many doubts for PH2 and PH3) seems to assume
some controversial philosophical theses about the independent nature of mental states and the descriptive function of our self-ascriptions. Nevertheless, it
coheres well with our prior characterization of authority as a sort of presumption of truth: avowals represent privileged self-knowledge in a way that other
expressions like smiles or grimaces could not do, because presumably, whenever I have a belief about my mental state, it is true that I am in such a mental condition. This is the kind of authority that justifies, in principle, our talk
of self-knowledge regarding our mental conditions.
Or maybe not. Finkelstein could hold on to the coherence between PH1,
PH2, and PH3 by arguing that their descriptions are just façons de parler: the
crucial point is that for all of them Hank’s entitlement to his self-ascription is
not based on a cognitive achievement.4 And he adds: “Do I mean to deny that
the person who says, ’I want you to stop humming that irritating song,’
knows that she wants the humming to stop? No; I don’t mean to deny this.
But if we do choose [my italics] to speak of knowledge in such a case, it’s
knowledge of a rather special sort” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 125, ft. 15]. Remember, first-person authority cannot be appropriately regarded as an epistemic matter; and it is even misleading to insist on the idea that the relation
we bear to our mental condition in a first-person way is epistemically asymmetrical with respect to the relation we have to the mental conditions of others or even to our mental states and processes when we “view” them from a
third-personal perspective. There is here no cognitive achievement involved.
In fact, Finkelstein associates first-person authority with a feature that
we could label as expressiveness. This feature can be characterized in two
ways: (a) as a capacity to express one’s own state of mind simply by selfascribing it, and (b) as a condition under which the awareness of the mental
state exhibited by a self-ascriber does not involve the raising of any epistemic
question [Finkelstein (2003), p. 125] about which mental state she is ascribing to herself. It is obvious that we can acquire knowledge about our psychological conditions in many different ways and that the propositions that figure
in our self-ascriptions could nevertheless be the same. Nothing prevents our
acquiring this knowledge through the use of an introspective mechanism, or
our relying on the remarks provided by an analyst, or our trusting the testimony of others about our own expressive behavior, etc. In such cases, we are
in a position to self-ascribe a certain proposition and we can be described as
knowing that proposition to the extent that the judgment expressed by the
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self-ascription is true and complies with certain epistemic conditions. However, here we are not speaking with first-person authority; our self-ascriptions
are not privileged, groundless, and authoritative. They lack expressiveness
because they are not the manifestation of the ability to express a mental state
by self-ascribing it [Finkelstein (2003), p. 120]. As I said before, Finkelstein
is trying to hold that self-ascriptions do not involve any cognitive achievement. But it is one thing to argue that the features of privilege, groundlessness and authority of certain self-ascriptions shouldn’t be explained away in
epistemic terms, that is, as a consequence of the subject’s holding wellwarranted true judgments that are given voice through self-ascription, and it’s
another thing to claim that it is optional to talk about ourselves as having
knowledge of our mental condition once expressiveness endows us with firstperson authority.
But how can I know, when self-ascribing a certain condition, that I am
exercising such a capacity for expressiveness? How can the subject know that
her self-ascription is really an expression of her mental condition and not
merely something she knows on the basis of evidence? In the rest of this section, I will consider possible cases of gaining and losing expressiveness. I
will try to show how both kinds of cases involve epistemic issues and that
there is a certain epistemic continuity between cases of non-expressive selfknowledge and expressive self-ascriptions.
Let’s consider first a case of gaining expressiveness. Let’s suppose
that I enjoy a certain state of secure belief about my mental condition of
anger vis-à-vis my brother but grounded on certain observations that my
friends have made me pay attention to, so that I am in a position to claim “I am
angry with my brother”. This is an unconscious feeling that I acknowledge on
the basis of evidence I have access to. My self-ascription is true and epistemically grounded, in such a way that it could be claimed that I acquire
some knowledge.
