Abstract
People do not always really believe what they take themselves to believe [1]. A person may sincerely say that a certain racist belief is definitively false, but still hold such a belief. When asked what she believes about something, it is likely that she simply expresses her opinion about the issue in question, and this reveals what she takes herself to believe, but not necessarily what she really believes. In some cases, however, a person may adopt a kind of a third-person point of view. Instead of expressing her opinion, she may report the belief she has in light of convincing evidence concerning her behavior and other attitudes. It follows that sometimes a person may report having a belief which conflicts with her better judgment – her opinion. “Many people have completely unjustified racially biased beliefs and, judging from my behavior, I must admit that I have them myself.” In these cases the person’s (evidential) beliefs are not apparent to the person in the normal way, and are not judgment-sensitive (or reason-responsive) in a way that they are supposed to be [2]. Beliefs of this kind can be called alien beliefs. They are beliefs that fail to be sensitive to the person’s regular processes of introspection and evaluation and are known by her merely through behavioral and psychological evidence that she has noticed about herself, or learned about herself from others [3]. When a person is aware of her beliefs in this way, she is not committed to their truth or overall acceptability; she has not endorsed them as true [4]. To have an alien belief of this sort is to realize that one has conflicting beliefs, with some (the “alien” ones) being very oddly related to oneself. Most or all people have unnoticed beliefs that conflict with their sincere opinions, but the unnoticed beliefs of this sort are not ”alien” in the relevant sense, as they do not appear as alien to those who have them.
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References
I would like to thank Saul Smilansky for permitting me to include this chapter in the book as the original version was a co-written paper. I would also like to thank Valtteri Arstila, Luca Barlassina, Walter Glannon, Amihud Gilead, Iddo Landau, Ariel Meirav, Daniel Statman, and Jukka Varelius for their helpful comments.
Georges Rey has distinguished between avowed beliefs and central beliefs. Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception. In: McLaughlin, B.P., Oksenberg Rorty, A. (eds.) Perspectives on Self-Deception, 264–295. University of California Press, Berkeley (1989), esp. 280. Philip Pettit distinguishes behavioural beliefs and judgmental beliefs. Practical Belief and Philosophical Theory. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, 15–33 (1998), esp. 18. The notion of judgment-sensitive attitudes is used for instance by Thomas Scanlon in What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 18–22. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2000). Judgment-sensitive attitudes are attitudes that, in “ideally rational” agents, are sensitive to reasons, such that these agents have them when, and only when, they judge there to be sufficient reason for them. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza talk about reason-responsive “mechanisms”. Responsibility and Control, pp. 69–76. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998).
I understand “psychological evidence” in the broad sense so that it includes evidence provided by brain sciences and cognitive neuroscience. Hence “neural evidence” is interpreted roughly as “psychological evidence”.
Richard Moran writes about the “kind of alienation” that people face when they are aware of their beliefs merely on theoretical grounds. Authority and Estrangement, p. 92. Princeton University Press, Princeton (2001). This chapter has benefited considerably from Moran’s book. The idea that one’s beliefs are transparent to oneself has been recently criticized by Brie Gertler. See Self-Knowledge and the Transparency of Belief. In: Hatzimoysis, A. (ed.) Self-Knowledge, pp. 125–145. Oxford University Press, New York (2011).
There is a large amount of evidence that people are surprisingly often unaware of the considerations that influence their behavior. See e.g. Wilson, T.D.: Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2002). See also Schwitzgebel, E.: The Unreliability of Naïve Introspection. Philosophical Review 117, 245–273 (2008). Schwitzgebel (p. 259) argues that we are “prone to gross error, even in favourable circumstances of extended reflection, about our ongoing emotional, visual, and cognitive phenomenology”.
Cf. Mellor, D.H.: Conscious Belief. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 78, 87–101 (1977-78), esp. 97; Rey: Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception, 281; Moran, R.: Problems of Sincerity. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105, 341–361 (2005), esp. 357.
Gary Watson writes that irrational guilt can be merely an “acculturated attitude” that is compatible with a seemingly conflicting value judgment. Free Agency. Journal of Philosophy 72, 205–220 (1975), esp. 215.
Cf. Räikkä, J.: On Irrational Guilt. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7, 473–485 (2004).
Damian Stanley, Elisabeth Phelps, and Mahzarin Banaji published an fMRI-based study that appeared to suggest that people may have unconscious racist biases and that it can be detected. However, the researchers warned against interpretating the results as indicating hidden racism. The Neural Basis of Implicit Attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Research 17, 164–170 (2008).
The saying “A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others” derives from Paul Valery.
