Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-KnowledgeSince Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first person authority'' the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged