Abstract
In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the question whether you believe that p. In particular, I argue that judging that p is a fallible yet basic guide to whether one believes that p. I go on to defend my view from an important skeptical challenge, according to which my view would make it too easy to reject skeptical hypotheses about our access to our minds. I close by responding to the opposing view on which our beliefs themselves constitute our only source of first-person access to our beliefs.
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Notes
For defense of the view that we can have non-inferential or basic access to the mental states of others, see McDowell (1982).
For a valuable recent discussion of “how-possible” questions, see Cassam (2007).
For dissent, Hazlett (2010).
At a minimum, you have justification in a way such that no one else has the ability to have justification to ascribe a mental state to you in that way. I leave open whether there is any stronger sense in which no one else can have justification to ascribe mental states to you in that way.
According to Sutton (2007), there is no such thing as a justified false belief. His view is actually compatible with the view that we enjoy fallible justification for some beliefs. In order to enjoy fallible justification from a state to believe that p, the crucial point is that one could be in the state when it is not the case that p, never mind whether one could have justification from the state to believe that p when it is not the case that p.
Given Evan’s bold claim that his procedure is necessarily a source of knowledge, one might think that he is really concerned with access to conscious belief [i.e. judgment], rather than to standing or dispositional belief.
One reason why I take Evans to focus on dispositional belief is that he leads with the question “do you think that there will be a third world war?” I take this question to not best be read in terms of conscious judgment, since I take the proper wording for a question about judgment to be “are you thinking that there will be a third world war?” The question with which Evans begins is instead more naturally read as being about dispositional belief, and I take his further discussion based on consideration of that question to be concerned with dispositional belief throughout.
Another reason why I take Evans to focus on dispositional belief is his sentence in Varieties of Reference immediately following the passage I quoted in the main text:
We can encapsulate this procedure for answering questions about what one believes in the following simple rule: when you are in a position to assert that p, you are ipso facto in a position to assert ‘I believe that p’ (Varieties of Reference, pp. 225–226)
I am often in a position to assert that p when I am not judging that p, for example throughout this month I am in a position to assert it is June, even when I am not judging it is June. I believe throughout the month that it is June, but I judge it is June only occasionally if ever. Further, I am in a position throughout this month to assert it is June, but I am in a position to assert I am judging it is June only occasionally. Given these points, the rule Evans proposes is more charitably understood in terms of dispositional belief. It is implausible that, whenever I am in a position to assert that p, I am in a position to assert I judge that p. It is much more plausible that, whenever I am in a position to assert it is June, I am in a position to assert I (dispositionally) believe it is June.
Thanks to Alan Hájek for urging me to think about connections between the transparency method and “Moore’s paradox”.
Why think there is anything rationally amiss with judging MP? One important clue is that although MP can be true, brief reflection indicates MP cannot be truly believed (Shoemaker 1995). The crucial point is not that MP can’t be truly believed (presumably many beliefs in necessary falsehoods can be rational). The crucial point is that only brief reflection is required to learn that MP can’t be truly believed—believing MP is problematic in an easily accessible way.
Here is why. If I believe that [p and I don’t believe that p], then I do believe that p, yet at the same time believe I don’t believe that p (I assume here that believing [p and q] entails believing p and believing q). My belief in the first conjunct is sufficient for the falsehood of my belief in the second conjunct. So only a little reflection reveals that, if I believe that [p and I don’t believe that p], I am mistaken in so doing. This suggests it is at least typically irrational to believe MP, and presumably also to judge MP.
For a useful overview of forms of “Moore’s Paradox”, and descriptions and explanations of their absurdity, see the introduction of Green and Williams (2007). For further discussion of Moore’s paradox and issues about self-knowledge, see Shoemaker (1995, 2009).
The Transparency thesis says that judgments that p are themselves a source of justification to believe you believe that p, not just that you have justification from some source or the other to BBp when you judge that p. One might object that one does not need so strong a claim as the Transparency thesis to explain what’s wrong with Moore paradoxical judgments, perhaps a mere claim about correlation will do the job. In response, I would say if one accepts that there is a correlation between judging that p and having justification to BBp, one should explain this correlation. Transparency provides the simplest explanation of the correlation, by saying that the judgment that p is itself the source of the justification to BBp. So even if one uses a mere correlation thesis to explain the defectiveness of Moore paradoxical judgments, one still in the end should accept the Transparency thesis. (I’m grateful here for discussion with Jim Pryor).
For a different take on the transparency method, in terms of considerations about “rule-following”, see Byrne (2005) and Setiya (forthcoming). For criticisms of Byrne (2005) see Shoemaker (2009) and Gertler (forthcoming).
