Abstract: Attempts to explain the assumption that a speaker's sincere self-attribution of propositional attitudes is justified, while such justification is lacking if the attribution is done by somebody else. By tracing the source of first-person authority, the justification of such self-attribution, to a necessary feature of language, Davidson offers both an original solution to the authority-problem and an escape from sceptical solutions to the problem of other minds.

Keywords: first-person authority, justification, language, necessary features of language, problem of other minds, propositional attitudes, scepticism,