Transparency, expression, and self-knowledge

Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge share a presupposition to the effect that the only way to vindicate so-called first-person authority as understood by our folk-psychology is to identify specific “good-making” epistemic features that render our self-ascriptions of mental states (‘avowals’) especially knowledgeable. In earlier work, I rejected this presupposition. I proposed that we separate two questions:(i) How is first-person authority to be explained?(ii) What renders avowals instances of a privileged kind of knowledge?In response to question (i), I offered a neo-expressivist account that, I argued, is compatible with a variety of non-deflationary, substantive answers to question (ii). Here I re-evaluate the relative merits of the neo-expressivist account in light of some recent attempts to capture first-person authority by appealing to the so-called transparency of mental self-attributions. I then canvass two recent appeals to transparency that give priority to question (ii). Bearing in mind difficulties with the recent attempts, I return (in Section 3) to relevant aspects of my own neo-expressivist account, which, instead, begins with question (i). I conclude by offering reasons for thinking that the neo-expressivist approach is better suited for integration with a folk-psychologically grounded understanding of ourselves than the alternatives canvassed.