In "Self-Knowledge and Resentment", Akeel Bilgrami argues that self-knowledge of our intentional states is special among all the knowledge we have, because it is not an epistemological notion in the standard sense of that term, but instead, is a fallout of the radically normative nature of thought and agency. Four themes or questions are brought together into an integrated philosophical position: What makes self-knowledge different from other forms of knowledge? What makes for freedom and agency in a deterministic universe? What makes intentional states of a subject irreducible to its physical and functional states? And what makes values irreducible to the states of nature as the natural sciences study them? This integration of themes into a single and systematic picture of thought, value, agency, and self-knowledge is essential to the book's aspiration and argument. Once this integrated position is fully in place, the book closes with a postscript on how one might fruitfully view the kind of self-knowledge that is pursued in psychoanalysis.
- ISBN10 0674022890
- ISBN13 9780674022898
- Publish Date 1 October 2006
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 9 February 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Harvard University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English