Debating self-knowledge
By: Anthony Brueckner, Gary Ebbs
Contributors: Ebbs, Gary
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781107017139
Subjects: PHILOSOPHY / Epistemology; Skepticism; Philosophy; Self-knowledge, Theory of; Language and languages; Individualism
Description: "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"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 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.