In my 'Mind's Eye': introspectionism, detectivism, and the basis of authoritative self-knowledge

It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, ‘constitutivist’, one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a conceptual matter. I argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative selfknowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states. It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, despite the fact that such knowledge seems typically to be neither inferencebased nor empirically evidence-based. Given that beliefs that are not based on evidence are not generally thought to be more reliable than ones that are, theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain the special status that attaches to at least some of it. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to a basis for self-knowledge which is perception-like in involving a reliable causal mechanism that enables subjects ‘detect’ their own mental states, whereas the