We naturally see ourselves as capable of being active with respect to the matter of what we believe – as capable of epistemic agency. A natural view is that we can exercise such agency by engaging in reasoning. Sceptics contend that such a view cannot be maintained in light of the fact that reasoning involves judgements, which are not decided upon or the products of prior intentions. In response, I argue that reasoning in fact can amount to epistemic agency in (...) virtue of its being aim-directed in a way that cannot be reconciled with the sceptics' conception of it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, though (...) this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of (...) love and derives a conclusion regarding the nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires. More specifically, its starting point is the crude intuition that the significance conferred by love upon its objects is of a distinctively personal kind—an intuition that is expressed by the apparent non-substitutability of two similar subjects only one of whom is loved with respect to their importance for the lover. I argue that the initial notion of non-substitutability can be refined and modified so as to form a real challenge to all versions of strong cognitivism and to establish the existence of attitude-dependent reasons. (shrink)

An action is typically carried out over time, unified by an intention that is known to the agent under some description. In some of our habitual doings, however, we are often not aware of what or why we do as we do. Not knowing this, we must ask what kind of agency is at stake in these habitual doings, if any. This paper aims to show how habitual doings can still be considered actions of a subject even while they involve (...) a sense of involuntariness and there is a temporal displacement in the self-understanding they afford. It turns out that in some forms of habitual agency, we do not have the relevant intentional description at hand when we are engaged in the process of doing what we so typically do; on the contrary, such a description can only be appropriated with effort and subsequent to the time of the action. I will focus on two approaches to habits, broadly construed; a phenomenological and an action theoretic one, and I will suggest that both approaches focus too narrowly on a synchronic relation between habitual action and self-understanding. I will suggest that we need a diachronic account of the potential for self-understanding required for agency that allows us to explain the experience of diminished control and alienation involved in certain of our habitual actions. The suggested perspective enables us to explain how some habits can be experienced as both momentarily involuntary and unconscious while at the same time they play a significant role for self-understanding. (shrink)

Knows-knows principles in epistemology say that if you know some proposition, then you are in a position to know that you know it. This paper examines the viability of analogous principles in ethics, which I call ought-ought principles. Several epistemologists have recently offered new defences of KK principles and of other related principles, and there has recently been an increased interest in examining analogies between ethics and epistemology, and so it seems natural to examine whether defences of KK and related (...) principles carry over to OO principles. In this paper, I introduce two OO principles, and I show how some arguments in favour of KK carry over to them. Then I show how these OO principles can be used to shed light on a much-discussed case in ethics, that of Professor Procrastinate. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible to knowingly believe something while judging that one ought not to believe it and (so) viewing the belief as manifesting a sort of failure. I offer examples showing that such ‘alienated belief’ has several potential sources. I contrast alienated belief with self-deception, incontinent (or akratic) belief and half-belief. I argue that the possibility of alienated belief is compatible with the so-called ‘transparency’ of first-person reflection on belief, and that the descriptive and expressive difficulties (...) it involves stem from well-understood sources. I conclude by speculating that endorsed belief is in important respects like intentional action. Reflection on the possibility of alienated belief may thus help us to see one respect in which an agent can be responsible for her attitudes. (shrink)

Can a person ever occurrently believe p and yet have the simultaneous, occurrent belief q that this very belief that p is false? Surely not, most would say: that description of a person’s epistemic economy seems to misunderstand the very concept of belief. In this paper I question this orthodox assumption. There are, I suggest, cases where we have a first-order mental state m that involves taking the world to be a certain way, yet although we ourselves acknowledge that we (...) are in m, we reflectively disavow m’s propositional content. If such an epistemic stance is possible, does this irrationally persistent first-order state m really deserve the title of belief, or should it instead be classified under some other, less doxastic appellation? I argue in this paper that the belief terminology is warranted, and thus, that we can be correctly described as having the second-order belief that a specific first-order belief that we nonetheless continue to hold is false. In such cases, our first-order state is what I refer to as a naughty belief. Like naughty toddlers, naughty beliefs are recalcitrant in the face of epistemic authority. (shrink)

