It is commonly held that we stand in a special epistemic relationship with respect to certain facts about our minds, a relationship that is known as privileged access. Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we either lack privileged access entirely, or that the scope of such access is severely limited. While there have been a number of attempts in the literature to respond to these skeptics, one question that has not been addressed is what, if anything, of value we fail to possess if these skeptics are right. In this paper, I argue that insofar as we lack privileged access, something of significant value would be absent from our cognitive lives. I defend this claim by developing a novel position that privileged access is necessary for possessing a type of epistemic control that is extrinsically valuable to those who possess it. I also provide reasons for thinking that privileged access is valuable in and of itself.

中文翻译：

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特权访问的价值

人们普遍认为，就我们思想的某些事实而言，我们处于一种特殊的认知关系中，这种关系被称为特权访问。最近，一些哲学家认为我们要么完全缺乏特权访问，要么这种访问的范围受到严重限制。虽然在文献中已经有许多尝试回应这些怀疑论者，但一个尚未解决的问题是，如果这些怀疑论者是对的，我们将无法拥有什么价值（如果有的话）。在本文中，我认为只要我们缺乏特权访问，我们的认知生活中就会缺少一些具有重要价值的东西。我通过提出一种新颖的立场来捍卫这一主张，即特权访问对于拥有一种对拥有它的人来说具有外在价值的认知控制是必要的。