Ownership and First-Person Authority from a Normative Pragmatist Perspective

Abstract

Mental episodes are typically associated with subjective ownership and first-person authority. My belief that an apple is red is had by me; it is mine and I’m in a privileged position to know it. Your experience of red is had by you; it is yours and you are in a privileged position to know it. The two assumptions are that mental events are had by individuals to whom they occur, and that owners are in a privileged epistemic position to fallibly report their own. This paper asks how to understand ownership and first-person authority (section 1). It argues that the two assumptions should not be accepted by default (section 2). A normative pragmatism is specified, on which mental episodes are not owned, but owed to practices of reason articulation (section 3). Finally, a positive account of ownership and first-person authority is considered (section 4). (Less)