SELF-BLINDNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS - Philosophy

Self-Blindness and Self-Awarenessthought of simply as whatever process realizes our capacity for first-person access. It ishelpful to distinguish these two.State Dependence: For any subject a and psychological state M, necessarily, M(a) only if aknows that M(a).Capacity Dependence: For any subject a and psychological state M, necessarily, M(a) only if ahas a distinct capacity to know that M(a).State Dependence requires that constitutive, rather than causal relations connect a person’spsychological state with her knowledge of it. On the assumption that knowing that Prequires believing that P, State Dependence is a thesis most constitutive theorists wouldendorse. However, because the most promising constitutive views wish to be consistentwith recent evidence from social psychology indicating that we sometimes lack awareness ofour psychological states, State Dependence should also be understood as a generic claim. 21It isa stronger claim because Capacity Dependence follows from it trivially. Nonetheless the two arelogically distinct.Since the Distinct Existence Thesis implies that any of a person's psychological statescan exist independently from her having a belief about it, it is inconsistent with StateDependence. But does the impossibility of self-blindness really show that the Distinct Existenceis false? Does it show that there must be necessary connections between a person’spsychological states and her own beliefs about them? Shoemaker says that the thesis entails"that for each kind of mental fact to which we have introspective access, it is at least logically21 It would therefore strengthen both to read the claims universally. But, I assume that the stronger version ofeither would be unacceptable to most philosophers; although the stronger form of State Dependence does seem tohave been Descartes' view.10