Our Knowledge of the Internal World
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Description
On the traditional Cartesian picture, knowledge of one's own internal world -- of one's current thoughts and feelings -- is the unproblematic foundation for all knowledge. The philosophical problem is to explain how we can move beyond this knowledge, how we can form a conception of an objective world, and how we can know that the world answers to our conception of it. This book is in the anti-Cartesian tradition that seeks to reverse the order of explanation. Robert Stalnaker argues that we can understand our knowledge of our thoughts and feelings only by viewing ourselves from the outside, and by seeing our inner lives as features of the world as it is in itself. He uses the framework of possible worlds both to articulate a conception of the world as it is in itself, and to represent the relation between our objective knowledge and our knowledge of our place in the world. He explores an analogy between knowledge of one's own phenomenal experience and self-locating knowledge -- knowledge of who one is, and what time it is. He criticizes the philosopher's use of the notion of acquaintance to characterize our intimate epistemic relation to the phenomenal character of our experience, and explores the tension between an anti-individualist conception of the contents of thought and the thesis that we have introspective access to that content. The conception of knowledge that emerges is a contextualist and anti-foundationalist one but, it is argued, a conception that is compatible with realism about both the external and internal worlds.Features
- A major new contribution to the theory of knowledge and mind
- Self-knowledge has been a key issue in philosophy since Descartes
- Of interest across the central areas of philosophy
- The first monograph in more than 20 years by one of today's leading philosophers
- Concise, lucid, and careful
Reviews
"Robert Stalnaker's Our Knowledge of the Internal World is an extremely engaging and rewarding book.... But even when particularly challenging or tricky, the book more than rewards its reader by challenging her to tackle lingering problems about the mind and knowledge with typical 'Stalnakerian' precision and rigor. Any philosopher will be better off for having read the book. the richness of his insights will seep in over time and in such a way that it will become obvious that he has said so much more that you thought he had.... Such is the beauty of his work. It is challenging, rigorous and innovative -- and it continues to make you think long after you have closed the cover."--Clare Batty, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Stalnaker puts up a good fight against the traditional Cartesian notion that one's knowledge of one's own 'internal' world is the starting point for all other knowledge."--J.R. Shook, CHOICE
About the Author(s)
Robert C. Stalnaker is Professor of Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His teaching and research interests are in philosophical logic, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is the author of Inquiry (Bradford Books, 1984), Context and Content (OUP, 1999), and Ways a World Might Be (OUP, 2003).
