Self-knowledge for Humans

Human beings are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless and uncritical, and our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes aren't always governed by rational factors: our beliefs can be eccentric, our desires irrational, and our hopes unrealistic. In this book Quassim Cassam develops an account of self-knowledge which tries to acknowledge and accommodate these aspects of our behaviour. He rejects rationalist and other mainstream philosophicalaccounts of self-knowledge on the grounds that, in more than one sense, they aren't accounts of self-knowledge for humans. Instead he defends the view that inferences from behavioural and psychologicalevidence are a basic source of human self-knowledge. On this account, self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement and self-ignorance is almost always on the cards. As well as explaining knowledge of our own states of mind, Cassam also accounts for what he calls 'substantial' self-knowledge, including knowledge of our values, emotions, and character. He criticizes philosophical accounts of self-knowledge for neglecting substantial self-knowledge, and concludes with a discussion of thevalue of self-knowledge.