Self-Knowledge and Rationality

I believe that human beings have walked on the moon, and I know that I have this belief. But how do I know it? One of the peculiarities about claims to self-knowledge is that they are typically made without being based on evidence. And yet, the claim that I make about my own belief, without evidence, is usually taken to have a greater authority than the claim I make about someone else’s belief, no matter how much evidence I may have regarding that person’s psychology. This sort of peculiarity has seemed to many philosophers to rule out any account of self-knowledge that is modeled on the knowledge we have of the world outside our own minds. In particular, many would now reject any account modeled on perception.1 Hence, some philosophers have offered an account of self-knowledge that takes its authority or entitlement to be non-epistemic in character.2 They argue that self-knowledge is grounded, not in any sort of cognitive connection to an independently existing mental state, but in the very nature of rational agency. There is much about the rational agency view of self-knowledge that is illuminating. But, I will argue, it cannot be the whole story, for we still must take an epistemic stance toward our own mental states on many occasions. Rational agency requires it. In what follows, then, I shall argue that there are two ways in which we are rationally required to adopt an epistemic stance toward ourselves. I conclude by considering how recognition of this fact poses a serious challenge for the rational agency view