When I began this project, I did not know what I would say in my book. I also did not know what exactly the philosophical debate around self-knowledge involved. The disillusionment I experienced when I learned what this debate was actually about is aptly captured in Quassim Cassam’s preface to Self-Knowledge for Humans (2014). There, he describes the disappointment that sets in when one explains to someone outside philosophy what philosophers mean by “self-knowledge.” While philosophers focus on cases of seemingly trivial self-knowledge (e.g., knowing that one wants pizza for lunch or that one believes that it is raining or that one is in pain), they ignore the, as Cassam calls it, “substantial” self-knowledge, which, by contrast, includes such things as knowledge of one’s values, character traits, aptitudes, deepest desires, hopes, fears, abilities, and knowledge of what makes you happy. But my initial disappointment turned into fascination.
One of the factors that led me to write my dissertation on the topic of self-knowledge was my personal interest in acquiring knowledge of who I (truly) am, who I want to be, and how to lead my life. I was interested in the substantial kind of self-knowledge; the one that matters to us humans. But I became fascinated with an approach to self-knowledge that, according to Cassam, is at odds with what humans find intriguing; an approach that is mainly concerned with the kind of self-knowledge that is thought to be privileged, and that is usually so easy to come by that to some it appears trivial. In any case, I did not have to sacrifice my human interests and become a homo philosophicus while studying and defending the so-called “transparency view” of self-knowledge. Quite the opposite.
Richard Moran’s inspiring Authority and Estrangement (2001) redefined what I thought self-knowledge was about, not by avoiding the Big Questions that initially interested me but by providing me with an intuitively appealing and philosophically fascinating explanation of the source of my desire to find out who I (truly) am. This source was a lack of privileged self-knowledge; a lack of the perhaps ordinary, yet undeniably significant, kind of self-knowledge that mainly refers to knowledge of my own beliefs, desires, emotions, and sensations. A primary motivation for working on this project was to defend Moran’s enlightening transparency view of self-knowledge against various objections. One of these objections—the objection of limited scope—is central in this book.
The primary claim of Feeling Outwards is that self-knowledge—namely, knowledge of our own mental states, including our beliefs, emotions, desires, and even pain—is usually transparent. That is, it is gained by attending outwardly, rather than by introspecting. Although this idea is not new per se, unlike most extant approaches on which this idea builds, I argue that an adequate account can and must be extended to include all mental states, including those that we might ordinarily consider phenomenological.
The intuitive appeal of the so-called transparency view of self-knowledge, especially in its doxastic aspects, is considerable. When asked what I believe, it seems entirely natural to attend to and then articulate the content of my beliefs. But what about mental states and attitudes other than our beliefs, namely emotions, desires, and sensations? I claim that we must ‘look outwards’ to come to know our ‘feelings’. This idea will seem prima facie counterintuitive because phenomenal states are characteristically knowable in virtue of the ways in which they feel to us. And, in the face of dubiety concerning the scope of the transparency view, many philosophers have accepted that we must know of our phenomenal states (especially our sensations) differently (i.e., not transparently). This leaves open what it is that renders special this ‘other’ kind of self-knowledge.
In Feeling Outwards, I take a different route. I claim that an adequate account of transparent self-knowledge should encompass an expanded scope. Central to my extension of the transparency view is the claim that we can know of the phenomenology of our occurrent mental states in a way that neither reduces their phenomenal character to their representational content nor implies an inward glance at their qualitative, non-intentional properties.
So, in one sense, the whole book can be read as a defense of the following claim:
I know of all types of my mental states by “looking outwards” to the objects of my mental states and not by looking inward—into my own mind.
While the ideas in Feelings Outwards are mostly in agreement with those in Moran’s Authority and Estrangement, it shares most affinity in form and subject matter with Alex Byrne’s Transparency and Self-Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2018). What makes Transparency and Self-Knowledge an important contribution to the debate on self-knowledge is that it offers a book-length treatment of the transparency view to mental states other than belief. Feeling Outwards takes up the same goal, but in a substantially different way. Whereas Byrne believes that transparency serves as a method for the detection (or as a reliable epistemic rule for inference) of one’s mental states, I follow Moran’s understanding of transparency as being intimately related to the nature of the relevant mental state.
