Wright (1998) and Bar-On (2004) put pressure on the idea that self-knowledge as an explanandum should be identified with privileged belief formation. They argue that setting up the discourse on the level of belief and belief formation rules out promising approaches to explain self-knowledge. Hence, they propose that we should characterize self-knowledge on the level of linguistic practice instead. I argue against them that self-knowledge cannot be fully characterized by features of our linguistic practice. I propose that (...) in some circumstances – disagreements about one's mental states – self-knowledge plays a role, but this role cannot be described in virtue of features of our linguistic practice. I consider three objections to the argument and conclude that we should not conceive self-knowledge solely in terms of linguistic practice. (shrink)

The pervasive dispositional model of belief is misguided. It fails to acknowledge the authority of first‐person ascriptions or avowals of belief, and the “decision principle”– that having decided the question whether p, there is, for me, no further question whether I believe that p. The dilemma is how one can have immediate knowledge of a state extended in time; its resolution lies in the expressive character of avowals – which does not imply a non‐assertoric thesis – and their (...) non‐cognitive status. The common claim that there are higher‐order beliefs concerning ones present beliefs is rejected as unintelligible. The decision principle is defended against claims of “unconscious belief”; there is no interesting such category, since all beliefs are liable at some time to be considered, but mostly to be out of mind. Belief is not constituted by a disposition, but is connected with dispositions – it is an “attitude concept”. (shrink)

This paper defends the avowal view of self-deception, according to which the self-deceived agent has been led by the evidence to believe that ¬p and yet is sincere in asserting that p. I argue that the agent qualifies as sincere in asserting the contrary of what they in the most basic sense believe in virtue of asserting what they are committed to believing. It is only by recognizing such commitments and distinguishing them from the more basic beliefs whose rational regulation (...) is automatic that the tension between the self-deceived agent’s actions and assertions can be explained in a core subset of cases of self-deception. (shrink)

The pervasive dispositional model of belief is misguided. It fails to acknowledge the authority of first‐person ascriptions or avowals of belief, and the “decision principle”– that having decided the question whether p, there is, for me, no further question whether I believe that p. The dilemma is how one can have immediate knowledge of a state extended in time; its resolution lies in the expressive character of avowals – which does not imply a non‐assertoric thesis – and their (...) non‐cognitive status. The common claim that there are higher‐order beliefs concerning ones present beliefs is rejected as unintelligible. The decision principle is defended against claims of “unconscious belief”; there is no interesting such category, since all beliefs are liable at some time to be considered, but mostly to be out of mind. Belief is not constituted by a disposition, but is connected with dispositions – it is an “attitude concept”. (shrink)

The paper comments on David Rosenthal’s claim that saying “p” is performance-conditionally equivalent to saying “I believe that p”. It is argued, by way of counterexamples, that the proposed performance-conditional equivalence does not hold in this generality. The paper further proposes that avowal expressivism gives necessary conditions for the performance-conditional equivalence: it holds only if the speaker’s utterance of “p” is a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the belief that p and the utterance of “I believe that p” is (...) an explicit expressive act expressive of the very same belief. If that is correct, the performance-conditional equivalence thesis provides an argument against Rosenthal’s preferred avowal descriptivism and in favor of avowal expressivism. (shrink)

In my reply to Boyle, Rosenthal, and Tumulty, I revisit my view of avowals’ security as a matter of a special immunity to error, their character as intentional expressive acts that employ self-ascriptive vehicles (without being grounded in self-beliefs), Moore’s paradox, the idea of expressing as contrasting with reporting and its connection to showing one’s mental state, and the ‘performance equivalence’ between avowals and other expressive acts.

It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person's beliefs. Here, Eric Marcus argues that the unity of the rational mind--what makes it one mind--is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can't believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special (...) sense. What explains this is that beliefs, and the inferences by which we acquire them, are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the way one can avow emotions and beliefs in poetry, with an emphasis on emotional expression. I want to show how the so-called Neo-Expressivism concerning self-attributions and avowals can help us understand the nature of emotional expression in poetry. The emphasis is on the way people use poems as vehicles for avowals of emotion and the way that emotions can shine through poems even though the poets did not intend to show those emotions. In (...) order to show that this is possible I shall give a short defense of a moderate, Wittgensteinian intentionalism and interpretative pluralism with respect to the understanding of literary works. What is an avowal? The Israeli philosopher... (shrink)

