Knowing Why: Essays on Self-Knowledge and Rational Explanation

Abstract

This thesis is about basic self-knowledge, our knowledge of particular facts about our own actions, attitudes, and sensory states. It focuses on our knowledge of particular explanatory facts about our own actions and attitudes and defends a particular interrogative theory of such knowledge, according to which our knowledge of such facts about our own actions and attitudes is arrived at by resolving related practical questions about our own actions and attitudes. It consists of four related essays. Essay one, "Introspection Without Inferentialism", argues against the view that a belief is rational only if it is based on sufficient reasons for so believing. It argues that beliefs about our own attitudes and explanations thereof can be rational even though they are not based on sufficient reasons for so believing. This conclusion clears the way for alternative theories of how we arrive at rational beliefs about our own actions and attitudes, like the theory to be defended in the third and fourth essay. Essay two, "Actions, Reasons, and Becauses", is about the relation between two different kinds of explanations of our own actions and attitudes: reason explanations and psychologi- cal explanations. It argues on broadly linguistic grounds that reason explanations are a kind of psychological explanation and are therefore not a distinct kind of rational explanation. A consequence of this conclusion is that questions about how we arrive at knowledge of partic- ular reason explanations can be treated as a special case of how we arrive at knowledge of psychological or rational explanations more generally. Essay three, "Knowing Why", is about our knowledge of particular explanatory facts about our own actions and attitudes. It argues against the view that our knowledge of par- ticular rational explanations of our own actions and attitudes is inferential and defends an alternative theory according to which such knowledge is non-inferential. According to the alternative theory, our knowledge of particular rational explanations of our own actions and attitudes is arrived at by resolving related practical questions about our own actions and atti- tudes. I argue that the latter theory provides a better explanation than an inferential theory of observed self and other symmetries concerning knowledge of particular rational explanations of our actions and attitudes. Essay four, "Interrogative Theories of Introspection", develops the theory defended in essay three in more detail and argues that it offers a plausible general theory of how we arrive at knowledge of particular facts about our own actions and attitudes. It explicates three distinct interrogative theories of introspection and argues that a theory on which we can arrive at knowledge of particular facts about our actions and attitudes by resolving related practical questions about those actions and attitudes provides the the best explanation of how we can come to know particular facts about our actions and attitudes in a non-inferential way.