Results by title

7 books match the query 'Self-knowledge, Theory of'

cover of Externalism and Self-Knowledge

Externalism and Self-Knowledge

Edited by Peter Ludlow and Norah Martin

CSLI, 1998

One of the most provocative projects in recent analytic philosophy has been the development of the doctrine of externalism, or, as it is often called, anti-individualism. While there is no agreement as to whether externalism is true or not, a number of recent investigations have begun to explore the question of what follows if it is true. One of the most interesting of these investigations thus far has been the question of whether externalism has consequences for the doctrine that we have authoritative, a priori self-knowledge of our mental states.

The selected works presented in this volume, some previously published, some new, are representative of this debate and open up new questions and issues for philosophical investigation, including the connection between externalism, self-knowledge, epistemic warrant, and memory.
[more]
cover of Reflection-in-Motion: Reimagining Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Reflection-in-Motion

Reimagining Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday

Utah State University Press, 2024

Reflection-in-Motion considers how reflective practice is embedded in daily course happenings, centering the experiences of students and teachers in Minority Serving Institutions to amplify
underrepresented viewpoints about how reflection works in the writing classroom. Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday examines how its availability is subject to teacher/student power dynamics, the literacies welcomed (or not) in the class, the past and present pedagogies that students are engaging with and attending to, and the interactions among humans, materials, and emotions within the rhetorical context. She adopts an intersectional feminist perspective for an inclusive view of how practitioners name, identify, and practice reflection in the everyday moments of writing classrooms.
 
Fiscus-Cannaday invokes a Black feminist qualitative research method that Venus Evans-Winters calls a “mosaic.” When researchers collect both traditional and nontraditional texts to create a full view of students’ and teachers’ interviews at three institutions (a Hispanic Serving Institution, a Historically Black College and University, and an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution), she finds that practitioners often build definitions from past experiences with reflection—and then use those definitions as terministic screens to decide if an activity can be named, identified, and practiced as reflection. These definitions hold different rhetorical effects: reflection-for-introspection, reflection-for-learning, reflection-for-mindfulness, and reflection-for-awareness.
 
Reflection is used for these different rhetorical effects, but because classrooms so often focus on the Westernized view and its emphasis on growth, reflection has the underused and undertheorized potential rhetorical effect of helping students investigate their identities and positionalities, acknowledge deep-rooted ideologies, and consider new perspectives so they can better work across difference. Reflection-in-Motion will inspire teachers and writing program administrators to listen to how students define and practice reflection and why—thus making room for more capacious definitions of reflection and student-centered practices of what reflection can do and be.
 
[more]
cover of Self-Reference

Self-Reference

Thomas Bolander, Vincent F. Hendricks, and Stig Andur Pedersen

CSLI, 2006

An anthology of previously unpublished essays from some of the most outstanding scholars working in philosophy, mathematics, and computer science today, Self-Reference reexamines the latest theories of self-reference, including those that attempt to explain and resolve the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. With a thorough introduction that contextualizes the subject for students, this book will be important reading for anyone interested in the general area of self-reference and philosophy.
[more]
cover of The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire

The Mirror of the Self

Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire

Shadi Bartsch

University of Chicago Press, 2006

People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. Gazing upon someone—or oneself—was treated as a path to philosophical self-knowledge, but the question of tactility introduced an erotic element as well.  In The Mirror of the Self, Shadi Bartsch asserts that these links among vision, sexuality, and self-knowledge are key to the classical understanding of the self. 

Weaving together literary theory, philosophy, and social history, Bartsch traces this complex notion of self from Plato’s Greece to Seneca’s Rome. She starts by showing how ancient authors envisioned the mirror as both a tool for ethical self-improvement and, paradoxically, a sign of erotic self-indulgence. Her reading of the Phaedrus, for example, demonstrates that the mirroring gaze in Plato, because of its sexual possibilities, could not be adopted by Roman philosophers and their students. Bartsch goes on to examine the Roman treatment of the ethical and sexual gaze, and she traces how self-knowledge, the philosopher’s body, and the performance of virtue all played a role in shaping the Roman understanding of the nature of selfhood. Culminating in a profoundly original reading of Medea, The Mirror of the Self illustrates how Seneca, in his Stoic quest for self-knowledge, embodies the Roman view, marking a new point in human thought about self-perception.

Bartsch leads readers on a journey that unveils divided selves, moral hypocrisy, and lustful Stoics—and offers fresh insights about seminal works. At once sexy and philosophical, The Mirror of the Self will be required reading for classicists, philosophers, and anthropologists alike.
[more]
cover of The Practices of the Self

The Practices of the Self

Charles Larmore

University of Chicago Press, 2010

What is the nature of the fundamental relation we have to ourselves that makes each of us a self? To answer this question, Charles Larmore develops a systematic theory of the self, challenging the widespread view that the self’s defining relation to itself is to have an immediate knowledge of its own thoughts. On the contrary, Larmore maintains, our essential relation to ourselves is practical, as is clear when we consider the nature of belief and desire. For to believe or desire something consists in committing ourselves to thinking and acting in accord with the presumed truth of our belief or the presumed value of what we desire.

Larmore develops this conception with frequent reference to such classic authors as Montaigne, Stendhal, and Proust and by comparing it to other views of the self in contemporary philosophy. He also discusses the important ethical consequences of his theory of the self, arguing that it allows us to better grasp what it means to be ourselves and why self-understanding often involves self-creation.

Winner of the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de Philosophie, The Practices of the Self is that rare kind of lucid yet rigorous work that transcends disciplinary boundaries.

[more]
cover of The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

The Reflexive Thesis

Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Malcolm Ashmore

University of Chicago Press, 1989

This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientific knowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research practices and textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientific knowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction.
[more]
cover of The Second Alcibiades: A Platonist Dialogue on Prayer and on Ignorance

The Second Alcibiades

A Platonist Dialogue on Prayer and on Ignorance

Harold Tarrant

Parmenides Publishing, 2023

Providing a challenging new interpretation of the Second Alcibiades from the Platonic corpus, this treatment sees the dialogue not only as a work of philosophic ethics, but also as one steeped in ancient literature, particularly Euripidean tragedy. The dialogue’s philosophy is underpinned by an epistemology paying special attention to one’s personal viewpoint, as its language shows. Dramatically, it presents a Socrates who falls into a similar trap from the one he steers Alcibiades away from, facing the dangers of a tragic character thanks to their mutual attraction. Understood in this way the dialogue, here retranslated to bring out such features, is revealed as the work of an author with linguistic and literary gifts who is deeply conscious of the human condition. While reminiscent of the Academic Skeptic picture of Plato, it is the work of somebody still moving cautiously in that direction.
[more]