What happens when we are uncertain about what we want, feel or whish for? How should we understand uncertainty in introspection? This paper reconstructs and critically assess two answers to this question frequently found in the secondary literature on Wittgenstein: indecision and self-deception (Hacker 1990, 2012; Glock 1995, 1996). Such approaches seek to explain uncertainty in introspection in a way which is completely distinct from uncertainty about the ‘outer world’. I argue that in doing so these readings fail to account (...) for the substantial role the intellect seems to play in the process of resolving such uncertainties. I then attempt to show that Wittgenstein’s remarks connecting psychological vocabulary, behaviour and public criteria (e. g. PI 2009: 580) provide alternative ways for thinking about uncertainty in introspection which allow for a substantial role of the intellect. (shrink)

The classical ethical questions of whether and to what extent moral criticism is a sort of rational criticism have received renewed interest in recent years. According to the approach that I refer to as rationalist, accounts of moral responsibility are grounded by explanations of the conditions under which an agent is rationally answerable for her actions and attitudes. In the sense that is relevant here, to answer for an attitude or action is to give reasons that at least purport to (...) justify it. To hold someone answerable for an attitude or action is thus to hold her rationally liable for it. T. M. Scanlon’s view is perhaps the most well-known example of this approach. The rationalist approach has recently been attacked by David Shoemaker for being too narrow: the charge is that attitudes exist for which an agent is responsible even though she cannot, in the relevant sense, answer for them. If there are morally significant attitudes that are attributable to an agent even though she cannot answer for them, then it would seem incomplete, misguided, or worse to treat morality as fundamentally a matter of demanding and giving reasons. By developing some remarks based on G. E. M. Anscombe’s _Intention_, I defend the rationalist approach against this critique. I show how an agent may be answerable for an attitude even though she cannot answer for it. The objective of this paper is thus twofold: to contribute to the discussion of the connection between rational liability and ethical responsibility, and to provide an example of the broad relevance of Anscombe’s thought to contemporary practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Frank Jackson.

'Where am I?' This is something we might expect to hear from hapless explorers or academics with no sense of direction. If we can, we'll explain to our inquirer that he is east of East St. Louis and hope he can find his way from there. If he persists, insisting that he is not really lost, but only cannot find himself no matter how hard he looks, we might reasonably suspect that we are dealing with that peculiarly incorrigible academic explorer, (...) the philosopher. When we hesitantly point to his body, we hear him explain, exasperated, 'No, don't you get it? That's my body, but I'm looking for my self! And I cannot find it!' At this point it is tempting to slip away, convinced that our philosophical friend is .. (shrink)

Since Sydney Shoemaker published his seminal article ‘Self-Reference and Self-Awareness’ in 1968, the notion of ‘Immunity to Error through Misidentification’ has received much attention. It crops up in discussions of personal identity, indexical thought and introspection, and has been used to interpret remarks made by philosophers from Wittgenstein to William James. The precise significance of IEM is often unspecified in these discussions, however. It is unclear, for example, whether it constitutes an important status of judgments, whether it explains an important (...) characteristic of judgments, or whether it merely marks an important characteristic of judgments. Nevertheless, reference to IEM abounds, making this obscure notion seem all the more significant. (shrink)

Empirical findings suggest that temptation causes agents not only to change their desires, but also to revise their beliefs, in ways that are not necessarily irrational. But if this is so, how can it be rational to maintain a resolution to resist? For in maintaining a resolution it appears that one will be acting against what one now believes to be best. This paper proposes a two-tier account according to which it can be rational neither to reconsider the question of (...) what one is going to do nor the question of what it is best to do; hence in the resolute agent the change in belief is not actual but merely potential. Various reasons are given for thinking that the resulting account is preferable to an alternative given by Bratman. (shrink)

Delusions have traditionally been considered the hallmark of mental illness, and their conception, diagnosis and treatment raise many of the fundamental conceptual and practical questions of psychopathology. One of these fundamental questions is whether delusions are understandable. In this paper, we propose to consider the question of understandability of delusions from a philosophy of language perspective. For this purpose, we frame the question of how delusions can be understood as a question about the meaning of delusional utterances. Accordingly, we ask: (...) “what meaning(s) can delusional utterances possibly have?”. We argue that in the current literature, there is a standard approach to the meaning of delusional utterances, namely the descriptive account which assumes that a delusional utterance “p” means that p is the case. Drawing on Speech Act Theory, we argue that solely relying on the descriptive account disregards essential ways of how linguistic meaning is constituted. Further, we show that Speech Act Theory can prove a helpful addition to the theoretical and clinical “toolbox” used for attempting to understand delusional utterances. This, we believe, may address some of the theoretical and clinical shortcomings of using only the currently predominant descriptive account. (shrink)

I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer indexically to the contents of our own (...) experiences in a unique way. This allows for the application of ordinary, non-mental concepts in order to arrive at a judgment about what it is that one is experiencing. In a transparent way one can then move inferentially to the self-ascription of an experience with such a content. I compare the demonstrative model with other accounts of introspective self-knowledge. (shrink)

I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer indexically to the contents of our own (...) experiences in a unique way. This allows for the application of ordinary, non-mental concepts in order to arrive at a judgment about what it is that one is experiencing. In a transparent way one can then move inferentially to the self-ascription of an experience with such a content. I compare the demonstrative model with other accounts of introspective self-knowledge. (shrink)

This paper examines the relations between, on the one hand, accounts of the distinction between an agent's identifying with, as opposed to feeling alienated from, their attitudes; and on the other, metaphysical accounts of action. It claims that a commitment to an event-causal conception of agency, which would analyse agency in terms of the causal potency of psychological states and events, appears to render mandatory a particular style of account of identification and alienation – namely, the hierarchical model offered by (...) Harry Frankfurt and Michael Bratman. It is argued that such accounts fall foul of a dilemma: the Authority Problem. The failure of attempts to avoid the Authority Problem is then used to motivate an attractive alternative style of account of the distinction, offered by Richard Moran. However, it is pressed that Moran's account rests on claims about agency which seem incompatible with the event-causal conception of agency. By making the links between the metaphysics of agency and accounts of identification and alienation more explicit, the paper allows us to better comprehend both the apparent need for and characteristic failures of some traditional accounts of identification and alienation, as well as make clear the action-theoretical debt incurred by those who would offer an alternative. (shrink)

On one conception of practical rationality, being rational is most fundamentally a matter of avoiding incoherent combinations of attitudes. This conception construes the norms of rationality as codified by rational requirements, and one plausible rational requirement is that you not be akratic: that you not judge, all things considered, that you ought to ϕ while failing to choose or intend to ϕ. On another conception of practical rationality, being rational is most fundamentally a matter of thinking or acting in a (...) way that’s informed by your practical reasons. This second conception construes the norms of rationality in terms that appear to allow the possibility of rational akrasia, since your capacity to act on your reasons can function at a level that need not involve deliberative judgment. Though their treatments of akrasia make them seem incompatible, I’ll argue that the two conceptions of rationality are not incompatible. It is possible to accommodate the core insight motivating defenses of ‘rational’ akrasia within the conception of rationality as codified by requirements of rational coherence. (shrink)

I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest (...) that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response. (shrink)

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees (...) that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

We are social primates, for whom language-mediated co-operative thinking (‘co-cognition’) is a central element of our shared life. Psychological concepts may be illuminated by appreciating their role in enriching and improving such co-cognition — a role which is importantly different from that of enabling detailed prediction and control of thoughts and behaviour. This account of the nature of psychological concepts (‘co-cognitivism’) has social anti-individualism about thought content as a natural corollary. The combination of co-cognitivism and anti-individualism further suggests that, in (...) addition to the familiar first person authority with which we ascribe thoughts to ourselves, there may also be something deserving the name ‘second person authority’. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how fear in contexts of crisis shapes and is shaped by agents’ relationships. I survey a number of approaches to understanding fearing at the intersection of empirical psychology and philosophy, highlighting the extent to which interpersonal relationships are positioned as involved in processes of fearing, and establish what I take to insufficient attention paid by these approaches to the ways interpersonal relations shape the emotions we come to have. Contexts of acute crisis and uncertainty can (...) involve rapidly adjusting practices of fearing in response to other agents, both those we trust and those we do not. I call for the development of a model of ‘relational calibration’ for understanding the complex interpersonal dynamics of fearing during crises, including in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This essay challenges some assumptions of prevalent theories of empathy. The empathizer, according to these theories, must have an emotion or a representation that matches the recipient’s emotion or representation. I argue that these conditions fail to account for important cases, namely surrogate and out-group empathy. In the course of this argument, I isolate some conceptual difficulties in extant models of cognitive empathy. In place of the matching theories,I propose an indexical model that (1) distinguishes virtual from real self-reference and (...) (2) replaces self–other distinctions with an epistemic condition. According to this account, empathy occurs when we index an intention to another person about whom we have the relevant knowledge or understanding. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this with the psychoanalytic distinction between contained and uncontained states of mind. On the face of it, Moran's distinction appears to be a useful theoretical deepening of the psychoanalytic distinction. On closer examination, however, it appears that (a) rational health is a more demanding standard than containment, (...) so the rationally unhealthy contains much that is mentally (quite) healthy; and (b) more seriously, some states that meet the “transparency” condition are manifestly mentally unhealthy. So transparency needs to be supplemented by an independently understood notion of containment to approach a realistic norm of mental health/ill health. (shrink)

In this paper we (i) identify the notion of ‘essentially non-conceptual content’ by critically analyzing the recent and contemporary debate about non-conceptual content, (ii) work out the basics of broadly Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content in relation to a corresponding theory of conceptual content, and then (iii) demonstrate one effective application of the Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content by using this theory to provide a ‘minimalist’ solution to the problem of perceptual self-knowledge which is raised by Strong Externalism.

In his early essay, “Must We Mean What We Say”, Cavell argues that the claims of ordinary language philosophers regarding “what we say when” are not empirical generalizations about a given group of speakers but are rather to be understood as measuring the limits of what counts as a coherent act of thinking and speaking. Cavell’s charge against the skeptic about the external world is that he seeks to think and speak beyond these limits. In this paper I compare Cavell’s (...) response to the skeptic to Davidson’s. Both base their responses on a broadly Kantian approach that appeals to the conditions under which thinking or speaking about objects is possible. On this approach the skeptic isn’t giving a false answer to an intelligible question, but rather, the question to which the skeptic is giving an answer is shown to be in some way unintelligible. But while Davidson’s critique of the skeptic is based on the conditions of ascribing meaning to one’s words, and contents to one’s beliefs, Cavell’s critique is based on the failure of the skeptic to mean the words he uses in the way that he needs. This difference expresses an underlying disagreement about the meaning of “meaning”: for Davidson the world comes into view through the meaning of our words and concepts, through the contents of our beliefs; for Cavell, the world comes into view through the agreement in “criteria” that are a condition of applying words and concepts to the world. This difference illuminates what Cavell calls “the truth of skepticism”: the idea that “my relation to the world and to others in general is not one of knowing”. (shrink)

I argue for two theses: 1) An unconscious belief that p is not the same attitude as a conscious belief that p (here I am disagreeing with David Finkelstein and Richard Moran). 2) An unconscious belief that p is the attitude it is on account of its rational connection with the conscious belief that p (taking issue with Georges Rey). I defend parallel theses for emotions. I then argue that Wittgenstein can be understood as accepting both theses and that this (...) shows – contrary to the interpretations of Jacques Bouveresse and Donald Levy – that Wittgenstein can accept talk not only of descriptive but also dynamic unconscious states (in Freud's terminology). (shrink)

