Transparency and Memory

Transparency theorists about self-knowledge claim that one can know one’s beliefs by focusing on the world beyond one’s mind. While transparency accounts have gained quite a bit of ground in recent years, they have also met with a series of important objections. Some philosophers have addressed these objections by articulating a key role for memory in the epistemic and psychological relationships between outward attention and self-knowledge of belief. This chapter critically evaluates these appeals to memory and then supplies an alternative view about the epistemology of memory-based transparent self-knowledge. However, while the view describes our warrant for self-ascribing beliefs via outward attention, it does not offer any empirical assurances about the reliability of this procedure. Some remarks about directions for future inquiry are offered at the end of the chapter.