Human beings are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be
careless and uncritical, and our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes
aren't always as they ought rationally to be. Our beliefs can be
eccentric, our desires irrational and our hopes hopelessly
unrealistic. Our attitudes are influenced by a wide range of
non-epistemic or non-rational factors, including our character, our
emotions, and powerful unconscious biases. Yet we are rarely conscious
of such influences. Self-ignorance is not something to which human
beings are immune. In this book Quassim Cassam develops an account of
self-knowledge which tries to do justice to these and other respects
in which humans aren't model epistemic citizens. He rejects
rationalist and other mainstream philosophical accounts 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 psychological evidence 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 the value of self-knowledge. This book tries to do for philosophy
what behavioural economics tries to do for economics. Just as
behavioural economics is the economics of ^homo sapiens, as distinct
from the economics of an ideally rational and self homo economics, so
Cassam argues that philosophy should focus on the human predicament
rather than on the reasoning and self-knowledge of an idealized homo
philosophicus.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191039737
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter