Davidson on Why We Trust Our Own Minds More Than Others'

Davidson proposes to explain first-person authority by tracing it to a necessary feature of how speech is interpreted, rather than appealing to introspection or a special inner faculty. Wes notes this replaces older introspection-based approaches with an analytic turn toward language and semantics.

Davidson restricts his account to propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and intention, deliberately setting aside pains, sensations, and the perception of objects. The hosts note this sidesteps the qualia question, making the problem more manageable but potentially incomplete.

Davidson holds that first-person authority over propositional attitudes is compatible with error and doubt, since attitudes are dispositions that manifest over time rather than incorrigible occurrent states. The hosts search for good illustrations and settle on self-deception, unconscious rationalization, and Freud's unconscious.

Gilbert Ryle argues in The Concept of Mind that self-knowledge differs from knowledge of others only in degree, since we are simply better positioned to observe ourselves. Davidson responds that Ryle has denied an asymmetry that is obviously real rather than explained it, so his account fails as an answer.

A.J. Ayer compares first-person authority to the special credibility of an eyewitness over secondhand testimony. Davidson objects that this does not explain why a person is eyewitness-like regarding his own mind but not others', and that self-attributions are usually made with no evidence at all, unlike testimony that rests on inductive reliability that can be discredited.

Joseph Agassi points to figures like Freud, Duhem, and Malinowski as cases where others know our minds, methods, or customs better than we do. Davidson argues that apart from the genuine complication posed by Freud's unconscious, these cases do not really threaten first-person authority, and that psychoanalytic recovery of an attitude to consciousness actually confirms rather than undermines it.

P.F. Strawson argues that having mental concepts at all requires being capable of both self-ascribing and other-ascribing them, since some predicates apply on the basis of observation and some do not. Davidson credits this as accurate description but argues it fails to explain why the asymmetry exists, leaving the skeptic about other minds unanswered.

Ryle holds that first-person and third-person knowledge of mental states differ only in degree, since we are simply better placed to observe ourselves. Davidson insists the asymmetry is obvious and real, so an account that denies it outright cannot count as an explanation.

Wes suggests it seems plausible that propositional attitudes and judgments actually alter the qualitative feel of pain rather than just adding reactions on top, linking this to the Stoic view that judgments shape experience. Mark raises a child's-scratch example as leaving open whether the raw sensation itself changes or only its outward expression does.