Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind An Essay in Neo-Sellarsian Philosophy [Hardcover]

This volume attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in epistemic bad faith in light of what psychology tells us. After all, the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting ego-threatening thoughts ? la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughtse.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However, reflection on ones thoughts requires knowing what those thoughts are in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just display naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are sometimes infallible in our self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a foundation for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Part I: Preliminaries

Preamble: Is Philosophy Anti-Scientific? 

1. Introduction: How is Rational Self-Reflection Possible? 

2. The Empirical Case against Infallibility 

Part II: Knowledge of Thought

3. Infallibility in Knowing What One Thinks 

4. Objection 1: Its Apriori that Water Exists 

5. Objection 2: Thought Switching 

6. Content Externalism Does Not Imply Wayward Reflection  

Part III: Knowledge of Judging

7. Infallibility in Knowing What One Judges 

8. Infallibility in Knowing What One Expresses 

9. Objection 1: Its Apriori that the Mental Exists&amlã$