BENJAMIN WINOKUR
Biographic Data
| ID | 5723573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | BENJAMIN WINOKUR |
| GIVEN NAMES | BENJAMIN |
| FAMILY NAME | WINOKUR |
| SIGNATURE | WINOKUR B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Macau |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0845-9460 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Agency, expression, and first-person authority
Authority as (qualified) indubitability
Self-ascriptions of one's current mental states often seem authoritative. It is sometimes thought that the authority of such self-ascriptions is, in part, a matter of their indubitability. However, they do not seem to be universally indubitable. How, then, should claims about self-ascriptive indubitability be qualified? Here I consider several such qualifications from the literature. Finding many of them wanting, I nevertheless settle on multiple…
Inferential self-knowledge reimagined
In the epistemology of self-knowledge, Inferentialism is the view that one’s current mental states are normally known to one through inferences from evidence. This view is often taken to conflict with widespread claims about normally-acquired self-knowledge, namely that it is privileged (essentially more secure than knowledge of others’ minds) and peculiar (obtained in a way that fundamentally differs from how others know your mind). In this pape…
Expressing What You Say: Neo‐Expressivism and the Matching Question
It is often appropriate to defer to one another when we ascribe mental states to ourselves in the present tense, even when these self‐ascriptions are evidentially unsupported. One way to explain this ‘first‐person authority’ is in terms of what such self‐ascriptions express . According to neo‐expressivism , the relevant expressed feature is the very mental state semantically represented by one's self‐ascription. Matthew Parrott worries that neo‐e…
How to commit to commissive self‐knowledge
At least some of your beliefs are commitments. When you believe that P as a commitment, your stance on P is such that you believe it on the basis of your considered judgement. Sometimes, you also believe that you believe P. Such self‐beliefs can also be commissive in a sense, as when they are reflective endorsements of your lower‐order commissive beliefs. In this paper I argue that one's commissive self‐beliefs ontologically constitute one's lowe…
Extended mentality and ascriptive authority
Authoritatively avowing your imaginings by self-ascriptively expressing them
Neo-expressivism is the view that avowals – first-personal, present tense self-ascriptions of mental states—ordinarily express the very mental states that they semantically represent, such that they carry a strong presumption of truth and are immune to requests for epistemic support. Peter Langland-Hassan (2015. “Self-Knowledge and Imagination.” Philosophical Explorations 18 (2): 226–245) has argued that Neo-expressivism cannot accommodate avowal…
Bots: Some Less-Considered Epistemic Problems
Posts on social media platforms like Twitter are sometimes the products of deceptively designed bots. These bots can cause obvious epistemic problems, such as tricking human users into believing the contents of misleading posts. However, less-considered epistemic problems involve false bot judgements where a human user mistakes another human user’s post for a bot-post, or where a human user mistakenly believes that bots are the primary vehicles f…
Self-Knowledge and Interpersonal Reasoning
Many philosophers contend that we often possess “privileged” and “peculiar” self-knowledge of our mental states. Self-knowledge is privileged insofar as it is systematically more secure than the knowledge that others have of one’s propositional attitudes, and it is peculiar insofar as it is systematically obtained in a way that is only suited for delivering self-knowledge. Focusing on privileged and peculiar self-knowledge of propositional attitu…
Davidson, first-person authority, and direct self-knowledge
Ontological Entanglement in the Normative Web
Terence Cuneo has recently argued that we have to be committed to the existence of epistemic facts insofar as they are indispensable to theorizing. Furthermore, he argues that the epistemic properties of these facts are inextricably ‘ontologically entangled’ with certain moral properties, such that there exist ‘moral-epistemic’ facts. Cuneo, therefore, concludes that moral realism is true. I argue that Cuneo’s appeal to the existence of moral-epi…
Ontological Entanglement in the Normative Web
Terence Cuneo has recently argued that we have to be committed to the existence of epistemic facts insofar as they are indispensable to theorizing. Furthermore, he argues that the epistemic properties of these facts are inextricably ‘ontologically entangled’ with certain moral properties, such that there exist ‘moral-epistemic’ facts. Cuneo, therefore, concludes that moral realism is true. I argue that Cuneo’s appeal to the existence of moral-epi…
Davidson, first-person authority, and direct self-knowledge
Self-Knowledge and Interpersonal Reasoning
Many philosophers contend that we often possess “privileged” and “peculiar” self-knowledge of our mental states. Self-knowledge is privileged insofar as it is systematically more secure than the knowledge that others have of one’s propositional attitudes, and it is peculiar insofar as it is systematically obtained in a way that is only suited for delivering self-knowledge. Focusing on privileged and peculiar self-knowledge of propositional attitu…
Authoritatively avowing your imaginings by self-ascriptively expressing them
Neo-expressivism is the view that avowals – first-personal, present tense self-ascriptions of mental states—ordinarily express the very mental states that they semantically represent, such that they carry a strong presumption of truth and are immune to requests for epistemic support. Peter Langland-Hassan (2015. “Self-Knowledge and Imagination.” Philosophical Explorations 18 (2): 226–245) has argued that Neo-expressivism cannot accommodate avowal…
Bots: Some Less-Considered Epistemic Problems
Posts on social media platforms like Twitter are sometimes the products of deceptively designed bots. These bots can cause obvious epistemic problems, such as tricking human users into believing the contents of misleading posts. However, less-considered epistemic problems involve false bot judgements where a human user mistakes another human user’s post for a bot-post, or where a human user mistakenly believes that bots are the primary vehicles f…
How to commit to commissive self‐knowledge
At least some of your beliefs are commitments. When you believe that P as a commitment, your stance on P is such that you believe it on the basis of your considered judgement. Sometimes, you also believe that you believe P. Such self‐beliefs can also be commissive in a sense, as when they are reflective endorsements of your lower‐order commissive beliefs. In this paper I argue that one's commissive self‐beliefs ontologically constitute one's lowe…
Extended mentality and ascriptive authority
Inferential self-knowledge reimagined
In the epistemology of self-knowledge, Inferentialism is the view that one’s current mental states are normally known to one through inferences from evidence. This view is often taken to conflict with widespread claims about normally-acquired self-knowledge, namely that it is privileged (essentially more secure than knowledge of others’ minds) and peculiar (obtained in a way that fundamentally differs from how others know your mind). In this pape…
Expressing What You Say: Neo‐Expressivism and the Matching Question
It is often appropriate to defer to one another when we ascribe mental states to ourselves in the present tense, even when these self‐ascriptions are evidentially unsupported. One way to explain this ‘first‐person authority’ is in terms of what such self‐ascriptions express . According to neo‐expressivism , the relevant expressed feature is the very mental state semantically represented by one's self‐ascription. Matthew Parrott worries that neo‐e…
Agency, expression, and first-person authority
Authority as (qualified) indubitability
Self-ascriptions of one's current mental states often seem authoritative. It is sometimes thought that the authority of such self-ascriptions is, in part, a matter of their indubitability. However, they do not seem to be universally indubitable. How, then, should claims about self-ascriptive indubitability be qualified? Here I consider several such qualifications from the literature. Finding many of them wanting, I nevertheless settle on multiple…
Epistemology (9 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (8 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Free Will and Agency (3 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (3 works) · Political science (3 works)