Authority and Freedom to Avow

Abstract

It is, I believe, a little-noticed fact that all psychological knowledge is erected upon a foundation of first-person, present-tense self-descriptions, felicitously named ‘avowals’ by Gilbert Ryle. The word ‘avowals’ is extremely apt because such assertions are not ordinary descriptions of states of affairs; they are semi-performative in nature,¹ falling somewhere in between the pure performatives brought to light by Austin, such as ‘I promise’, ‘I do thee wed’ and ‘I dub thee Sir Lancelot’, and physical self-descriptions such as ‘I weigh 150 pounds’. I intend to show that psychology cannot be a theoretical science like biology because its data are ‘subjective reports’ or avowals, and all apparently more objective psychological knowledge is built upon these data, thus sharing their subjectivity. Secondarily, I hope to shed new light on how and why the human animal has free will, despite the correct Hegelian-Marxist claim that the individual is a nexus of social relationships.

‘Just try, in a real case, to doubt someone else’s pain or fear’ — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

‘“So you are saying that the word ‘pain’ really means crying?” On the contrary: the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it’ — Ibid.