Episode 127 - Nic Koziolek discusses self-knowledge
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What is self‑consciousness and how do philosophers define it?
Hi, I'm Nora with the Elucidations podcast. In this episode of Elucidations, we sit down with Nick Kozelek to discuss the importance of self-consciousness, which is knowing you're in a state by being in it. And we also discuss one solution to the infinite regress of knowing how you know something. Sometimes it seems like a good thing to know everything about yourself, but sometimes it seems like knowing everything about yourself can lead you to be overly self-conscious. Like, for example, if you're speaking in front of people and you suddenly don't know what to do with your hands. We hope you enjoy the episode.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I'm Matt Teichman.
I'm Nora Bradford.
With us today is Nick Kozolik, lecturer in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. And he's here to discuss self-consciousness. I also want to recommend that you check out our earlier episode that we did with Nick, episode 96 on the role of belief and reasoning. It's a real treat. Nick Kozolik, welcome back to Elucidations. Thanks, Matt. So self-consciousness is a topic you will find all over the place if you crack open random philosophy books. And yet it's also a topic that I think doesn't always occur to people as something that's that important. One thing you hear in like everyday situations is stuff like you got to get over your self-consciousness. So if I have a friend who's going to go tap dance in front of a bunch of people, maybe I'll try to tell my friend, don't be self-conscious about it.
Just do it the way you do it in front of me. Don't think about all those people watching. So I feel like ordinarily we think of being self-conscious as something like an impulse to fight that you have to like get over. Is that at all related to what philosophers who work on self-consciousness work on?
I think it ultimately is. But in a way, it's good to start by reminding yourself that, you know, in that way of talking about self-consciousness, it seems like, as you said, a kind of bad thing, something you want to get over. But in other cases, it's a good thing. So self-consciousness is also often connected with self-knowledge. And we do think of knowing things about yourself as being a good thing.
And so would we say that self-consciousness in the normal sense that we use it, saying don't be too self-conscious, actually means don't have too much self-knowledge? So be a little bit sort of in the dark about what you actually are doing or how you're operating in the world?
Yeah, that might be true. And so if you think about it that way, then the thought is that there are at least times in which having too much self-knowledge can be debilitating in some way. I always think about this in terms of like when you're talking in front of a large group of people, you suddenly find this thing that you never find in the rest of your life, which is you can't figure out what to do with your hands. And suddenly you're like very aware of the fact that you have hands and that you have to make a decision about where to put them and you don't know what to do.
Right, because normally it's just automatic. Your hands go wherever they naturally go and you don't even think about it. But once you have to think about it, it like becomes a problem that you have to solve suddenly or something.
Yeah, although now I'm thinking, like, maybe we should start paying attention to, like, think back on what you were doing with your hands when you were talking with your friends at dinner or something and try to figure out what it was that you were doing and then try to do that when you're, say, teaching a class. Hmm. And this would be using self-consciousness to figure out how to do better in these kinds of situations in which we ordinarily think about self-consciousness as being a bad thing.
Hmm. Another thing that kind of fascinates me is that in this sort of everyday use of the word self-conscious, it often goes with the verb feel. So like, I don't like hanging out with Arthur. He makes me feel self-conscious. But based on what we've said so far, that seems a little odd because if self-consciousness is having like self-knowledge, like what am I saying?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is self‑consciousness and how do philosophers define it?
0:00–6:45
2
Why do we sometimes want to “get over” self‑consciousness in everyday situations?
6:45–12:59
3
How does the “being‑in‑the‑state” account explain knowing you’re in pain or enjoying pizza?
12:59–18:19
4
When can we be in a mental state without knowing it, and what does that reveal about self‑knowledge?
18:19–26:18
5
What are the classic error cases (itch vs. pain, fear of needles) that test the self‑consciousness theory?
26:18–33:13
6
How do self‑consciousness, self‑knowledge, and proprioception differ from each other?
33:13–39:41
7
What is the infinite‑regress problem for knowledge‑that‑you‑know and how does Rodel’s “receptive vs. spontaneous” solution work?
39:41–40:47
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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