First person authority and knowledge of one's own actions.
| Autor | Fricke, Martin F. |
In Crítica, vol. 38, no. 114 (2006), Carlos Moya ascribes a theory of self-knowledge to Richard Moran according to which knowledge of one's own actions explains authoritative knowledge of one's own beliefs. This is because, on this interpretation of Moran's theory, knowing of one's own beliefs is a special case of knowledge of one's own actions. Moya criticises this account of self-knowledge on the grounds of circularity. In this discussion note, I examine the relation between the two types of knowledge in Moran's theory. I shall try to show that Moran's reference to knowledge of one's own actions is not an attempt to give the finer detail of how we acquire self-knowledge with respect to beliefs. Rather, it is an illustrative analogy. But perhaps Moya is right in that Moran's account of knowledge of one's own beliefs is incomplete. If it is, then, so I shall suggest, his account of knowledge of one's own actions is as well. (1)
Someone who sincerely affirms that she believes that P rarely makes a false utterance. It might be that not P; but it is unlikely, some would say impossible, that she does not believe that P. The self-knowledge expressed in "I believe that P" is not only less prone to error but also more immediate than knowledge about the beliefs of other people. To find out whether someone else believes that P I have to observe the other person and, perhaps, draw more or less implicit inferences based on these observations. In order to know that I believe that P, I do not seem to have to make such observations or draw such inferences. How should such first person authority be accounted for?
Moran offers an explanation of both aspects of first person authority which is based on the idea that the question "Do I believe that P?" is transparent to the question "Is it true that P?" The idea of transparency, as Moran understands it, is expressed in the following well-known quote from Gareth Evans:
If someone asks me "Do you think there is going to be a third world war?", I must attend, in answering him, to precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question "Will there be a third world war?" I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p. (Evans 1982, p. 225)
Here, the question about my belief about a third world war is "transparent" to a question about the war itself. "A first-person present-tense question about one's belief is answered by reference to (or consideration of) the same reasons that would justify an answer to the corresponding question about the world" (Moran 2001, p. 62).
Self-knowledge acquired in this way might be expected to enjoy first person authority in both of the senses described above. Going from a positive answer to "Is it true that P?" to a positive answer to "Do I believe that P?" seems easier than to observe a person and then draw inferences about her beliefs. This might explain why we are less prone to error in such self-ascriptions. Likewise, it seems that the procedure is at least 'more direct' than those we have for ascribing beliefs to other persons, since it is not dependent on truthful observation. So it is easy to see why the transparency described by Evans is often seen as central to an explanation of first person authority.
However, Moran's central question does not seem to be how transparency contributes to authority. Rather, he wants to know how such transparency is possible. How can it be that we answer a question about someone's mind (what do I believe?) by considering what is the case in the world? This question about the possibility of transparency can be understood in at least two different ways (cf. Shoemaker 2003, p. 400). First, we can ask as to the metaphysics involved in transparency. What mental mechanisms (functional roles, cognitive dynamics, etc.) allow that a consideration of questions about the world produce knowledge of one's own mind? Second, we can understand the question as an epistemological one. What epistemic right does a subject have to consider questions about the world when answering questions about her beliefs? What legitimises this procedure? Moran, clearly, is only interested in this second sense of the how-possible question.
His answer, in its most concise form, can be found in a discussion with Lucy O'Brien and Sydney Shoemaker: "[I]t is only because I assume that what I actually believe about X can be determined, made true by, my reflection on X itself, that I have the right to answer a question about my belief in a way that respects the Transparency Condition" (Moran 2003, p. 406). Moran adds that the assumption in question can be interpreted as a Kantian "Transcendental Assumption of Rational Thought" (Moran 2003, p. 406). If my reflection (or deliberation) about X did not determine what it is that I believe about X, then why should I engage in such reflection? The purpose of rational thought is the acquisition of beliefs. It only makes sense to undertake such reflection or thought if this determines my beliefs. For this reason, Moran talks of an assumption of rational thought. If the assumption is true, then I have the epistemic right to self-ascribe beliefs on the basis of my reflection about the world. So Moran's answer to the question of how transparency is possible is this: We have an epistemic right (2) to transparency in as much as we are capable of rational thought. Transparency is legitimate in so far as we are rational thinkers. (3)
Moran often mentions the knowledge we have of our own actions, when he tries to explain his theory of the self-ascription of beliefs: "A central example for me is that of making up one's mind about what to do, where the answer arrived at expresses first-person knowledge of my own future action" (Moran 2003, p. 411). Why is the knowledge we have of our own actions a "central example" for Moran? How does it contribute to our understanding of the authority we have in self-ascriptions of belief? There are passages in Moran's book that suggest that knowledge of one's own actions can provide special clues to understanding the knowledge we have of our own beliefs. A crudely simplified argument might go as follows:
(i) I know what I am doing.
(ii)I make my beliefs.
(iii) Therefore, I know what beliefs I have.
Both premises of this argument are questionable. Premise (i) does not seem to be true of unintentional actions. What makes such actions unintentional seems to be precisely that I do not know what I am doing. But perhaps premise (i) is true if the action in question is intentional. Still, what reasons can be given for holding it to be true in this case and how is it possible that it be true? But premise (ii) is even more problematic. In what sense do we make our beliefs? If premise (i) is true only of intentional actions, then, for the argument to be valid, premise (ii) must also describe an intentional action. But is it true that we make our beliefs intentionally? It seems that most beliefs, even those we know about authoritatively, come to us rather unintentionally...
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