Consider now the scenario in which I express my anger with my brother
by issuing the very same self-ascription. Now, according to Finkelstein, nothing prevents me from claiming that talk of knowledge is here sheer nonsense.
Nothing forces me to claim this either, but, insofar as it is an option I have,
expressiveness is consistent with not taking self-ascriptions as manifestations
of my knowledge that I am angry with my brother. But in principle I have a
certain relation to the very same proposition. Imagine that I first get the
knowledge about my mental condition in the non-authoritative way and only
later become first-personally authorized to make the very same selfascription: Could I possibly be taken as not knowing the proposition that I
previously knew?
I think that one thing is true: our intuitions about asymmetry between
first- and third-person do not justify even the mere possibility of avoiding epistemic vocabulary to adequately describe what an expressive self-ascription
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
45
manifests about what the subject is in position to know or not know. On the
contrary, any deflationary movement in this field has problems giving its due
to the epistemic asymmetry.
Consider now a case of losing expressiveness. Following the previous
characterization of expressiveness, in those cases where it remains open an
epistemic question, a subject’s self-ascription is not expresssive. So we could
lose the ability to express our mental states merely by self-ascribing them insofar as some epistemic question is raised about whether we really are in a
certain mental state. In this sort of cases, it suffices to begin to consider some
evidence for or against the belief that one is in a certain mental state both for
losing expressiveness with respect to this mental state and for needing epistemic vocabulary to describe the situation.
In general, self-ascriptions can be taken to manifest a certain belief
about the mental condition they express (to the extent that they are assertions); at the same time, self-ascriptions, even if they are expressive, can be
questioned by the subject herself, so that they are open to self-criticism and
transparent to the mental condition itself, that is, the subject is in a position to
take her second-order belief as answering to an independent mental condition. That means that there is a sense in which the self-knowledge that we
manifest in our avowals represents a certain cognitive achievement. It is true
that when we offer the self-ascription as a natural and immediate expression
of our mental state, there is no cognitive effort involved, there has been no inference or reliance on observation or on evidence, but that does not mean that
the subject is not answering in a cognitive way to truth conditions that are “in
some way independent of the making of the judgment” [Moran (2001), p. 19].
Briefly, though our expressive self-ascriptions are not based on evidence (and
we acquire knowledge based on nothing, to use Boghossian’s terms), the
judgments expressed by our self-ascriptions are clearly subject to revision (if
not just as a consequence of our fallibility) and to evidential considerations
insofar as they answer to contingent and independent mental conditions.
I think that the best way to interpret Finkelstein’s dialectics in his book
Expression and the inner is as one attempt to sever the link between firstperson authority and self-knowledge. Detectivism could be an adequate model
of self-knowledge, but not of first-person authority. Speaking with firstperson authority is not just a question of getting knowledge (maybe by introspection or a reliable tracking competence or an infallible mechanism); it is
rather a phenomenon about how we consciously entertain certain psychological conditions. In a sense, the phenomenon concerns primarily how we are
able to give significance to our mental states in the context of our life. And
maybe this last condition has nothing to do with my knowing which mental
states I am in. It rather involves a certain transformation of my psychological
condition.
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46
V. CONCLUSION
A certain tendency in the contemporary literature on first-person authority insists on rejecting a characterization of the phenomenon in epistemic
terms. Expressivism, in its different versions, is a branch of this tendency.
Authoritative self-ascriptions are not cognitive achievements at all, and in the
more radical versions they do not even manifest self-knowledge on the part of
the self-ascriber. There is much to recommend in Finkelstein’s expressivism:
an essential component of our self-ascriptions is to expressively open our
minds in such an immediate and natural way that the expression and that
which is expressed make sense together. Finkelstein’s sophisticated expressivism attempts not to lose the assertoric dimension of our self-ascriptions.
They are truth-evaluable and they are authoritative: as I have said before, the
act of expressing a psychological condition through our avowals guarantees
that it is true of the self-ascriber that she is in the self-ascribed mental state.