This is surely a bit of Socrates' famous irony. He draws the analogy to explain how his friends should regard poetry as they regretfully banish it from the ideal state. But lovers were no more sensible then than they are now. The advice to banish poetry, undermined already by Plato's own delight and skill in drama, is perhaps undermined still further by this evocation of a 'sensible' lover who counts love so well lost. Yet Socrates' image is one of (...) class='Hi'>avowed rationality and prudence. The sensible lover imitates the older literary example of Ulysses' tying himself to the mast. (The example belongs therefore to the class of problems treated in Elster (1979)). Both this lover and Ulysses foresee that under certain possible future conditions, their opinions, values and preferences will or would differ from what they are now, in a very definite fashion. To what extent is such foresight possible? Correspondingly (when we do not claim foreknowledge) to what extent is such opinion reasonable, rational, coherent, or consistent in some suitably broad sense? It is not easy to understand exactly what is possible or even logically permissible in this respect. In an earlier paper, "Belief and the Will", I argued for a principle ("Reflection") to govern such deliberation. Here I will both generalize the treatment of opinion in "Belief and the Will" and respond to criticism. Critical examples mainly resembled the story of Ulysses who foresaw a period of dysfunction (at the sound 2 of the sirens) in his epistemic and/or doxastic future. Other criticism focused on the model of opinion used (precise numerical subjective probability) and on the merits of Dutch Book arguments. The present argument will not rely on Dutch Book arguments and strategies, and the Reflection principle will be formulated so as to apply also to vague opinion. (shrink)

In Part I, I consider the normal contexts of assertions of belief and declarations of intentions, arguing that many action-guiding beliefs are accepted uncritically and even pre-consciously. I analyze the function of avowals as expressions of attempts at self-transformation. It is because assertions of beliefs are used to perform a wide range of speech acts besides that of speaking the truth, and because there is a large area of indeterminacy in such assertions, that self-deception is possible. In Part II, (...) I analyze the conditions of self-deception, and discuss the grounds on which it is regarded as irrational, even when particular instances may be beneficial. I consider some of the classical analyses of the motives for self-deception, and attempt to give an account of the occasions in which it is likely to occur. In the final section, I discuss the complex organization of the self that is presupposed by the phenomena of self-deception. (shrink)

We consider a range of cases—both hypothetical and actual—in which agents apparently know how to \ but fail to believe that the way in which they in fact \ is a way for them to \. These “no-belief” cases present a prima facie problem for Intellectualism about knowledge-how. The problem is this: if knowledge-that entails belief, and if knowing how to \ just is knowing that some w is a way for one to \, then an agent cannot (...) both know how to \ and fail to believe that w, the way that she \s, is a way for her to \. We discuss a variety of ways in which Intellectualists might respond to this challenge and argue that, ultimately, this debate converges with another, seemingly distinct debate in contemporary epistemology: how to attribute belief in cases of conflict between an agent’s avowals and her behavior. No-belief cases, we argue, reveal how Intellectualism depends on the plausibility of positing something like “implicit beliefs”—which conflict with an agent’s avowed beliefs—in many cases of apparent knowledge-how. While there may be good reason to posit implicit beliefs elsewhere, we suggest that there are at least some grounds for thinking that these reasons fail to carry over to no-belief cases, thus applying new pressure to Intellectualism. (shrink)

My central thesis is that Socrates of Plato’s “early” dialogues believes he has the very wisdom he famously disavows. Eschewing the usual tack of analyzing his various avowals and disavowals of knowledge, I focus on other claims which entail a belief that he has wisdom par excellence—not just selfawareness of ignorance and not just so-called elenctic wisdom. First, I correct the common misimpression that Socrates is willing only to ask but not to answer questions. Indeed, he describes his own (...) answers as a crucial part of his exhortative message, which, I show, involves not just an exhortation to participate in “elenctic” discussion; his exhortation to virtue is not aimed just at getting his interlocutors to understand that virtue—whatever it is!—must be pursued first and foremost. The elenchus, I argue, is only a prerequisite for understanding the much more substantive lessons of his exhortative practice, which produces “the greatest good”—indeed “happiness” itself. This interpretation, I explain, goes hand in hand with Socrates’ belief that he is a “good man”, invulnerable to injury, who rationally and independently always makes unerring decisions aimed at justice. In light of such beliefs, as well as his fearless claims about others’ injustices, I offer a plausible explanation of why Socrates denies having bona fide wisdom and being a “teacher” of it. (shrink)

There is a common assumption that intention is a complex behavioural disposition, or a motivational state underlying such a disposition. Associated with this position is the apparently commonsense view that an avowal of intention is a direct report of an inner motivational state, and indirectly an expression of a belief that it is likely that one will A. A central claim of this article is that the dispositional or motivational model is mistaken since it cannot acknowledge either the future-direction (...) of intention or the authority of avowals of intention. I argue that avowals of intention - first-person, present-tense ascriptions - express direct knowledge of a future action, knowledge that is not based on examination of one's present introspectible states or dispositions. Such avowals concern a future action, not a present state or disposition; just as self-ascriptions of belief concern the outer not the inner, so self-ascriptions of intention concern the future outer, not the present inner. One way of capturing this future-direction is to say that avowals of intention - and perhaps sense intentions themselves - are a kind of prediction, and not a description of one's present state of mind. This position is suggested by Anscombe in her monograph Intention (1963), and treats avowals of intention as judgements about the future, which unlike ordinary predictions are not based on evidence. However, since talk of prediction everywhere suggests an evidence-based stance - that meaningful hypothesis about the likely occurrence of events is being proposed, an hypothesis that can be falsified by evidence - the description future-outer thesis is preferred. I defend this thesis against various objections, arguing that it complements Anscombe's characterisation of intentions as based on reasons. (shrink)

