| Summary: | In the discourse of self-knowledge, the concept of privileged access and the inner sense account seems to be taken for granted in that we are not cognizant of what else it can offer. I begin this essay with a close inspection of a few accounts of privileged access and the nature of the mental states that derive from it. I introduce the inner sense account followed by a few criticisms by Sydney Shoemaker, an advocate of introspection but not the ISA, and Gilbert Ryle, who refuses to give any role to privileged access in self-knowledge and who is skeptical about the general idea of introspection I tackle Shoemaker’s views by demonstrating that the ISA remains relevant despite his “self-blindness” thesis. With Ryle’s non-asymmetrical view of acquiring self-knowledge, I highlight some concerns regarding his arguments. Ultimately, I show that our privileged access and the ISA must necessarily co-exist to strengthen the view that we are intuitively attuned to these two epistemic approaches in acquiring self-knowledge.
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