A question I leave open is whether the transparency method can somehow be generalized beyond the case of belief. For discussion of the case of absence of belief, see Sosa (2003). For discussion of the case of visual experience, see Evans (1982), Byrne (2005), and Peacocke (2008). For discussion of still further cases, see Gordon (1995, 2007), Byrne (2005), and Way (2007).
On my view, the transparency method is a way of obtaining introspective justification or knowledge about what beliefs you have. My view isn’t that the method is the only way of obtaining introspective justification/knowledge about what beliefs you have. Evans seems to think otherwise, given his remarks about what one “must” do to answer the question whether one believes that p. To see why there are arguably other sources of introspective justification, consider that you could have introspective justification to believe that p when you may never have judged that p. Perhaps your standing belief that p could give you introspective justification for a second-order belief, without doing so via an intermediary judgment (Zimmermann 2006).
A different challenge appeals to a constraint on immediate justification:
(Face Value Constraint): Necessarily, if a state M gives one immediate justification to believe that p, then M has the content that p.
The Face Value Constraint is false. One way to see this is by considering the case of visual experience. Your visual experience can give you immediate justification to believe that you are conscious, whether or not it has the content that you are conscious. In response, one might insist that, according to philosophers such as Searle (1983), experiences have contents which involve references to the experiences themselves. However, this is not yet to say that an experience of mine will have the content that I am having the experience. So the counterexample stands even if philosophers such as Searle are right.
One might wonder whether there are non-introspective counterexamples to the Face Value Constraint. I think there are, and I discuss them in my forthcomingb.
I use the term “easy justification” to echo Cohen (2002)’s discussion of “basic knowledge and the problem of easy knowledge”. It should be said that the talk of “easy justification” and “easy knowledge” is somewhat misleading. On Cohen and Wright’s ultimate views, it is not especially hard to reject skeptical hypotheses. They consider that one might be able to rationally reject skeptical hypotheses simply by taking it for granted they are false, in the absence of significant reason to think they are true. This is easy! The focus of Cohen and Wright is specifically on whether it is legitimate to reject skeptical hypotheses on the basis of Moorean inferences, rather than more generally on whether there are any easy ways to reject skeptical hypotheses.
Zimmermann (2006) considers the fallback position I just outlined, and objects to it as follows:
… if experience with the phenomenal character of genuine judgment is not sufficient for belief, we can have experiences with this phenomenal character that are not real judgments (for they don’t initiate, sustain or accompany beliefs). If our second-order introspective beliefs are grounded in such judgment-like experiences, knowledge of our beliefs is not direct, but instead mediated by inconclusive inferential grounds or states of inner perception (p. 367).
I see no reason to accept the dilemma he proposes. Judgment-like experiences arguably can provide inconclusive immediate justification, we need an argument that they can’t.
One could simply consider a skeptical hypothesis to the effect that one judged that p while failing to believe that p at the later time of the self-ascription. This skeptical hypothesis would leave open whether one believed that p at the time of the judgment.
An advantage of this skeptical hypothesis is that it sidesteps issues about whether judging that p entails believing that p. We can all agree that it is possible for one to judge that p at a time and to fail to believe that at a nearby later time, simply through forgetting or some cognitive interference.
A disadvantage of the hypothesis is that it does not permit us to address issues of propositional justification in addition to doxastic justification. When we consider whether judging that p gives you immediate justification to believe you believe that p, we actually needn’t consider the later time at which you actually form the self-ascription.
A separate challenge departs more directly from the claim that, in order to believe that p, you must meet dispositional requirements which need not be satisfied when you judge that p. According to the challenge, it simply follows that conscious judgment that p can’t be an immediate guide to belief that p (see Cassam 2010 for a discussion in this vicinity). Since the challenge focuses on the insufficiency of judgment for belief, it seems to simply assume that a source of immediate justification for Q must suffice for the truth of Q. The assumption requires separate defense before the challenge can succeed (see Sect. 5 for criticism of the assumption that immediate justification must be infallible).
For arguments along these lines, focusing on the case of perceptual justification, see Davies (2004) or Pryor (forthcominga).
One might wonder whether “begging the question” really is problematic. Perhaps an inference can beg the question while still being a way for one to acquire justification to believe its conclusion. For present purposes, I will simply take it for granted that begging the question is problematic.
See also the “clever car thief” case in Klein (1981, pp. 33–36).
