Précis
of
"Knowing What I Want"
By
Alex Byrne
On a familiar Evans/Dretske/Shoemaker-inspired view, one may
know what one believes by an inference from world to mind; specifically, one
infers that one believes that p from the premise that p. Whatever the merits of
this account, it is commonly assumed that it is at best of very limited
application. Perhaps the account can be extended to cover knowledge of one's
perceptual states, but no further. In particular, world-to-mind inferences
cannot explain knowledge of one's desires. The paper argues, on the contrary,
that they can.
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