Infallibility and Incorrigibility In Self-Knowledge

Philosophers have recently argued that since there are people who are blind, but don't know it, and people who echolocate, but don't know it, conscious introspection is highly unreliable. I contend that a second look at Anton's syndrome, human echolocation, and ‘facial vision’ suggests otherwise. These examples do not support skepticism about the reliability of introspection.

The aim of this paper is to show that introspective beliefs about one’s own current visual experiences are not immediate in the sense that what justifies them does not include other beliefs that the subject in question might possess. The argument will take the following course. First, the author explains the notions of immediacy and truth-sufficiency as they are used here. Second, the author suggests a test to determine whether a given belief lacks immediacy. Third, the author applies this test (...) to a standard case of formation of an introspective belief about one’s own current visual experiences and concludes that the belief in question is neither immediate nor truth-sufficient. Fourth, the author rebuts several objections that might be raised against the argument. (shrink)

Há um argumento cético clássico derivado das Meditações sobre a filosofia primeira. Este artigo oferece uma formulação contemporânea padrão do argumento, pretendendo mostrar que ninguém sabe qualquer coisa sobre o mundo extramental. A obra de Hilary Putnam na filosofia da linguagem e da mente parece fornecer uma resposta a uma versão atualizada do argumento cético cartesiano. Em sua maior parte, este artigo é dedicado a uma análise e crítica das meditações anti-céticas de Putnam. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Descartes. Putnam. Ceticismo. Cérebros em (...) cubas. Externalismo de conteúdo. ABSTRACT There is a classical skeptical argument that derives from Descartes’s Meditations on first Philosophy. This paper offers a standard contemporary formulation of the argument, which purports to show that no one knows anything about the world that exists outside our minds. The work of Hilary Putnam in the philosophy of language and mind seems to afford an answer to an updated version of the Cartesian skeptical argument. The bulk of this paper is devoted to an analysis and critique of Putnam’s anti-skeptical meditations. KEY WORDS – Descartes, Putnam, Skepticism, Brains in vats, Content externalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that a Cartesian belief in the self-transparency of minds might actually be an innate aspect of our mind-reading faculty. But it acknowledges that some crucial evidence needed to establish this claim hasn’t been looked for or collected. What we require is evidence that a belief in the self-transparency of mind is universal to the human species. The paper closes with a call to anthropologists (and perhaps also developmental psychologists), who are in a position to collect such evidence, (...) encouraging them to do so. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a thoroughgoing critique of Rorty's interesting attempt to characterize the mental and its elimination within materialism in terms of the incorrigibility of mental reports. I elucidate, criticize, and improve the concept of incorrigibility his position requires. Then I argue: that although mental-state reports are as corrigible as physical reports, this reflects contingent matters which do not affect the boundary of the mental and the physical; that even if the familiar paradigm mental-event reports are incorrigible, there are mental (...) events for which our language does not provide descriptions plausibly considered as incorrigible; even the familiar mental-event reports are not incorrigible which I show through examples that explain how and why persons maintain false beliefs about their most simple sensations, thoughts, indeed anything, I then suggest that Rorty’s conception of the triumph of materialism is simplistic and inadequate in a number of respects. Finally, I attempt to show how difficult if not impossible it is to define or eliminate the mental without presupposing it; in trying to get the barest sense of Rorty's materialist world, the mental forces itself into our mind at every turn. (shrink)

Forthcoming in D.H. Pritchard & V. Hendricks, New Waves in Epistemology,.

Schueler has argued, against the eliminativist, that human purposive action cannot be an illusion because the concept of purpose is not theoretical. He argues that the concept is known directly to be instantiated, through self-awareness; and that to maintain that the concept is theoretical involves an infinite regress. I show that Schueler’s argument fails because all our concepts are theoretical in the sense that we may be mistaken in applying them to our experience. As a consequence, it is conceivable that (...) direct introspection of an event as a purposive action may be mistaken. I indicate ways in which the eliminativist may be able to explain why our perception and introspection is afflicted with systematic error. (shrink)