According to one line of objection, the probabilistic diagnosis I gave is actually incompatible with the claim that one has immediate justification to believe the premise. I discuss this sort of objection in Sect. 4 of my (2008). According to another, more radical, line of objection, the probabilistic diagnosis is mistaken (see Pryor, forthcomingb or Weatherson 2008).
A similar move can be made in the case of perceptual justification as well. For example, one might insist that the only experiences which justify one in believing that p are factive mental states of seeing that p (McDowell 1995). These states of seeing that p are such that one is of necessity in them only if p. Here there would be no question of being in the same state when one is in a skeptical scenario in which one’s external world belief is false.
Although this move can indeed be made in the case of perceptual justification, I take the move to be much more plausible in the case of introspective justification.
For discussion of this sort of issue in the case of perception, see Wright (2002).
For an endorsement of this claim, see Zimmermann (2006, Sect. 8), and especially his remark that “when our second-order introspective beliefs are formed and maintained in a first-person way they are grounded in the very first-order mental states that make them true (p. 370).” However, he sometimes makes a weaker claim: “if we have any false, justified beliefs about what we believe, the grounds for these beliefs will be different in kind from the grounds with which we hold our typical second-order introspective beliefs (p. 371).” Here one could allow for an introspectively justified yet false second-order belief, and simply insist that such a belief would have a different ground from an introspectively justified true second-order belief.
Compare: if you are a posteriori justified in believing that p1, and you have a justified belief that q on the basis of competent reasoning from p1… pn, then you are a posteriori justified in believing that q.
Contrast: if you are immediately justified in believing that p1, and you have a justified belief that q solely on the basis of competent reasoning from p1… pn, then you are NOT immediately justified in believing that q.
I’m grateful here for discussion with Declan Smithies and Daniel Stoljar.
One might be reminded of the much discussed “McKinsey puzzle” here, and deny that one can have introspective justification for a belief which concerns the external world. Given that the source of the introspective justification in question is experience, however, we should cease to be puzzled by the case. It is not a case of somehow a priori knowledge of the world. There is nothing paradoxical about the view that experiences can be a source of justification for beliefs about the external world, or for beliefs about the mental world which have implications about the external world.
One might instead protest that an experience can give one immediate justification to believe that p only if it has the content that p, and insist that visual experiences don’t have contents to the effect that one is seeing that p. For further discussion of this objection, see my forthcomingb.
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This paper integrates my (2008) and (forthcominga), and inherits the debts of those papers.
Appendix
Appendix
Here I draw on White (2006) to give a sharper diagnosis of what’s wrong with the No Error inference. We can start by considering the following consequence of Bayes’ Theorem:
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P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR|JUDGMENT) =
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[[P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR/P(JUDGMENT)] X P(JUDGMENT|INTROSPECTIVE ERROR)]
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Now, since INTROSPECTIVE ERROR obviously entails JUDGMENT,
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P(JUDGMENT|INTROSPECTIVE ERROR) = 1
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So,
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P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR|JUDGMENT) = P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR/P(JUDGMENT)
So far, we can see that the probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR conditional on JUDGMENT is the prior probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR divided by the prior probability of JUDGMENT. Thus, provided that the prior probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR is greater than 0 and the prior probability of JUDGMENT is less than 1, the probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR conditional on JUDGMENT will be greater than the prior probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR. After all, if the conditions on the prior probabilities are satisfied, the probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR conditional on JUDGMENT will be the result of multiplying the (non-zero) prior probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR by a number greater than 1, yielding a product greater than the prior probability of INTROSPECTIVE ERROR.
The needed conditions in fact are met. You weren’t certain that INTROSPECTIVE ERROR is false, and you weren’t certain that you would judge that p. So
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P(JUDGMENT) < 1
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P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR) > 0
Therefore,
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P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR|JUDGMENT) > P(INTROSPECTIVE ERROR)
Here I assume that you should update in this case by conditionalization, and that JUDGMENT is your strongest new evidence in the case. It then looks like you should increase your confidence in INTROSPECTIVE ERROR in response to JUDGMENT, and so decrease your confidence in NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR in response to JUDGMENT. If you should decrease your confidence in NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR in response to JUDGMENT, JUDGMENT is not evidence in favor of NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR.
We now need to turn our attention to the No Error inference itself. I take it that, if your evidence for the claim that you believe that p fails to be evidence for NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR, you fail to gain justification to believe NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR by performing the inference. When JUDGMENT is your strongest evidence that you believe that p, you do not gain justification to believe NO INTROSPECTIVE ERROR by performing the No Error inference.
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Silins, N. Introspection and inference. Philos Stud 163, 291–315 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9816-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9816-0