Self Representation

Abstract

It has been noted by philosophers for quite a while (starting with Castaneda, 1966) that the beliefs, or knowledge one has regarding oneself may require some special analysis. As Lewis (1979) puts it, it is in principle possible to know all the true propositions in a given world and still know nothing about oneself, if one does not know the relation between oneself and these propositions (as in the Perry-based example of the amnesiac in the Stanford library.) In the smaller scale of reports of propositional attitudes, a specific account may be needed for what Lewis has labelled `attitudes de-se`. This is a subcase of the de-re interpretation of belief reports, but it requires awareness of the believer of the fact that he himself is the person of whom something is attributed. Given (1), which is based on an example of Lewis (1979) (attributes to Kaplan), the report could be true under the de-re reading if Alfred, escaping from a fire, sees himself in the mirror without recognizing himself, and without noticing that it is his own pants that are on fire. In this state of affairs, the sentence will be false under the de-se reading.