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Chapter 8 - Self-ignorance
- By Eric Schwitzgebel
Edited by JeeLoo Liu, California State University, Fullerton, John Perry, Stanford University, California
Book:

Consciousness and the Self

Published online:

05 December 2011

Print publication:

17 November 2011, pp 184-197
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Summary

Philosophers tend to be impressed by human self-knowledge. Perhaps the most prominent writer on self-knowledge in contemporary philosophy is Sydney Shoemaker. From Descartes to the present, the philosophical literature on self-knowledge of consciousness and attitudes has focused, with a few exceptions, on statements of or attempted explanations of the fact that we know ourselves remarkably well. Personality trait attributions, skill attributions, and attitude attributions can all be seen as shorthand ways of talking about patterns of inward and outward action and reaction. The philosophical focus on how impressive our self-knowledge is gets the most important things backwards. Self-knowledge is pretty good about narrow and concrete matters. In a classic article, Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown, reviewing a broad range of literature, suggest that positive illusions about oneself are the ordinary concomitant of mental health.