 The idea that we must engage in interpretation to know our own attitudes and emotions echoes Ryle’s (1949) view that our means of achieving self-knowledge is broadly similar to our means of knowing others’ states. In particular, self-interpretation theorists maintain that, just as we know others’ attitudes by inference from what they say, self-knowledge often involves inference from inner speech. (I’m indebted here to Byrne 2012a.) Ryle suggests that the experience of inner speech is a maximally effective type of “eavesdropping”.