 Shoemaker (1994) offers a sustained critique of inner sense accounts. His main objection centers on the charge that, in construing the capacity for self-knowledge as similar to sensory capacities like vision, inner sense accounts imply that the capacity for self-knowledge is one that a rational person might lack. As he puts this, they imply that a rational creature could be “self-blind”, unable to recognize its own mental states. But, he says, self-blindness is impossible in a rational creature (at least, one with ordinary mental states and who possesses mental state concepts). Shoemaker’s discussion has been as influential for its positive suggestion—that our capacity for self-knowledge is closely tied to rationality (see  3.6  and  3.7)—as  for its critical treatment of inner sense accounts.