Abstract
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.
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Notes
This is a cousin of the paradoxical utterance noted by Moore (1968).
The term “alief” is Gendler’s (2008).
To be consciously aware that p is, I take it, to have the occurrent belief that p. (Perhaps there is also some attenuated sense of “conscious awareness that p” which does not imply belief that p, but that’s not the sort of awareness I am interested in here.)
A similar sort of example is presented in Elga (2005).
It might be objected that such a circumstance is conceptually impossible because it is built into the notion of a belief that one can neither (a) regard oneself as lacking evidence for it; nor (b) reflectively regard the putative belief as false. Yet as I shall argue later in the paper, the limitations posed in (a) and (b) are overly restrictive. A token mental state, I suggest, can properly be described as a belief, even while running afoul of the conditions given in (a) and (b). I argue for this claim at greater length when I turn to the more positive part of my case.
On some accounts of self-deception, we can properly be ascribed the beliefs p and \(\neg\) p. These beliefs cannot, however, be simultaneously present to consciousness, it is thought. As McLaughlin puts it, one is “accessible” and the other is “inaccessible” (1988). Thus, a person cannot, to use McLaughlin’s example, have the occurrent belief that he is both fat and not fat, even if he can, at a given time, have the inaccessible belief that he is fat, and the accessible belief that he is not fat. For an alternative account of self-deception, see Gendler (2007). On Gendler’s deflationary view, the self-deceived fat man imagines that he is not fat, all the while believing that he really is fat. On such a understanding of things, there is no conflict in belief after all.
Velleman (2000).
As we discussed in the last section, Pettit and Smith make a similar point (1996, 448).
This idea is typically credited to Anscombe (1957).
Mark Johnston rightly observes that even if a given putative belief that p is out of touch with what one takes to be evidence and fact, its claim to the title of belief is nonetheless warranted “in its being a disposition to the occurrent thought that p, in its action-guiding potential, and in its potential to allay anxiety that not-p” (1988).
Velleman (2000).
Wittgenstein (1997, II, 190).
It should be noted that the position that Evans (1982) is attributing to Wittgenstein is fairly modest. Evans is not claiming that we never look inward to determine what we believe about the external world; he is just saying that we often do not. In this respect, perhaps, his view and my own are in agreement. Wittgenstein, however, seems to be pressing a stronger claim when he says that there cannot be a first-personal present indicative of “believe falsely.”
Wittgenstein (1997, II, 190).
Wittgenstein (1997, II, 190).
Thanks to an audience at the University of Miami, and in particular to Simon Evnine, for pressing me on this analogy and pointing out its limitations.
Railton (1997).
Velleman (2000).
Gendler (2008).
Ginet (2001).
It could be that certain types of beliefs never admit of context sensitivity. Perhaps the belief that 2 + 2 = 4 could be thought to be like this. But maybe under threat of torture by rats (think of Winston Smith in 1984), one could no longer properly be described as believing this. When the stakes get high enough, perhaps even our most deeply held beliefs might fall by the wayside. (As I understand what happens in 1984, Winston does not simply affect to believe that 2 + 2 = 4; he actually comes to believe this.)
Byrne (2005).
Thanks to Adam Elga for bringing this objection to my attention.
We discover this in Episode 4 of Season 11, “The Babysitter”.
For criticism of Davidson’s tendency to over-rationalize compulsions by interpreting them through the lens of a Humean motivational machinery, see Lear (2005).
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to Richard Yetter Chappell, Jack Spencer, Nick Riggle, Rob Wohl, Des Hogan, Whitney Schwab, Markus Kneer, Tom Dixon, and in particular, Adam Elga, for helpful conversation about these topics. Thanks as well to a thoughtful audience at the University of Miami, as well as to Aaron Wilson, my commentator when I presented a version of this paper there.
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Huddleston, A. Naughty beliefs. Philos Stud 160, 209–222 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9714-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9714-5