The epistemic status of reflective beliefs

Abstract

This paper examines the epistemic status of the reflective belief about the content of one’s own conscious mental state, with emphasis on perceptual experience. I propose that the process that gives a special epistemic status to a reflective belief is not observation, inference, or conceptual articulation, but semantic ascent similar to the transition from a sentence in the object language to a sentence in the meta-language that affirms the truth of the original sentence. This account of the process of reflection explains why a reflective belief is (subject to some qualification) infallible.

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Tomoji Shogenji
Rhode Island College

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References found in this work

A Materialist Theory of the Mind.D. M. Armstrong - 1968 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Ted Honderich.
Individualism and the mental.Tyler Burge - 1979 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1):73-122.
Consciousness and Experience.William G. Lycan - 1996 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Mind and World.Huw Price & John McDowell - 1994 - Philosophical Books 38 (3):169-181.

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