Intentionality and self-knowledge

This essay concerns an important intersection of the philosophy of mind and epistemology: the connection between intentionality and self-knowledge. “Intentionality” is a philosopher’s term of art used to refer to a system's ability to represent something. In this essay, we will be concerned with the ability of minds to represent the world. The concept of self-knowledge is more familiar than the concept of intentionality; before any philosophy, we are all acquainted with the idea that we know our own minds in a way that others cannot. I do not have to hear what I say, read my words, observe my behavior, and make inferences based on that evidence to know what I think, although I must do these things to know what you think. Each of us knows what we think in a way that others do not.;This essay is concerned with finding a theory of intentionality that is compatible with self-knowledge. The theories of intentionality we will consider concern the degree to which the content of our intentional states depends on environmental factors. One theory, content externalism, says that the content of our intentional states depends on the environment in an important way. The other theory, content internalism, says that the content of our intentional states does not depend on the environment in an important way.;In this essay I show that we have good reason to believe that content externalism is incompatible with a key aspect of self-knowledge: our ability to access our intentional contents in a first-person way. I also show that the arguments taken to support content externalism are not as strong as some have thought. Thus, we should adopt content internalism, because it is the only view of intentional content consistent with self-knowledge and because there are no good arguments that properly support of content externalism. What may have appeared to be a genuine philosophical puzzle—understanding how content externalism and self-knowledge are compatible—dissolves when we see that there are no good reasons to adopt content externalism. (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html ).