Conference Presentations by Dorit Bar-On
Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzle... more Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzles surrounding the seemingly privileged, first-person access we have to our own minds. His is an attempt to answer the question:
What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have?
In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide.
In Section 2, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 3, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 4, I motivate my preferred, neo-expressivist approach to avoiding Rorty’s Dilemma by drawing on the earlier discussion of “I” and of self-identification. I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely:
What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them?
I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.
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Conference Presentations by Dorit Bar-On
What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have?
In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide.
In Section 2, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 3, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 4, I motivate my preferred, neo-expressivist approach to avoiding Rorty’s Dilemma by drawing on the earlier discussion of “I” and of self-identification. I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely:
What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them?
I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.