This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative" "view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view” (encompassing both theory- theory and simulation theory, as well as hybrid variations). On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind- making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: (1) the problem of “first- person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and (2) the problem of “reactive responsiveness” – accounting for our deep concern with calling" "one another to account for normatively untoward behaviour, both generally and in the moral domain.
A fully satisfying account of 1st person authority should satisfy two desiderata: (1) explain the privileged relation we bear to our own intentional states sufficient to justify a default presumption of authority; (2) explain why such authority matters for our ability to function well as rational agents. The traditional epistemological approach fails on the second desideratum, suggesting the more radical alternative of analyzing first-person authority in terms of a rational and self-regulative capacity we have to author our own intentional states. In comparing different versions of this “agency” model of authoritative self-knowledge, I argue that Richard Moran’s Kantian ideal of rational autonomy is neither necessary nor sufficient for well-functioning agency; worse, the ideal is unsuitable for human beings given our moral developmental liabilities. Using examples drawn from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, I argue we become better authoritative agents through embracing a less ambitious rational ideal.
