Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The puzzle of self-talk arises from endorsing the following three claims: 1) self-talk exists; 2) we know our communicative intentions; 3) what we say in self-talk conveys information to an interlocutor (in the case of self-talk, ourselves) about our communicative intentions. Some authors (Deamer 2021, Carruthers 2011, Cassam 2011) propose to deny (2), while others (Geurts 2018) deny (3). In this talk, I situate this puzzle in the broader context of the relationship between thinking/feeling and speaking regarding self-knowledge. Based on a model of speech production, I suggest a way to understand (2) and (3) that makes them compatible and so the puzzle doesn’t arise.