In any case, Finkelstein doesn’t pay much attention to this feature of firstperson authority and how the contextualizing feature of our self-ascriptions
could help to elucidate how our avowals are presumed to be true or even
guaranteed to be true in a sense that our perceptual judgments, for instance,
are not.
Finkelstein’s expressivism seems to face a dilemma. On the one hand, if
he adheres to a strong analogy between self-ascriptions and natural expressions, the link with the assertoric and epistemic dimensions of avowals will
be severed. On the other hand, I have tried to show that taking the assertoric
dimension of avowals seriously means committing oneself to an epistemic
description of first-person self-ascriptions. So it is difficult to view it as an
option to describe Hank’s case as articulating self-knowledge. First-person
authority is not accounted for in epistemic terms, but that does not let us to
draw the conclusion that avowals could be coherently described as not manifesting self-knowledge. There is a sense in which we should view avowals as
the result of a cognitive achievement, not in the sense that the self-ascriber
has recognized or ascertained a certain fact about his own psychological life
and then reports it through her avowals, but in the sense of considering that
our self-ascriptions answer to an independent reality.
So if self-ascriptions are assertions and articulate self-knowledge, then
there are genuine philosophical disagreements between PH1, PH2, and PH3.
PH1 disagrees with PH2 and PH3 on whether there can be a substantive epistemology of self-knowledge. PH2 and PH3 disagree on whether our substantive epistemology of self-knowledge could be unified under just one notion
of knowledge. PH1 is closer to simple expressivism, given his rejection of
epistemic vocabulary in the characterization of Hank’s avowals. As such, he
is disposed to renounce a substantive epistemology for self-knowledge. PH2
accepts epistemic vocabulary, but recommends a sort of error theory about
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
47
the cognitive expressions used to describe Hank’s self-ascriptions. In any
case, PH2 argues from a certain unified epistemology that makes justification
a necessary condition for knowledge. PH3, insofar as he takes seriously a description in terms of knowledge, should be committed to provide an elucidation of the special kind of knowledge that our self-ascriptions manifest. If this
is not one of his commitments, then he is not only rejecting the idea that firstperson authority is backed by a cognitive achievement, understood as the
outcome of our efforts to get things right, but also the possibility of developing a substantive epistemology, that is, an account of how self-ascriptive
judgments are reliable, apt to be knowledge or presumably true (obviously in
a sense that is not shared by other forms of getting knowledge).
My suspicion is that Finkelstein views Hank’s case as indifferent with
respect to the epistemic question because he draws his intuitions about firstperson authority exclusively from the theses defended by a simple expressivist,
whereas he draws on sophisticated expressivism when trying to recover the
idea that self-ascriptions are truth-evaluable and assertoric (so he will be free
of traditional objections against expressivism) without drawing the epistemological consequences of this move.
Behind many of the arguments against the idea that we should care too
much about knowledge when addressing issues about first-person authority is
the conviction that the only epistemic model that is available is detectivism,
and as Finkelstein and others have shown, detectivism is an insufficient and
flawed position as an account of first-person authority. Nonetheless, Finkelstein is yet guided by the assumption that the only epistemic model to account for authoritative self-knowledge is a form of detectivism.
So I do not see any other possibility, to avoid philosophical conflict
between PH1, PH2, and PH3, than to regard epistemic vocabulary as mere flatus
vocis, a description that amounts to nothing. If, on the contrary, we accept that
our self-ascriptions can enter into inferences like those that Hank makes and
can function as genuine assertions, then the philosophical disagreement
between our three philosophers becomes clear: they disagree about whether it
makes sense to develop a substantive epistemology of self-knowledge and
whether our epistemology should be unified under just one notion of knowledge.
Departamento de Lingüística General, Lenguas Modernas, Lógica
y Filosofía de la Ciencia y Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco
E-28049 Madrid
E-mail: [email protected]
Jesús Vega-Encabo
48
NOTES
1
I would like to thank Josep Corbí, Fernando Broncano, Diego Lawler, Ignacio
Vicario and Víctor Martín Verdejo for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and
specially David Finkelstein for his comments on the last version and his suggestions to
improve the text. The research for this paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Innovation (FFI2009-12054, CSD00C-09-00056).
