Abstract
This chapter deals with weak epistemic accounts of self-knowledge. It starts with Christopher Peacocke’s rational internalism, which claims that the simple conscious occurrence of first-order mental states grounds and rationalises one’s psychological self-ascriptions. The account is found either circular or unsuited to confer a genuinely rationalising role to the self-ascribed states. Tyler Burge’s rational externalism is then scrutinised and the instability of its central notion of “entitlement” is noted. Gareth Evans’s so-called “transparency method” is then considered, whereby in order to get knowledge of our own beliefs, we have to direct our gaze outward. One, more epistemically oriented development of this view (due to Jordi Fernández) is criticised mainly for claiming that the evidence which justifies one’s belief in P would also justify one’s self-ascription of that belief. Another, deliberative development (due to Richard Moran) is found wanting mainly because it identifies first-personal self-knowledge solely with the ability to deliberate and make up one’s mind.
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Notes
- 1.
Peacocke 1999, p. 214.
- 2.
According to Peacocke, a judgement that p may not always occur, in fact, but it should always be available to a subject, in order for his psychological self-ascription to be justified (cf. Peacocke 1999, pp. 222–223; 241–242).
- 3.
Peacocke 1999, p. 214.
- 4.
Peacocke 1999, pp. 205–209.
- 5.
Peacocke 1999, pp. 224–225.
- 6.
Peacocke 1999, pp. 230–231.
- 7.
Peacocke 1999, pp. 232–233.
- 8.
Peacocke 1999, pp. 205–206.
- 9.
Peacocke 1999, p. 207.
- 10.
For instance, Peacocke (1999, pp. 209–210) writes: “I now attempt some further analysis of the occupation of the attention by conscious thought. When you have a thought, it does not normally come neat, unconnected with other thoughts and contents. Rather, in having a particular thought, you often appreciate certain of its relations to other thoughts and contents. You have a thought, and you may be aware that its content is a consequence, perhaps gratifying, perhaps alarming, of another conclusion you have just reached; or you may be aware that its content is evidence for some hypothesis that you have formulated; or that it is a counterexample to the hypothesis” (italics mine). “Now when you think a particular thought, there is of course no intention in advance to think that particular thought. But there can be an intention to think a thought which stands in a certain relation to other thoughts or contents” (italics mine). This clearly suggests the idea that if a thought occupies one’s attention, then, according to Peacocke, its content must be known to the subject who has it, as well as its practical consequences—like causing one’s feeling alarmed or gratified—and theoretical ones—such as its relation to other thoughts. As we shall presently see, however, this requires for Peacocke too knowledge of the nature of one’s own mental states as well—that is, of their being beliefs as opposed to wishes, imaginings, and so on.
- 11.
Actually, Peacocke talks in terms of “rational sensitivity” to one’s mental states. One way of understanding this (rather vague) expression is in terms of “awareness”. However, for a different—still problematical—interpretation, see the following paragraph.
- 12.
Peacocke himself (1999, p. 216) makes the point: “Now the thinker who successfully reaches new beliefs by inference has to be sensitive not only to the content of his initial beliefs. He has also to be sensitive to the fact that his initial states are beliefs. He will not be forming beliefs by inference from the contents of his desires, hopes, or daydreams”.
- 13.
Peacocke could reply that what is required is knowledge of one’s judgement but that what gets self-attributed is a belief. Yet, first, a judgement is nothing but a mental state (or action). Hence, knowledge of it would be a case of self-knowledge, which we are supposed to account for. Secondly, if we applied Peacocke’s model to explain how this latter piece of knowledge could be possible in turn, we would get, on the present proposal, that this very mental state should already be known to a subject who self-ascribed it.
- 14.
I think the following three paragraphs can take care of the kind of objections raised by McHugh (2012) against my criticism of Peacocke’s proposal.
- 15.
I would like to thank Barry Smith for bringing this point to my attention. McHugh dubs it “practical” in his 2012 paper. See previous footnote.
- 16.
McHugh 2012 in fact seems to take it as a brute datum about certain kinds of creature.
- 17.
