Self-Knowledge and the First Person

 Paul Klee, Insula Dulcamara (1921-1938). Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern) 

'Self-knowledge' is a standard rubric under which a variety of central and perennial problems in philosophy sort. These questions span the areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, epistemology, and to some extent philosophy of language. Analysing the problems related to self-knowledge, Wittgenstein has developed two coordinated lines of thought. One line stresses the importance of thirdperson perspective with respect to mental life in order to resist introspectionism and discard the illusion of inscrutability of other minds. The other line of thought meets Frege’s idea according to which, in ordinary forms of self-awareness, one is presented to oneself as one is presented to no other. This conception affords first-person perspective a particular status, not by virtue of special access to some specific realm of facts over which one allegedly exercises expertise, but rather by virtue of the particular kind of authority and authorship one claims to enjoy with respect to one own mental life. The C-MLAG conference includes a selection of leading scholars addressing these questions from different perspectives: some starting from problems in philosophy of psychology, some from problems in logic and language, some from concerns with the relation of philosophy to ordinary life. 

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