The indexical word “I” has traditionally been assumed to be an overt analogue to the concept of self, and the best model for understanding it. This approach, I argue, overlooks the essential role of cognitive phenomenology in the mastery of the concept of self. I suggest that a better model is to be found in a different kind of representation: phenomenal concepts or more generally phenomenally grounded concepts. I start with what I take to be the defining feature of the (...) concept of self, namely its “super-reflexivity”: to use this concept is not just to think of oneself, but to think of oneself as the thinker of the present thought. I call this familiar observation the “Thinker Intuition”. I review some shortcomings of the indexical model of the concept of self, which is the classical account of the Thinker Intuition. I go on to propose a different account, the “phenomenal model”, according to which the concept of self is a phenomenally grounded concept, anchored in a generic kind of cognitive phenomenolog... (shrink)

Saul Kripke's influential ‘sceptical paradox’ of semantic rule-following alleges that speakers cannot have any justification for using a word one way rather than another. If it is correct, there can be no such thing as meaning anything by a word. I argue that the paradox fails to undermine meaning. Kripke never adequately motivates its excessively strict standard for the justified use of words. The paradox lacks the resources to show that its standard is truly mandatory or that speakers do not (...) frequently satisfy the well-motivated competitor I offer. So the paradox fails. (shrink)

Abstract In the contemporary literature on self-knowledge discussion is framed by and large by two competing models of self-knowledge: the observational (or perceptual) model and the constitutive model. On the observational model self-knowledge is the result of ?cognitively viewing? one's mental states. Constitutive theories of self-knowledge, on the other hand, hold that self-knowledge is constitutive of intentional states. That is, self-ascription is a necessary condition for being in a particular mental state. Akeel Bilgrami is a defender of the constitutive model. (...) I argue that the constitutive model gives rise to a regress problem. This paper will focus on that problem as well as its application to Bilgrami's version of the constitutive model. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 115, Issue 3pt3, Page 235-253, December 2015.

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated knowledge (...) of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's current conscious experience may modify (...) its phenomenology. Failing to take phenomenal modification into account affects the adequacy of extant versions of the acquaintance view. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better version, the integration account, that meets the phenomenal modification challenge while preserving the merits of other versions. (shrink)

If we use “introspection” just as a label for that essentially first-person way we have of knowing about our own mental states, then it’s pretty obvious that if there is such a thing as introspection, we know on that basis what we believe, and want, and intend, at least in many ordinary cases. I assume there is such a thing as introspection. So I think the hard question is how it works. But can you know that you know on the (...) basis of introspection? Well, that all depends on how introspection works. I present one account of how introspection works and argue that on that account, you can know that you know ordinary empirical things on the basis of introspection. As far as how we know about them is concerned, there’s no principled difference between the factive and non-factive mental states. (shrink)

When a subject has perceptually grounded knowledge, she typically knows how she knows what she knows, and is able to appeal to perceived items and her own experiences in reason-giving practices. What explains this ability? In this paper I focus on vision, and I submit that paradigmatic cases of visual perceptual knowledge are such that, when a subject acquires knowledge that p by seeing that p, she also acquires tacit knowledge that she sees that p; I also argue that the (...) truth of this thesis is grounded in phenomenological facts concerning awareness and self-awareness. (shrink)

Gareth Evans and others have argued that our intentional attitudes are transparent to facts in the world. This suggests we can know them by looking outwards to the world rather than inwards to our minds. Richard Moran uses this idea of transparency in his account of self-knowledge. Critics have objected to his account on several counts. For example, Jonathan Way has argued that irrational attitudes can give ordinary self-knowledge when they are not transparent and that there are rational attitudes that (...) are not transparent. I argue here that these objections fail because Way does not fully consider the two different kinds of self-knowledge, ‘ordinary’ and evidence-based, that differentiate the two stances that Moran claims a subject can have towards his attitudes. It is the differences between these two stances and the implications of these that motivate Moran’s account, rather than whether the formed attitude is rational or irrational, as long as the subject avows it from the deliberative stance, focuses on the attitude’s object and conforms to the transparency condition as Moran sets this out. (shrink)

How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-knowledge, our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our (...) rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals. This paper has two goals. The first is exegetical: to identify agentialism's defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose a way to understand the role of agency in reasoning and avowals, one that does justice to what is distinctive about these phenomena yet is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. (shrink)