My definition of alien beliefs is not directly based on the debate concerning how to distinguish those desires that a person identifies with from those that are alien to her. For a discussion of that issue, see e.g. Frankfurt, H.: Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person published in his The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988); Taylor, J.T.: The Myth of Objectively Alien Desires. In: Chan, D. K. (ed.) Moral Psychology Today, pp. 109–122. Springer, UK (2008). What Frankfurt calls “alien desires” are not “alien” in my sense.
Nisbett, R.E., Wilson, T.D.: Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. Psychological Review 84, 231–259 (1977), esp. 241–242. The stockings experiment is mentioned also by Rey in his Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception (p. 272).
An alternative interpretation is the belief that “The right-most stockings are better than the left-most stockings, because I noticed the right-most stockings later than the left-most stockings”. Nisbett and Wilson (p. 244) write that it is not obvious why the position effect occurs, but that it “is possible that subjects carried into the judgment task the consumer’s habit of ‘shopping around’, holding off on choice of early-seen garments on the left in favour of later-seen garments on the right”.
Nisbett and Wilson (p. 247) point out that “if people were aware of position effects on their evaluation, they would attempt to overcome those effects”.
Sie, M.: Moral Agency, Conscious Control, and Deliberative Awareness. Inquiry 52, pp. 516–531 (2009), esp. 520. For a discussion, see Räikkä, J., Varelius, J. (eds.) Adaptation and Autonomy. Springer, Heidelberg (2013).
It is often said that groundless optimism is important in daily routines, not only because it contributes to psychic health, but also because positive (but false) beliefs often help us in our undertakings (by enhancing our confidence in our own abilities, and the like.). This is why there are good prudential reasons to have false rather than true beliefs in certain circumstances. However, people cannot choose their beliefs at “will”. Cf. Goleman, D.: Vital Lies, Simple Truths. Simon Schuster, New York (1985); Taylor, S.E.: Positive Illusions. Basic Books, New York (1989). Saul Smilansky argued that we should continue to deceive ourselves on the free will problem. See his in Free Will and Illusion. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2000). For a discussion of the ethics of self-deception, see e.g., Martin, M.W.: Self-Deception and Morality. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence (1986).
Here is another example. Before elections a responsible citizen may fail to judge that “My vote is important”, but if she in fact believes so, then she has a morally desirable alien belief, given that she is aware of her evidential belief and thinks (perhaps correctly) that having it is morally important, as it indicates her commitment to democracy. (Morally desirable alien beliefs can be true or false.)
Why would a person have a desirable alien belief? Perhaps because morally desirable alien beliefs do have a psychological function.
Peacocke, C.: Being Known, pp. 242–243. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999). Peacocke defends the claim that we may have introspectively justified but nevertheless false second-order beliefs. Aaron Z. Zimmerman criticizes Peacocke’s example in Self-Knowledge. Philosophy Compass 3, 325–352 (2008).
The principle of belief attribution used here could be the following. “If the best explanation of S’s non-verbal behavior includes attributing to S the belief that not-p, then do not attribute to S the belief that p.” Cf. Hales, S.D.: Self-Deception and Belief Attribution. Synthese 101, 273–289 (1994), esp. 287.
In Akeel Bilgrami’s thought experiment a person has self-knowledge of his thoughts only from an external or “third personal perspective on himself”. Self-Knowledge and Resentment, pp. 190–191. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2006).
Obviously, being biased does not always mean that one has a biased belief. A person may have biased “impressions” or “aliefs”, and so on. Cf. Gendler, T.S.: Alief and Belief. The Journal of Philosophy 105, 634–663 (2008).
Neil Levy discusses “the faulty attitudes” and “the epistemic conditions on moral responsibility”. The Good, the Bad, and the Blameworthy. Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 1, 2–16 (2005), esp. 11.
Cf. Moran: Authority and Estrangement, 63.
Levy’s claim that judgment-sensitive attitudes “are responsive to reasons such that when no such reason is forthcoming, they tend to weaken and eventually extinguish” may be correct, but there are many exceptions to this tendency. The Good, the Bad, and the Blameworthy, 11.
Perhaps a person who manages to internalize her precautionary measures in the sense that she need no longer think of them nor intentionally apply them has managed to get rid of her biased belief. But this is not clear.
If she is unable to work wholeheartedly with people who have undergraduate degrees from countries other than her own, why does she not just quit? Because then most professors should quit? Because she is perhaps the best person for the job? Because she is irreplaceable? There may be, in other words, good reasons for her to remain on the job.
Adams, R.M.: Involuntary Sins. The Philosophical Review 94, 3–31 (1985), esp. 15.