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

In this paper I show that a variety of Cartesian Conceptions of the mental are unworkable. In particular, I offer a much weaker conception of limited discrimination than the one advanced by Williamson (2000) and show that this weaker conception, together with some plausible background assumptions, is not only able to undermine the claim that our core mental states are luminous (roughly: if one is in such a state then one is in a position to know that one is) but (...) also the claim that introspection is infallible with respect to our core mental states (where a belief that C obtains is infallible just in case if one believes that C obtains then C obtains). The upshot is a broader and much more powerful case against the Cartesian conception of the mental than has been advanced hitherto. (shrink)

If we agree, along with Arnauld, Berkeley, Descartes, Hume, Leibniz, and others that our occurrent phenomenal states serve as sources of epistemic certainty for us, we need some explanation of this fact. Many contemporary writers, most notably Roderick Chisholm, maintain that there is something special about the phenomenal states themselves that allows our certain knowledge of them. I argue that Chisholm's view is both wrong and irreparable, and that the capacity of humans to know these states with certainty has to (...) do with the contingent cognitive capacities and abilities people have. (shrink)

Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of identity, but they (...) leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements that directly countenance (...) “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified, i.e., justified in a way that is truth-entailing. In this paper, I examine the second thesis of rationalist infallibilism, what might be called ‘synthetic a priori infallibilism’. Exploring the seemingly only potentially plausible species of synthetic a priori infallibility, I reject the infallible justification of so-called self-justifying propositions.

The Identity Thesis, proposed by Reid for the case of sensations, and extended by Brentano to conscious states generally, says that a state is conscious iff it is identical with introspective knowledge of its own instantiation. The Thesis offers simple explanations of a number of puzzling features of introspective self-knowledge, and unites the problems of introspection, consciousness and knowledge in the single problem of the metaphysical nature of conscious states. It does nothing to solve the latter problem, but it does (...) entail that a functionalist account of consciousness is incomplete without an exact functionalist definition of knowledge itself. (shrink)

"the incorrigibility thesis", The thesis that it is logically impossible to be mistaken about such things as whether I am now in pain or am seeing or seeming to see something red, Is very widely supposed to be false. I consider the arguments designed to show this, And argue that they all fail.

I argue that indirect quotation in the first person simple present tense (self-quotation) provides a class of infallible assertions. The defense of this conclusion examines the joint descriptive and constitutive functions of performative utterances and argues that a parallel treatment of belief ascription is in order. The parallel account yields a class of infallible belief ascriptions that makes no appeal to privileged modes of access. Confronting a dilemma formulated by Crispin Wright for theories of self-knowledge gives an epistemological setting for (...) the account of infallible belief ascription. (shrink)

According to one of the most influential views in the philosophy of self-knowledge each person enjoys some special cognitive access to his or her own current mental states and episodes. This view faces two fundamental tasks. First, it must elucidate the general conceptual structure of apparent asymmetries between beliefs about one’s own mind and beliefs about other minds. Second, it must demarcate the mental territory for which first-person-special-access claims can plausibly be maintained. Traditional candidates include sensations, experiences (of various kinds), (...) thoughts, beliefs, desires, and also affective states such as emotions. I reconstruct five prominent privileged access claims that have traditionally been maintained for emotions and discuss logical relations among them. I then argue that none of these claims stands up to scrutiny. The truth is that we often suffer from affective ignorance, and that third-person ascriptions of emotional states should often be credited with more rather than less authority than corresponding self-ascriptions. I conclude by considering, and rejecting, five potential objections to my argument. (shrink)

McDowell and Merleau-Ponty share a critical attitude towards a certain Cartesian picture of the mind. According to the picture in question nothing which properly belongs to subjectivity can be hidden to the subject herself. Nevertheless there is a striking asymmetry in how the two philosophers portray the problematic consequences of such a picture. They can seem to offer exact opposite views of these consequences, which, given the almost identical characterization of the transparency claim, is puzzling. I argue that a closer (...) look at the prima facie puzzling asymmetry dissolves the apparent disagreement and reveals a deeper agreement concerning both the nature and the origin of the problems haunting the Cartesian picture in question. Both McDowell and Merleau-Ponty argue that on the picture of the relation of between mind and world in question, we lose our grip on the very idea of a perceptual appearance. Furthermore, the two authors regard a certain conception of nature as conceived in the image of science, as one of the crucial elements in making the picture of the mind in question look attractive. (shrink)