With this provocative book, Quassim Cassam aspires to reorient the philosophical study of self-knowledge so as to bring its methodology and subject matter into line with recognizably human concerns. He pursues this reorientation on two fronts. He proposes replacing what he sees as the field’s standard subject, an ideally rational being he calls Homo Philosophicus, with a more realistic Homo Sapiens. And he proposes shifting the field’s primary focus from ‘narrow epistemological concerns’ to issues reflecting ‘what matters to humans’, such (...) as knowledge of one’s own character and the moral significance of self-knowledge. Cassam also contributes to this field: he advances an inferentialist account of self-knowledge and a moderate instrumentalism about self-knowledge’s value. (shrink)

This paper concerns the relationship between two questions. The first is a question about inner freedom: What is it to be rendered unfree, not by external obstacles, but by aspects of oneself? The second is a question about agency: What is it to fail at being a thing that genuinely acts, and instead to be a thing that is merely acted upon, passive in relation to its own behaviour? It is widely believed that answers to the first question must rest (...) on or be partly explained by answers to the second. Here I argue that this is a mistake: losses of inner freedom are not, after all, explicable in terms of failures of agency. To establish this conclusion, I consider three familiar lines of thought that appear to tie ideas about inner freedom to ideas about agency, each relating to a different conception of inner freedom: absence of inner constraint, self-government, and absence of determination by external forces. I argue that, in each case, any apparent conceptual reliance on a special conception of agency is merely illusory, the result being that we must allow clear water between our theories of inner freedom and our theories of agency. This conclusion is of significance for contemporary theories of agency and personal autonomy, as well as for ‘positive’ conceptions of political liberty. (shrink)

Many of our beliefs behave irrationally: this is hardly news to anyone. Although beliefs’ irrational tendencies need to be taken into account, this paper argues that beliefs necessarily preserve at least a minimal level of rationality. This view offers a plausible picture of what makes belief unique and will help us to set beliefs apart from other cognitive attitudes.

What is the relation between reasoning and self-knowledge? According to Shoemaker, a certain kind of reasoning requires self-knowledge: we cannot rationally revise our beliefs without knowing that we have them, in part because we cannot see that there is a problem with an inconsistent set of propositions unless we are aware of believing them. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. A second account, versions of which can be found in Shoemaker and Byrne, claims that we can (...) reason our way from belief about the world to self-knowledge about such belief. While Shoemaker’s “zany argument” fails to show how such reasoning can issue in self-knowledge, Byrne’s account, which centres on the epistemic rule “If p, believe that you believe that p”, is more successful. Two interesting objections are that the epistemic rule embodies a mad inference and that it makes us form first-order beliefs, rather than revealing them. I sketch responses to both objections. ¿Qué relación existe entre el razonamiento y el autoconocimiento? Según Shoemaker, cierto tipo de razonamiento depende de un autoconocimiento: no podemos revisar nuestras creencias racionalmente sin saber que las tenemos, en parte porque no podemos ver que la inconsistencia de un conjunto de proposiciones constituye un problema a menos que estemos conscientes de creerlas. En el presente artículo argumento que esta propuesta es errónea. Una segunda posición, versiones de la cual se pueden encontrar en Shoemaker y Byrne proclama que es posible razonar desde creencias sobre el mundo hacia un autoconocimiento sobre tales creencias. Mientras el zany argument de Shoemaker no logra mostrar cómo tal razonamiento puede resultar en un autoconocimiento, la teoría de Byrne, que se centra en la regla epistémica “Si p, cree que crees que p” tiene más éxito. Dos objeciones interesantes son que la regla epistémica incorpora una inferencia insana y que nos hace formar creencias de primer orden, en lugar de revelarlas. Esbozo respuestas a ambas objeciones. (shrink)

What is the relation between reasoning and self-knowledge? According to Shoemaker (1988), a certain kind of reasoning requires self-knowledge: we cannot rationally revise our beliefs without knowing that we have them, in part because we cannot see that there is a problem with an inconsistent set of propositions unless we are aware of believing them. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. A second account, versions of which can be found in Shoemaker (1988 and 2009) and Byrne (...) (2005), claims that we can reason our way from belief about the world to self-knowledge about such belief. While Shoemaker’s “zany argument” fails to show how such reasoning can issue in self-knowledge, Byrne’s account, which centres on the epistemic rule “If p, believe that you believe that p”, is more successful. Two interesting objections are that the epistemic rule embodies a mad inference (Boyle 2011) and that it makes us form first-order beliefs, rather than revealing them (Gertler 2011). I sketch responses to both objections. (shrink)

