ABSTRACT

In the paper I explore Wittgenstein’s suggestive remarks about self-knowledge—that is, our knowledge of our own mental states—and their connection with naturalism. Although he was definitely critical of naturalizing the epistemology of the mind, he placed great emphasis on the role of instinctive and natural manifestations of our own mental states. These natural manifestations, in his view, made it possible for us to acquire and apply the relevant psychological concepts by learning to substitute them with their linguistic manifestations. The paper thus reconstructs Wittgenstein’s route to expressivism with respect to phenomenal and intentional avowals. It also unravels the constitutivist, anti-epistemological sentiment of his own treatment of psychological self-ascriptions, while underlying its nuances. For Wittgenstein was well aware of the fact that the same turns of phrase could sometimes be used not to express, but to describe one’s own mental states and that in those cases they would be underwritten by an attendant epistemology. Still, it is argued that Wittgenstein’s expressivism is not without problems. For he ended up endorsing a strong form of semantic contextualism, which would pair a change of function with a change in meaning. In connection with avowals of belief and other propositional attitudes, moreover, it is not clear what kind of pre-linguistic behavior avowals would substitute. Moreover, the equation of these intentional avowals with the assertion of their embedded contents is highly problematic. These difficulties notwithstanding, Wittgenstein’s expressivism can be considered a form of “soft” (or “catholic”) naturalism and his attention to third-personal self-knowledge an important concession to the application of naturalistically amenable epistemic methods in the acquisition of knowledge of our own mental states.