Bonjour (2003, p. 62): “[Awareness of the kind and content of one’s own occurrent mental state is] not in any way apperceptive or reflective in character: [it does] not require or involve a distinct second-order mental act with the propositional content that I have the belief in question. Instead, [it is] partly constitutive of the first-level state of occurrent belief”.
- 18.
According to Bonjour (2003, pp. 65–68) that would either involve us in a vicious regress or never provide an account of how a given mental state (first-order or otherwise) could ever be conscious.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Peacocke (1999, p. 216) writes: “In cases of consciously based self-ascription of attitudes and experiences, a thinker […] makes a transition not only from the content of some initial state, but also makes it because the initial state is of a certain kind (…). In the case of consciously based self-ascription, the distinction between those events which are occurrent attitudes of the right kind to sustain the resulting judgement and those which are not is a distinction which is conceptualised by the thinker”. All this clearly implies that the relevant transitions are made on the basis of how the first-order mental states are represented to the subject and not just on the basis of their phenomenology and this seems to ensure their rationality from the subject’s own point of view. Hence, although, as Pryor has brought to my attention, Peacocke 2001 maintains that sensations—devoid of any representational content—can immediately justify one’s corresponding self-ascriptions, he does not seem to be inclined to offer an analogous account of intentional mental states and of their self-ascriptions.
Furthermore, for reasons of internal coherence with his earlier work, I think Peacocke should acknowledge that only representational contents—let them be psychological or otherwise—can serve as rationalisers of judgements and, in particular, of self-ascriptions of intentional mental states. Indeed, it is only on such an assumption that one can understand why, instead of defending the so-called “Myth of the Given” against McDowell’s attacks, he elaborated a notion of non-conceptual yet fully representational content for experiences (see Peacocke 1992, Chap. 4).
- 23.
Indeed, I think that it is very unclear how proponents of such a view could solve the problem just mentioned and known as the ‘arbitrariness problem’ (see Pryor 2005, pp. 192–193). For instance, Pryor’s own attempt to solve it by appealing to a notion of mental events which are themselves logically structured is dubious both from a metaphysical point of view, as Achille Varzi has remarked to me, and from an epistemological one. For an internalist needs a justifier that is given to the subject and that can play a rationalising role for his self-ascription from his own point of view. The fact that an event might be, unbeknownst to him, logically structured and suited, in principle, to rationalise the transition from its occurrence to its self-ascription, is of no use to the development of a sound internalist epistemology of psychological self-ascriptions.
- 24.
I need to emphasise that Peacocke 2003 does not explicitly consider the case of self-knowledge. Rather, I am freely extending views he develops with respect to the relation between perceptual experiences and empirical beliefs to the case of transitions from first-order mental states to second-order ones.
- 25.
Strictly speaking, as Peacocke himself notices (2003, p. 26), the results of these transitions would be only “relatively a priori” since they would be justified by the occurrence of particular mental states. Still, they would not be inferred from them.
- 26.
See Peacocke 2003, p. 11.
- 27.
See Peacocke 2003, pp. 12, 101, 177–178.
- 28.
Notice that I am not claiming that the rationalising principles should be self-consciously or even tacitly employed by a subject, even less that their truth should be appreciated by him in order to have an account of self-knowledge which would be acceptable by internalist lights.
- 29.
On pain of falling back into either horn of the consciousness dilemma.
- 30.
- 31.
This is a very simplified account of perceptual entitlements. In fact, several a priori conditions characteristic of perception will have to be met too, for Burge. His proposal, therefore, differs from crudely reliabilist versions of perceptual justification (or warrant, in Burge’s terminology). See Burge 1993 and 2010. For an assessment, see Coliva 2012a.
- 32.
In Burge 2011 (p. 189), it is pointed out that although one can have a perceptual entitlement and yet lack knowledge of the world around one, if, for instance, one is in a sceptical scenario, one cannot have an entitlement for one’s psychological self-ascriptions and yet be wrong about one’s own mental states. Burge dubs this second kind of entitlement “immune to brute error”.
- 33.
Being a reasoner and a subject to whom moral norms apply are, according to Burge 2011, constitutive features of what it means to be a subject.