Adams: Involuntary Sins, 15. Adams (p. 19) argues that a person’s “evil beliefs are a part of who he is, morally, and make him a fitting object of reproach”, no matter what is the origin of his evil beliefs.
Angela M. Smith thinks that what makes us responsible for our attitudes is that they are the kinds of states that “reflect and are in principle sensitive to our rational judgments”. Responsibility for Attitudes: Activity and Passivity in Mental Life. Ethics 115, 236–271 (2005), esp. 271.
Cf. Moran’s discussion on unmotivated desires. Authority and Estrangement, 115.
Cf. Moran: Authority and Estrangement, 67, 151.
Georges Rey argues in Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception (pp. 282–283) that people can choose whether they identify with their “avowed attitudes” or with what he calls “central attitudes”. Rey writes that just “as avowals themselves are caught up in social relations, so are the identifications we make with them”. “On the one hand, one doesn’t want to be overly burdened with the biases, superstitions, and stupidities that one may centrally believe despite one’s better (avowed) judgment; but, on the other hand, one oughtn’t to be swayed by now this, now that bit of explicit reasoning.”
Rey describes the case of an “educated” neurotic who ”might acquiesce to the nonconscious motives ascribed to him by his therapist”. See Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception, 276.
A separate ethical question is how easily a person should trust belief-attributions that concern her own beliefs and attribute to herself beliefs that conflict with her opinions.
When a person feels that she is the only person who could eradicate her alien belief, she has in mind natural ways of dealing with the issue. Of course there are medical and technical means to eradicate people’s beliefs, alien or not.
Festinger, S.L.: A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press, Stanford (1957).
Epistemic conservatism comes in many forms but roughly speaking it is the doctrine that claims that we may have a justification for a belief in virtue of holding that belief. For a defense of epistemic conservatism, see e.g. McCain, K.: The Virtues of Epistemic Conservatism. Synthese 164, 185–200 (2008). David Christensen has criticized epistemic conservatism in his Conservatism in Epistemology. Nous 28, 69–89 (1994).
There is an air of self-deception if the CEO manages to change his opinion by interpreting “evidence” in the way that helps him to form a belief that he wishes to have.
Moran: Problems of Sincerity, 357.
Ibid.
Of course, the CEO’s report about his state of mind is also an opinion of his, that is, his opinion about his state of mind.
Someone might say that the CEO takes advantage of Moore’s paradox and plays with two propositions “I believe that women are as able as men to act in responsible leadership positions in business enterprises” and “Women are not as able as men to act in responsible leadership positions in business enterprises”. But this does not appear to be an accurate picture, as the CEO’s attitudes seem to be his (alien) evidential belief that “Women are as able as men to act in responsible leadership positions in business enterprises” and his opinion that “It does not seem to me that women are as able as men to act in responsible leadership positions in business enterprises”.
Obviously, if a person who has the evidential belief that “A conservative candidate is better than a liberal candidate” votes for the liberal candidate, then this voting should be taken into account when it is considered whether the belief “A conservative candidate is better than a liberal candidate” can still be attributed to the person.
A husband may wonder whether his wife really loves him, not whether his wife sincerely thinks that she loves him. Such a husband would like his wife to analyze her emotions from a third-person point of view.
The point here is that neuroscience will reveal contradictions in our beliefs, not that it will play a causal role in producing them.
See e.g. Racine, E.: Pragmatic Neuroethics, ch. 5. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2010).
Cf. Arstila, V.: Brain Reading and the Popular Press. Res Cogitans 8, 4–24 (2011).
See Farah, M.J., et al.: Brain Imaging and Brain Privacy: A Realistic Concern? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21, 119–127 (2008).
Cf. Arstila: Brain Reading and the Popular Press, 4–5.
See e.g. Eaton, M.L., Illes, J.: Commercializing Cognitive Neurotechnology – The Ethical Terrain. Nature Biotechnology 25, 393–397 (2007). Valtteri Arstila and Franklin Scott argue that the idea that brain imaging data could reveal something unintended (that is, something that the researchers were not looking for in the first place) holds for “structural characteristics of our cortex where abnormalities are often found in MRI scanning”, but unintended findings are unlikely “in the cases where researchers aim at investigating more ‘dynamic’ states, such as thoughts, memories, and personality traits”. See Arstila, V., Scott, F.: Brain Reading and Mental Privacy. Trames 15, 204–212 (2011), esp. 208.
Cf. Farah, M.J.: Neuroethics: The Practical and the Philosophical. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, 34–40 (2005).
Cf. my discussion in Brain Imaging and Privacy. Neuroethics 3, 5–12 (2010).
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Räikkä, J. (2014). The Ethics of Alien Beliefs. In: Social Justice in Practice. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04633-4_9
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