Juan Pablo Cortés
University of Valencia
Pluralism about introspection is the view that there is more than one method or process that generates special, first-personal knowledge of our own mental states. Its opposite is introspective uniformity, the view that there is only one such method or process. Until recently, the uniformity of introspection was a standard—though often implicit—assumption (Armstrong, 2003; Bar-On, 2007; Byrne, 2018). However, in recent years, pluralism about introspection has gained significant traction (Boyle, 2009; Coliva, 2016; Franco, 2024), and various arguments have been advanced in its support.
The aim of this paper is to defend pluralism in a novel way by drawing on Russell’s classical distinction between knowledge of truths and knowledge of things (Russell, 1997). The central idea behind this distinction is that there exists a distinctive kind of knowledge—knowledge by acquaintance—which is direct and non-propositional.
My argument proceeds in two parts. First, I argue that we have good reasons to think that we possess knowledge by acquaintance of some of our mental states. In particular, I suggest that this view is especially plausible when applied to bodily sensations such as pain. In the second part, I argue that anyone who accepts the existence and significance of knowledge by acquaintance should also acknowledge the role of knowledge of truths in introspection. I contend that certain mental states—namely, propositional attitudes—can only be known as knowledge of truths about ourselves and cannot be known merely by acquaintance. The main reason is that propositional attitudes cannot be grasped in non-propositional terms, such as those involved in acquaintance. Therefore, defenders of acquaintance should accept additional introspective methods to account for our knowledge of propositional attitudes, which would lead them to a pluralistic view of introspection.
References
Armstrong, D. M. (Ed.). (2003). A materialist theory of the mind (Rev. ed). Routledge.
Bar-On, D. (2007). Speaking my mind: Expression and self-knowledge (Repr). Clarendon Press.
Boyle, M. (2009). Two Kinds of Self‐Knowledge. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 78(1), 133–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2008.00235.x
Byrne, A. (2018). Transparency and self-knowledge. Oxford university press.
Coliva, A. (2016). The Varieties of self-knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan.
Franco, K. S. (2024). Pluralism about introspection. Mind & Language, 39(2), 293–309. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12483
Russell, B. (1997). The problems of philosophy. Oxford University Press.
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