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Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind

Online ISBN:
9780199345663
Print ISBN:
9780199926299
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind

Matthew Boyle
Matthew Boyle
Emerson and Grace Wineland Pugh Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
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Published online:
22 February 2024
Published in print:
4 March 2024
Online ISBN:
9780199345663
Print ISBN:
9780199926299
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The topic of self-knowledge has been central to philosophy since antiquity, but if self-knowledge deserves to be, not just a goal that each person should privately pursue, but a topic that philosophers should investigate in general terms, on what basis does it claim this attention? This book urges a reconsideration of the classical idea that the topic of self-knowledge earns its philosophical significance in virtue of its connection with the distinctive nature of human minds. The author argues that the capacity for self-knowledge is a byproduct of the “first-person perspective” that all human beings possess, as rational animals, on their own lives, and seeks to defend this perspective against popular forms of skepticism about its soundness. The author develops these ideas in a way that seeks to bring out a link between debates about how people know their owns mind and the dark but intriguing idea that Jean-Paul Sartre expressed in his remark that, for a human being, “to exist is always to assume its being” in a way that implies “an understanding of human reality by itself.” An implication of this Sartrean thought about self-awareness, the author argues, is that the primary form of self-awareness must be transparent: its focus must be, not oneself, but aspects of the non-mental world presented in a way that is informed by an implicit self-awareness. Nevertheless—as the author goes on to argue—rational subjects are necessarily capable of transforming this implicit self-awareness, through reflection, into an explicit understanding of themselves and their own mental states.

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