FIRST PERSON AUTHORITY

First person authority is the special authority that we have when testifying about our current mental states. I take this authority to be a fact that no one can reasonably doubt. What is controversial though is how to explain the presumption that we get things right when we describe what we currently think or feel. Following Donald Davidson, I reject any attempt to explain first person authority in terms of some kind of privileged access to one's own mind. But unlike Davidson, I see much value in a neo-expressivist account of the semantics of avowals.