We provide a critical study of Alex Byrne's Transparency and Self-Knowledge. The study proceeds in three stages. First, we summarize the main features that, according to Byrne, any adequate account of basic self-knowledge should satisfy-namely, that the account should (i) explain the privilege (special epistemic security) and peculiarity (distinctive epistemic features) of basic self-knowledge, in a way that is (ii) economical (not positing any extravagant epistemic method), (iii) uniform (accounting for all basic self-belief in the same way), and (iii) detectivist (acknowledging that self-beliefs track independent mental states). Second, we summarize Byrne's transparency account and argue that the features of this account are in tension with the desiderata Byrne himself has proposed. According to Byrne's account, basic self-beliefs are the product of transparent inferences from world-directed beliefs; for instance, one infers, from the premise that p, to the conclusion that one believes that p. Although such an inference is logically 'mad', Byrne argues that carrying out the inference nevertheless results in safe, true self-beliefs, and hence is a good epistemic rule to follow. We argue that Byrne's account must invoke an epistemically deflated notion of 'inference' that cannot actually account for the privilege and peculiarity of basic self-beliefs while remaining economical. We also argue that Byrne's account must posit worlds of facts that are proprietary to sensation and perception (e.g., a world of pain, a world of vision, even a world of nausea) that risk metaphysical extravagance. Finally, in the third stage, we sketch an alternative non-transparency-based schema for modelling basic self-knowledge that can account for privilege and peculiarity in an economical, uniform, and detectivist manner, without invoking what we see to be the extravagances of Byrne's account and what we see to be contentious commitments concerning the nature of inference. The availability of accounts falling under this schema raises a challenge for Byrne: Byrne needs to demonstrate how the transparency account can do better in meeting the desiderata Byrne himself has laid out than this alternative schema.