Alex Byrne and Jordi Fernández propose two different versions of a transparency theory of self-knowledge. According to Byrne, we self-attribute beliefs by an inference from what we take to be facts about the world (following a rule he calls BEL). According to Fernández, we self-attribute the belief that p on the basis of a prior mental state, a state which constitutes our grounds for the belief that p (thereby realizing a procedure he calls Bypass). In this paper, I present the (...) two theories in outline and discuss various objections concerning their normative (Can the procedure give us knowledge?) and metaphysical aspects (Is the procedure functional?). I conclude that especially the metaphysical objections against Bypass are somewhat more difficult to counter than those against BEL and that the modifications required of Fernández’s theory make it very similar to Byrne’s. -/- Alex Byrne y Jordi Fernández proponen dos diferentes versiones de la teoría de la transparencia del autoconocimiento. Según Byrne, para autoatribuir creencias inferimos qué es lo que creemos a partir lo que tomamos como hechos sobre el mundo (siguiendo una regla que Byrne llama BEL). Según Fernández, autoatribuimos la creencia de que p con base en un estado anterior a esta creencia, un estado que fundamenta la creencia de que p (realizando un procedimiento que él llama Bypass). En este artículo expongo las dos teorías y discuto objeciones que conciernen su aspecto normativo (¿puede el procedimiento darnos conocimiento?) y metafísico (¿es funcional el procedimiento?). Concluyo que en especial las objeciones metafísicas son más graves en el caso de Bypass que en el de BEL y que las modificaciones requeridas de la teoría de Fernández la asemejan mucho a la de Byrne. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow much control do we have over our reasons for action? Not much, but some. We all have reasons to avoid pain and not to inflict it on others. What explains our shared reasons? On an externalist account, reasons are grounded in values. All reasons are external to agency. This ensures that reasons are universal, so it is an attractive feature of moral and prudential reasons. However, when our reasons differ this is less attractive. In some cases, it seems like (...) something internal to the agent makes all the difference. There are many valuable things, but an agent can only come to care about a small set of those things. Consider your reasons that stem from your love of philosophy or punk rock. Here it seems we make some reasons our reasons by becoming committed to them. I call these our agential reasons. We express our agency by coming to care about some things in ways not required by rationality. Unlike, matters of taste though, these are not bare preferences we just find ourselves having. Rather these concerns are cultivated over time. We express rational agency by incorporating particular values into our lives. (shrink)

This article discusses the notion of transparency condition proposed by Richard Moran in Authority and Estrangement (2001). According to this notion the question in the first-person present tense about our own belief ("Do I believe in p?") is answered in reference with the same reasons that justify the answer to a corresponding question about the world (about the truth of p). Transparency, in this sense, is the fundamental characteristic of self-knowledge in the context of common experience. Understanding this idea helps (...) us to understand the notions which are normally associated to self-knowledge, such as immediacy (we do not need to turn to observation or inference) first-person authority (I have different access to my attitudes than other people do) and the relationship between self-knowledge, rationality and psychic health of a person. Through the presentation of the transparency condition and some objections to this notion, I aim to offer an interpretation of the notion of transparency which favors a modest conception of self-knowledge and rationality. (shrink)

We present counterexamples to the widespread assumption that Moorean sentences cannot be rationally asserted. We then explain why Moorean assertions of the sort we discuss do not incur the irrationality charge. Our argument involves an appeal to the dual-process theory of the mind and a contrast between the conditions for ascribing beliefs to oneself and the conditions for making assertions about independently existing states of affairs. We conclude by contrasting beliefs of the sort we discuss with the structurally similar but (...) rationally impermissible beliefs of certain psychiatric patients. (shrink)