This volume answers questions that lead to a clearer picture of third-person self- knowledge, the self-interpretation it embeds, and its narrative structure. Bringing together current research on third-person self-knowledge and self-interpretation, the book focuses on third-person self-knowledge, and the role that narrative and interpretation play in acquiring it. It regards the third-personal epistemic approach to oneself as a problem worthy of investigation in its own right, and makes clear the relation between third-person self-knowledge, self-interpretation, and narrative capacities. In recent years, the idea that each person is in a privileged position to acquire knowledge about her own mental states has come under attack. A growing body of empirical research has cast doubt upon the existence of what philosophers call ‘first person self-knowledge’, i.e., knowledge about our mental states that is often thought to be immediate, transparent, and authoritative. This line of thought has led some philosophers to claim that what seems to be ‘first-person self-knowledge’ is really just ‘third-person self-knowledge,’ i.e., knowledge about our mental states that is inferential, opaque, and fallible. This book discusses challenges for first-person knowledge and explores the true nature of third-person knowledge.

This volume attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in "epistemic bad faith" in light of what psychology tells us. After all, the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting "ego-threatening" thoughts à la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts—e.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However, reflection on one’s thoughts requires knowing what those thoughts are in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just display naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are sometimes infallible in our self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a "foundation" for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Using classic texts in African philosophy, Bruce B. Janz applies the strand of cognitive science known as enactivism to realise new connections and intersections between both fields. The idea that cognition is embodied and embedded in a social world neatly maps onto specifically African epistemologies to outline a new direction of study on what philosophy is. By working through a rich range of texts and thinkers, Janz provides a fruitful new interpretation of African philosophy and provides close readings of seminal and sidelined thinkers to provide an invaluable resource for students and scholars. Janz's study takes in the creative humanism of Sylvia Wynter, Placide Tempels's Bantu Philosophy, Mbiti's theory of time, Oruka's last work on sage philosophy, Mogobe Ramose's own version of Ubuntu, Sophie Oluwole's active literature of philosophy, Achille Mbembe's excoriating attack on the effects of colonialism on life in Africa, and Suzanne Césaire writings on négritude. This book reorients African philosophy towards an active and creative future informed by enactivist thinking.

One of the most important research programmes in contemporary cognitive science is that of extended cognition, whereby features of a subject's cognitive environment can in certain conditions become constituent parts of the cognitive process itself. The aim of this volume is to explore the epistemological ramifications of this idea. The volume brings together a range of distinguished and emerging academics, from a variety of different perspectives, to investigate the very idea of an extended epistemology. The first part of the volume explores foundational issues with regard to an extended epistemology, including from a critical perspective. The second part of the volume examines the applications of extended epistemology and the new theoretical directions that it might take us. These include its ethical ramifications, its import to the epistemology of education and emerging digital technologies, and how this idea might dovetail with certain themes in Chinese philosophy.

We are often asked to describe ourselves. In response, one might propose a few adjectives, or possibly even a brief account of how they became the person they are today. How we develop such self-understanding is a complicated matter involving various cognitive and social processes. Fanti Rovetta contributes to the comprehension of these processes by exploring the role of inner speech, or verbal thought, in self-understanding. Drawing from sociolinguistics, he proposes and applies a novel theoretical framework, a situated approach to inner speech, which emphasizes individual variation, and suggests that each person has a style of inner speaking. Such style of inner speaking constrains the linguistic hermeneutic resources a person can access in thinking about themselves and in making sense of their experiences. Additionally, he investigates the role of inner speech in narrative thinking and in verbal rumination, which are two key mental phenomena related to self-understanding. Throughout the book, the approach adopted is multidisciplinary, integrating philosophical discussion with recent developments in cognitive science, psychology, and linguistics.

Drawing on a range of hard evidence, Neil Van Leeuwen shows that the psychological mechanisms underlying religious belief are the same as those enabling imaginative play. He argues that we should therefore understand religious belief as a form of make-believe that people use to define their group identity and express the values sacred to them.

This book develops a theory of imagining biblically that explores the contributions scripture can make to a new way of thinking about creativity, reading, interpretation, and criticism. The methodology employed in order to demonstrate this thesis consists of a theoretical exploration of current theological understandings of the imagination and their implications within the fields of literary studies. The biblical texts locates the function generally defined as imagination in the heart (the eyes of your heart, Ephesians 1:18). This book assesses what the biblical text as a literary and religious document contributes to the concept of imagination. Due to the eclectic nature of the individual books that comprise the scriptural canon, the text is considered primarily in terms of its overarching metanarrative, language, genres, and theological propositions. Tracing the various trajectories the biblical text opens up and the ways in which they intersect with and modify post-Romantic assumptions about the imagination reconfigures traditional definitions of this concept. A Calvinistic, evangelical hermeneutic is deployed to establish a theoretical concept of what it means to imagine biblically. This is further substantiated by a comparative study of authors ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries (John Bunyan, Samuel Rutherford, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and C. S. Lewis). Each author's chapter incorporates a close reading of a key text which concretely examines various trajectories of imagining biblically, including creativity, faith, morals, narrative, Romanticism, and eschatology. The conclusion returns to the biblical text and draws these elements together, with a definition of the concept of imagining biblically and its implications for literary studies.