2
Finkelstein has a sui generis notion of report. For him, reports are “an attempt
(or merely apparent attempt) to inform someone of a fact that the speaker has learned
or ascertained” [Finkelstein (2003), p. 97, italics in the original].
3
See for instance the following text in the footnote 9 of the page 120: “the sort
of ability at issue is one that enables a person to express his state of mind in a selfascription of it, where what matters –what carries the expressive force– isn’t his tone
of voice…, but simply the fact that he is giving voice to his sincere judgment about
his own state of mind”. Here Finkelstein seems to be assuming that the expression of
a mental state depends on giving voice to a sincere judgment about the mental state.
4
Truly enough, Finkelstein does not say much where this entitlement comes
from and what it consists in.
REFERENCES
BAR-ON, D. (2004), Speaking My Mind. Expression and Self-Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
BILGRAMI, A. (2006), Self-Knowledge and Resentment, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
FINKELSTEIN, D. (2003), Expression and the Inner, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
FRICKER, E. (1998), “Self-Knowledge: Special Access Vs. Artefact of Grammar -A
Dichotomy Rejected”, in C. Wright, B. C, Smith and C. Macdonald (eds.),
Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 155-206.
MORAN, R. (2001), Authority and Estrangement. An Essay on Self-Knowledge, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
WRIGHT, C. (1998), “Self-Knowledge: the Wittgensteinian Legacy”, in C. Wright, B.
C, Smith and C. Macdonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 13-45.
RESUMEN
David Finkelstein, en su libro Expression and the Inner, ofrece una explicación
no-epistémica de la autoridad de primera persona que podría caer bajo la etiqueta de
expresivismo sofisticado. Discuto el caso de Hank, introducido en el último capítulo
del libro para apoyar la idea de que no hay necesariamente un desacuerdo filosófico
entre aquellos que consideran que es un puro sinsentido describir las declaraciones de
Hank en términos epistémicos, aquellos que niegan efectivamente que conoce porque
no está justificado y aquellos que aceptan una descripción epistémica según un concepto de conocimiento que no implica justificación. En mi comentario, argumento que
Self-Knowledge as Knowledge?
49
en la medida en que el expresivismo sofisticado se toma en serio la idea de que las declaraciones son también aseveraciones, debería estar comprometido con una descripción epistémicas de las auto-adscripciones en primera persona, incluso si esta
descripción se aleja de concepciones epistemológicas tradicionales. Casos de ganar y
perder lo que denominaré expresividad muestran la continuidad epistémica en autoadscripciones que podrían diferir en autoridad de primera persona. Hay, por tanto, un
desacuerdo filosófico serio entre nuestros tres tipos de filósofos.
PALABRAS CLAVE: expresivismo, declaración, autoconocimiento, autoridad de primera
persona, aseveración, logro cognitivo.
ABSTRACT
David Finkelstein, in his book Expression and the Inner, offers a non-epistemic
account of first-person authority that could fall under the label of sophisticated expressivism. I discuss Hank’s case, introduced in the final chapter of his book to support the idea that there is no necessary philosophical disagreement between those that
consider to be sheer nonsense to describe Hank’s avowals in epistemic terms, those
that deny that he knows because he is not justified, and those that accept an epistemic
description under a concept of knowledge that does not entail justification. In my comments, I argue that insofar as sophisticated expressivism takes seriously the idea that
avowals are also assertions, it should be committed to an epistemic description of firstperson self-ascriptions, even if that description departs from traditional epistemological
conceptions. Cases of gaining and losing what I will dub expressiveness show the epistemic continuity between self-ascriptions that could differ in first-person authority. So
there is serious philosophical disagreement between our three types of philosophers.
KEYWORDS: Expressivism, Avowal, Self-Knowledge, First-Person Authority, Assertion, Cognitive Achievement.