Introspection and Distinctness

This chapter deals with Armstrong’s self-scanning theory of self-knowledge. Armstrong held the view that when we know that we are in some mental state, it’s a question of scanning our own internal states. The chapter claims that, for Armstrong, this follows from a combination of a traditional view of perception, and something like the central-state materialist view that mental states are internal states of the brain. This made Armstrong very keen to reject another traditional view, namely, that we have incorrigible access to our own mental states. He rejected this, this chapter states, because he thought if our access were incorrigible, this would be inconsistent with this combination of views. This leads to Armstrong’s own argument for why we should expect our beliefs about our own mental states to be fallible, which hangs on the idea that our beliefs about mental states, and the states they are beliefs about are distinct, given Hume’s dictum that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. The chapter then considers the various ways in which we might think about the idea of distinctness, and contrasts Armstrong’s view with Shoemaker’s view, according to which they are not distinct.