Transparency to the World, the Nature of Mind, and Self-Knowledge (Commentary on Boyle’s Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind )

Abstract After presenting Boyle’s appeal to the Sartrean notion of nonpositional self-awareness in explaining Evans’ “transparency fact” concerning self-knowledge, I argue that his explanation suffers a certain instability. To the extent that nonpositional self-awareness is taken to be a matter of first-order ‘transparent’ orientation to the world, Boyle’s suggestion concerning the character of explicit positional self-knowledge is compromised. On the other hand, to the extent that nonpositional awareness is regarded as a form of genuine self-awareness, his explanation overintellectualizes first-order mental states. I conclude by raising questions regarding Boyle’s success in providing a viable alternative to epistemic accounts of basic self-knowledge.