Epistemic privilege or privileged access is the philosophical concept that certain

knowledge Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is oft ...

, such as knowledge of one's own

thought In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and de ...

s, can be apprehended by a given person and not by others. This implies one has access to, and direct self-knowledge of, their own thoughts in such a way that others do not. The concept can also refer to the notion of having privileged, non-

perspectival Perspectivism (also called perspectivalism) is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism regard all perspectives and ...

access to knowledge of things about

reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways. Philosophical questions abo ...

or things beyond one's own

mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...

.See for example: Epistemic privilege can be characterized in two ways: * ''Positive characterization'': privileged access comes through

introspection Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...

. * ''Negative characterization'':

derived from privileged access is not based upon

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports the proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the proposition is truth, true. The exact definition and role of evidence vary across different fields. In epistemology, evidence is what J ...

Analysis

The still prevailing traditional position argues each of us do in fact have privileged access to our own thoughts. Descartes is the paradigmatic proponent of such kind of view (even though "privileged access" is an anachronic label for his thesis): For Descartes, we still have privileged access even in the

doubt Doubt is a mental state in which the mind remains suspended between two or more contradictory propositions, and is certainty, uncertain about them. Doubt on an emotional level is indecision between belief and wikt:disbelief, disbelief. It may i ...

scenario. That is, for him we would retain self-knowledge even in those extreme situations in which we can not have knowledge about anything else.

Gilbert Ryle Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase " ghost in the machine". Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been ca ...

, on the other hand, maintains a diametrically opposed view. According to the

behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that indivi ...

of Ryle, each of us knows our own thoughts in the same way we know other's thoughts. We only come to know the thoughts of others through their linguistic and bodily behaviors, and must do exactly the same in order to know our own thoughts. There is no privileged access. We only have access to what we think upon

s supplied through our own actions.

Analysis

References

Further reading