SELF-KNOWLEDGE – A DEFENSE OF AN EXTROSPECTIVE ACCOUNT MICHAEL ROCHE Our knowledge of (some of) what we believe, desire, perceive, etc. seems privileged. That is, it seems both superior to, and different in kind from, our knowledge of others’ mental states. In addition, we seem able to arrive at such knowledge in a special way, one ill suited for coming to know others’ minds. This privileged access makes possible privileged self-knowledge. Philosophers have traditionally advanced introspective accounts of this access. The acquaintance and inner sense theories are in this tradition. According to the former, we are able to bear a non-causal, metaphysically direct relationship to some of our own mental states; according to the latter, we have a perception-like mechanism for detecting such states. In contrast, other philosophers have defended extrospective accounts according to which privileged self-knowledge is attained, not by attending to one’s mental states, but rather by thinking about the non-mental world. One can come to know, e.g., whether one believes that p by inquiring as to whether p is true. Finally, some philosophers regard privileged access as illusory. My dissertation is largely organized around the three approaches just sketched: introspective, extrospective, and skeptical. Further, I attend almost exclusively to the propositional attitudes. My primary goal is to defend an extrospective account of our privileged access to these states. Following a short introductory chapter (chapter 1), the dissertation is divided into two parts. The first concerns the introspective approach, while the second concerns the extrospective approach. The first introspective account that I consider is the inner sense theory (chapter 2-4). My case against it rests largely on my positive project (undertaken in chapters 6-8). My main aim here is to achieve a clearer understanding of the theory. In these chapters, I argue (inter alia) that (i) the theory is committed to a heretofore unrecognized claim about the neurological realization of the propositional attitudes, and (ii) a common argument form used by both proponents and opponents of the theory is both often misused and difficult to successfully execute. I turn next (in chapter 5) to the acquaintance theory. After explaining and raising various criticisms of this theory, I argue that the dispositional, and hence non-phenomenal, nature of the propositional attitudes makes the theory ill suited to explain our alleged privileged access to these states. I begin the second part of my dissertation by examining (in chapter 6) Alex Byrne’s (2005) extrospective account of the alleged privileged access that we have to our beliefs. I develop (in chapters 6 and 7) my own extrospective account, which I argue has advantages over Byrne’s. Put roughly, my account claims that one’s judgment concerning whether p is true reliably but fallibly indicates whether one believes that p, both at the moment of the judgment and at the moment that one began to consider p’s truth. Taken together with a reliabilist conception of justification, a promising account emerges on which one is able to know whether one believes that p by considering the non-mental matter of whether p is the case. This framework allows me to explain away some of the counter-intuitiveness that many find in extrospective approaches to privileged access. I then set out (in chapter 8) to extend this framework to the attitudes of desire and intention. Apart from finding a non-mental matter appropriate for each of these attitude types— considering whether p is true is inappropriate for discovering whether one desires that p—this extension is relatively straightforward. Finally, these chapters make clear that my account is compatible with the data cited by skeptics of privileged access. Having argued for the epistemic feasibility of my account, I conclude (in chapter 9) by noting that the door is open to accepting that it is psychologically feasible, i.e., that the method it describes is more or less the method that we use when attaining knowledge of our attitudes. That the account posits no dedicated mechanisms or special relations is an additional mark in its favor.