Debating Self-Knowledge

by Anthony Brueckner, Gary Ebbs

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139508162
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/21/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Anthony Brueckner is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Essays on Skepticism (2010).
Gary Ebbs is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University. He is the author of Rule-Following and Realism (1997) and Truth and Words (2009).

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Brains in a vat Anthony Brueckner; 2. Scepticism, objectivity, and brains in vats Gary Ebbs; 3. Ebbs on scepticism, objectivity, and brains in vats Anthony Brueckner; 4. The dialectical context of Putnam's argument that we are not brains in vats Gary Ebbs; 5. Trying to get outside your own skin Anthony Brueckner; 6. Can we take our words at face value? Gary Ebbs; 7. Is scepticism about self-knowledge incoherent? Anthony Brueckner; 8. Is scepticism about self-knowledge coherent? Gary Ebbs; 9. The coherence of scepticism about self-knowledge Anthony Brueckner; 10. Why scepticism about self-knowledge is self-undermining Gary Ebbs; 11. Scepticism about self-knowledge redux Anthony Brueckner; 12. Self-knowledge in doubt Gary Ebbs; 13. Looking back Anthony Brueckner; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...strongly recommend Brueckner and Ebbs’s book to anyone interested in self-knowledge. It is a valuable contribution both in its overall argument and in its specific discussions."
—-George Lăzăroiu, PhD, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in, Humanities and Social Sciences, New York, Review of Contemporary Philosophy

From the Publisher