ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I conclude my examination of Wittgenstein’s critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space by considering his application of it to the “undoubted asymmetry” (PO 215) that characterises our uses of psychological vocabulary. Many first-person, present-tense, indicative ascriptions of psychological predicates enjoy a special status. If I say that a friend is behaving irascibly because she has a toothache, it may be reasonable to ask, “Are you sure?” However, if I tell my dentist that I have toothache, the same question would be absurd and inappropriate. One way to characterise this asymmetry between first-and other-person utterances employing psychological vocabulary is to say that each of us enjoys “first-person authority” or, as Dorit Bar-On has suggested, “first-person privilege” (2004, 123). 1 When I say that I feel hungry, exhausted, exhilarated, bored, or frightened, or that I hear my noisy neighbours, see the moons of Jupiter through my binoculars, or taste the coriander in my curry, other things being equal, my listeners will defer to me. 2 I have an authority in such ascriptions to myself that others lack, though they enjoy the same authority with respect to their psychological self-ascriptions.