- 34.
See Burge 2011, pp. 192–193.
- 35.
In this case, “I am thinking/judging that P” would be similar to the explicit performative “I promise you to φ”, whereby one is promising to φ as well as saying that one is so doing. Thus, by judging “I am thinking/judging that P”, one would thereby think or judge that P while also judging that one is so doing.
- 36.
Burge (2011, pp. 210–211) claims that “I hereby judge that P” is an impure cogito-like case and that error is possible. Yet, if it occurred, it would signal a malfunctioning in a subject’s cognitive capacities and that would actually defeat one’s entitlement for the relevant self-ascription.
- 37.
Indeed, Burge 1996, p. 103, fn. 12 allows that his account is compatible with the presence of “a causal mechanism that relates attitudes to judgments about them”.
- 38.
- 39.
See Burge 2011, p. 192.
- 40.
Furthermore, it would be dubious that only creatures capable of such a robust form of critical reasoning would count as selves and that, in turn, would make trouble for Burge’s vindication of our entitlement to self-knowledge, which heavily depends on constitutive claims about what it means to be a self.
- 41.
Although Evans did not develop his proposal, he actually maintained his model for self-knowledge of beliefs could be extended to other cases of first-personal knowledge of our own mental states. Hence, he embraced monism. (See Evans 1982, p. 225).
- 42.
However, it may be objected, as Giorgio Volpe observed, that Fernández’s account violates a particular form of groundlessness—namely, one which would ban that the relevant psychological self-ascription be based on any kind of evidence or grounds whatsoever, even those which would ground the first-order belief in P. I agree with this objection, but at least the restricted versions of groundlessness we introduced in Chap. 3 would be respected.
- 43.
For a discussion of further aspects of Fernández’s proposal, see Coliva 2014.
- 44.
In Moran 2012 (p. 235), he calls this form of agency “agency as responsiveness to reasons” as opposed to “agency as production”. The latter is “at will”, the former is constrained by epistemic reasons. It is a form of agency nonetheless.
- 45.
- 46.
Like Fernández’s account, Moran’s would not respect an unrestricted version of groundlessness (see fn. 42). For our purposes, though, it is sufficient that it respects indeed both the weak and strong version of it we have been discussing throughout this book.
- 47.
Implausibly, Cassam 2014 raises this objection to theories that hinge on the application of the transparency method. For a discussion, see Coliva 2015b. See also Boyle 2011a and 2015. However, his gloss (Boyle 2011a) on Moran’s position as entailing tacit self-knowledge of one’s first-order mental states, which needs be made explicit only through reflection, seems to betray the gist of Moran’s non-evidential account.
- 48.
It is difficult, though, to see how psychological self-ascriptions reached through the transparency method could be wrong. For the subject will have the relevant judgement-dependent attitude, if she has formed it by considering reasons in favor of its content. Still she may also exhibit a behvior which at least partially goes against her psychological self-ascription. In that case, it would seem that Moran’s account would be more consistent with treating cases of self-deception as due to the presence of two conflicting mental states, only one of which is formed through deliberation and is self-known by application of the transparency method. There will be more about this account of self-deception in Chapter 7 (§§3-4).
- 49.
Moran acknowledges this charge in his exchange with Sydney Shoemaker and Lucy O’Brien. See Moran 2003, especially fn. 4 and pp. 409–417.
- 50.
- 51.
This is the gist of his response to Lucy O’Brien’s observation. See Moran 2003, p. 412.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Or at the very least he seems to hold that this kind of self-knowledge is more fundamental than our self-knowledge of sensations, perceptions, and so on. (For a similar objection, see Finkelstein 2003.) Boyle 2009, who is sceptical of the claim that genuinely first-personal self-knowledge should be equated with deliberative self-knowledge of one’s propositional attitudes, is however in favour of the claim that it is more fundamental than any other kind of self-knowledge because it is inherent to our notion of belief. The latter claim is specially defended in Boyle 2011b.
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Coliva, A. (2016). Epistemically Weak Accounts. In: The Varieties of Self-Knowledge. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-32613-3_5
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