Language users ordinarily suppose that they know what thoughts their own utterances express. We can call this supposed knowledge minimal self-knowledge. But what does it come to? And do we actually have it? Anti-individualism implies that the thoughts which a person's utterances express are partly determined by facts about their social and physical environments. If anti-individualism is true, then there are some apparently coherent sceptical hypotheses that conflict with our supposition that we have minimal self-knowledge. In this book, Anthony Brueckner and Gary Ebbs debate how to characterize this problem and develop opposing views of what it shows. Their discussion is the only sustained, in-depth debate about anti-individualism, scepticism and knowledge of one's own thoughts, and will interest both scholars and graduate students in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and epistemology.
Advance praise: 'The Brueckner and Ebbs debate, about whether attitude anti-individualism threatens a subject's authority regarding her own thoughts, is a pleasure to read. This book is a must-read for all who followed the debate over the last decade, and the arguments presented here will also invigorate the debate going forward.' Sanford Goldberg, Northwestern University
| Introduction | |
| Brains in a vat | |
| Scepticism, objectivity, and brains in vats | |
| Ebbs on scepticism, objectivity, and brains in vats | |
| The dialectical context of Putnam's argument that we are not brains in vats | |
| Trying to get outside your own skin | |
| Can we take our words at face value? | |
| Is scepticism about self-knowledge incoherent? | |
| Is scepticism about self-knowledge coherent? | |
| The coherence of scepticism about self-knowledge | |
| Why scepticism about self-knowledge is self-undermining | |
| Scepticism about self-knowledge redux | |
| Self-knowledge in doubt | |
| Looking back | |
| Bibliography | |
| Index | |
| Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9781107017139
ISBN-10: 1107017130
Audience:
Tertiary; University or College
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 244
Published: 21st June 2012
Dimensions (cm): 22.8 x 15.9
x 2.2
Weight (kg): 0.525