Another important contribution to the debate on whether a theory of self-knowledge should be unified or not is Matthew Boyle’s recent Transparency and Reflection (Oxford University Press, 2024). Most of the present book was written before its publication and even though Boyle’s new book seems to indicate that he has changed his view on some of the matters that I discuss, I did not exclude my discussion of his former view, because I think that it is still a view worth considering. I shall discuss his updated view where relevant, but given the publication date of Transparency and Reflection, I unfortunately could not include a sufficiently lengthy discussion of it.
This book is based on my doctoral dissertation, defended in July 2020 at Universität Potsdam. That dissertation was turned into its current form during my time as Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the University of Michigan. I owe the book’s existence to many people who both inspired and challenged my thoughts and cared for me as I wrote them down. In the first place, I would like to express deep gratitude to my primary adviser, Logi Gunnarsson. He gave unwavering support and guidance and was patient throughout the project. The dissertation would have been much worse and likely have remained unfinished if not for his extraordinary mentorship and intellectual generosity. Most of all, I thank him for teaching me how to do philosophy by the example he set, for encouraging me to find my own voice, and for reassuring me in the face of feelings that I do not belong in academia.
I am also deeply indebted to my second dissertation adviser, Richard Moran, who gave me invaluable and thoughtful feedback. He also kindly sponsored my research semester at Harvard and attended a workshop that we organized on practical self-knowledge in Potsdam. His philosophical work has been a great inspiration to me. Indeed, this whole book could be viewed as a series of appreciative remarks on his ideas about self-knowledge.
I have benefited more than I can say from conversations with friends and colleagues in the University of Potsdam philosophy department. I would also like to thank the members of Logi’s Forschungskolloquium “Ethik und Ästhetik” for their philosophical openness, incisive criticisms, and helpful comments. The feedback I received there and in the department colloquium helped me to articulate my ideas more clearly and identify my arguments’ shortcomings. In particular, I would like to thank Joachim Toenges-Hinn, Dennis Wildfeuer, and Laura Hinn for countless conversations over coffee and beer, some of which started in Dortmund and continued in Potsdam. I am also thankful to Karsten Schöllner for proofreading my dissertation and for suggestions about clarifying my arguments. I am also greatly indebted to my close friend Lilith Hethey for spontaneously proofreading the German abstract of my dissertation on the night before I submitted it.
I have benefited greatly from the helpful questions and critical feedback on some of my earlier ideas that I have presented at conferences in Murcia (“Self-knowledge, expression and transparency,” 2014), in Amsterdam (“Deliberation, Interpretation and Confabulation,” 2015), in Manchester (“The Subjective Structure of Consciousness,” 2014), in Berlin at the Literaturwerkstatt (“Übergänge,” 2014), at a workshop on practical self-knowledge in Potsdam (“Knowing and Acting,” 2014), and in departmental Colloquia at Potsdam (2015) and Dortmund (2016). Thank you to all the organizers and audiences.
Moreover, I am indebted to the German Research Foundation for a three-year scholarship in the interdisciplinary research group “Lebensformen und Lebenswissen” and to Potsdam Graduate School for granting me funding for another half year before beginning my position at the philosophy department. I am thankful for the interest and faith that Stephan Kopsieker (acquisitions editor at Brill Mentis) showed in this project and for his support throughout the publication process. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this publication from Potsdam University.
Most importantly, I wish to thank my family and friends for their endless support and encouragement. It has made all the difference. In particular, I want to thank my best friend, Kristina Röhl. I lived with her in Berlin while writing my dissertation, and she served as a constant sounding board, provided comic relief, and never questioned my ability to finish the dissertation (not even during impulsive moments of severe irrationality). I also want to mention my children, Nika and Jona. They are too young to understand my need for space and time to think and write. But their precious existence and their needs forced me to finalize this project. Thanks also to my husband, Darko Kolcaj, who helped me get the space and time I needed. It helped tremendously. My father, Zef Gjoni, and my sisters, Vera and Sonja, provided unlimited love and confidence in me, since my very beginning. Faliminërs (Thank you).
Lastly, I owe everything else to my mother, Lulë Martinja, my first and best teacher. Regardless of what I argue in this book, she seems to know me better than I do. The least I can do is dedicate this book to her.
One final note: self-knowledge can help you make life choices that align with who you take yourself to be. For political reasons, I finally decided to change the assimilated surname “Ljucovic” back to my ancestral Albanian surname “Lucaj” and to publish this book under my new (old) name.