 Shoemaker explains the link between rationality and self-knowledge with his “constitutivist”  [8]  thesis, namely: for rational thinkers with the appropriate conceptual repertoire, being in certain mental states constitutes knowledge that one is in them. What it is for a rational creature to feel pain is, in part, for that creature to believe that they are in pain; what it is for a rational creature to believe that p is, in part, for it to believe that it believes that p; etc. Shoemaker cashes out this idea with a functionalist analysis of mental states, proposing that in rational creatures, the causal role defining a mental state are also sufficient for belief that one is in that mental state (Shoemaker 1994: 287–9).