Abstract

Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge share a presupposition to the effect that the only way to vindicate so-called first-person authority as understood by our folk-psychology is to identify specific “good-making” epistemic features that render our self-ascriptions of mental states especially knowledgeable. In earlier work, I rejected this presupposition. I proposed that we separate two questions: How is first-person authority to be explained? What renders avowals instances of a privileged kind of knowledge?In response to question, I offered a neo-expressivist account that, I argued, is compatible with a variety of non-deflationary, substantive answers to question. Here I re-evaluate the relative merits of the neo-expressivist account in light of some recent attempts to capture first-person authority by appealing to the so-called transparency of mental self-attributions. I then canvass two recent appeals to transparency that give priority to question. Bearing in mind..