# The Opacity of Mind An Integrative Theory of Self-Knowledge **Opening (not a real abstract):** The Opacity o f Mind It is widely believed that people have privileged and authoritative access to their own thoughts, and many theories have been proposed to explain this fact. The Opacity of Mind challenges the consensus view and subjects the theories in question to critical scrutiny, while showing that they are not protected against the findings of cognitive science by belonging to a separate ‘explanatory space’. The book argues that our access to our own thoughts is almost always interpretive, grounded in perceptual awareness of our own circumstances and behavior, together with our own sensory imagery (includ­ ing inner speech). In fact our access to our own thoughts is no different in principle from our access to the thoughts of other people, utilizing the conceptual and inferential resources of the same ‘mindreading’ faculty, and relying on many of the same sources **Authors:** [[carruthers]]