ABSTRACT
Human beings use the same concepts to interpret themselves as others. We think of both ourselves and others as believers, desirers, hopers, intenders, goal pursuers, and experiencers of sensations and emotions. Although this is obvious, it has been the source of centuries of puzzlement and controversy in both philosophy and psychology. We seem capable of interpreting ourselves in a way that we cannot interpret others. For example, we seem to require no behavioral evidence to know what we think, feel, or want; yet, such direct insight is impossible in the case of knowing what others think, feel, or want. These interpretive, socio-cognitive concepts and categories appear to have a radically disjoint nature: their application to the self seems unmediated by behavioral evidence and incorrigible, while their application to others seems completely dependent on behavioral evidence and epistemically fraught.