To believe is to possess a wide variety of dispositions pertinent to the proposition believed. Among those dispositions are self-ascriptive dispositions. Consequently, being disposed to self-ascribe belief that P is partly constitutive of believing that P. Such self-ascriptive dispositions can be underwritten by any of a variety of mechanisms, acting co-operatively or competitively. But since self-ascriptive dispositions are only partly constitutive of belief, there can be cases in which the self-ascriptive dispositions splinter away from the remaining dispositions. It (...) is then an empirical question how often our self-ascriptive dispositions diverge from the remaining dispositions constitutive of belief. The dispositions will tend to align reliably when possession of the belief in question is normatively neutral, straightforwardly connected to behavior, and most centrally manifested in explicit assertions or judgments. When these three conditions are not met, self-ascription, self-conscious avowal, sincere utterance, and explicit judgment will often diverge from the various other dispositions constitutive of belief. Even self-knowledge of explicit judgment can be problematic when we are attracted to half-empty forms of words or when we are not entirely persuaded of what we are saying. (shrink)

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal—through avowal—the other third-personal—no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions—is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this enable some instances of (...) Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a thirdpersonal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or tojustification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themself not first-personal enough. (shrink)

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this (...) enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough. (shrink)

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this (...) enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough. (shrink)

Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region also important for driving top-down (...) pain inhibitory circuits. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context-dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non-religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image eneabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context-dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group-specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated (...) in action in a way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Film can be a significant way of doing public philosophy. This chapter sketches some essential public features of philosophy by using popular films. Learning to watch popular films as philosophical expressions, on par with books and articles, brings film and philosophy to inform one another and illuminate important areas of overlap. Memento is an especially uncanny film because it begins with the story's ending. Daniel J. Clark's 2018 documentary film Behind the Curve charts the resurgence of flat‐Earth theory in the (...) United States. Its core thesis is that false, avowed belief in flat‐Earth is sustained partly by an irrational weighing of evidence reinforced by various social, psychological, and economic benefits that come from holding the belief. We gain insight into a classic mechanism of motivated reasoning from Tony Kaye's film American History X, a fictional exploration of the rise of white supremacist ideology in US white working‐class neighborhoods. (shrink)

It is certainly true that no one has demonstrated the sheer falsity of claiming that whatever we count among the most distinctive things of the human world (persons, surely) or that whatever are rightly included among the most salient anthropocentric properties ascribed such things (a capacity for speech and self-reference, for productive and self-transformative agency, and for avowing beliefs, intentions, feelings and the like) are reducible in physicalist terms. Nevertheless, the prospects...

I explore the possibility and rationality of interpersonal mechanisms of doxastic self-control, that is, ways in which individuals can make use of other people in order to get themselves to stick to their beliefs. I look, in particular, at two ways in which people can make interpersonal epistemic commitments, and thereby willingly undertake accountability to others, in order to get themselves to maintain their beliefs in the face of anticipated “epistemic temptations”. The first way is through the avowal of (...) class='Hi'>belief, and the second is through the establishment of collective belief. I argue that both of these forms of interpersonal epistemic commitment can function as effective tools for doxastic self-control, and, moreover, that the control they facilitate should not be dismissed as irrational from an epistemic perspective. (shrink)

Most agree that believing a proposition normally or ideally results in believing that one believes it, at least if one considers the question of whether one believes it. I defend a much stronger thesis. It is impossible to believe without knowledge of one's belief. I argue, roughly, as follows. Believing that p entails that one is able to honestly assert that p. But anyone who is able to honestly assert that p is also able to just say – i.e., (...) authoritatively, yet not on the basis of evidence – that she believes that p. And anyone who is able to just say that she believes that p is able to act in light of the fact that she holds that belief. This ability to act, in turn, constitutes knowledge of the psychological fact. However, without a broader theory of belief to help us make sense of this result, this conclusion will be hard to accept. Why should being in a particular mental state by itself necessitate an awareness of being in that state? I sketch a theory that helps to answer this question: believing is a matter of viewing a proposition as what one ought to believe. I show how this theory explains the thesis that to believe is to know that you believe. (shrink)

New ideas are seldom received with moderation. When Spengler's Decline of the West appeared it was greeted with wild enthusiasm, which collapsed like a pricked bubble under criticism. Now that Toynbee, a generation later, has taken up the theme, there seems to be a determination not to be caught a second time. His critics have no wish to be unfair, and much of what they say is true enough; but to anybody who has a sympathetic understanding of what he is (...) attempting most of it seems entirely irrelevant and misleading. Toynbee's critics fall broadly into two classes—those for whom he says too little, and those for whom he says too much. In the first class are those who complain that he does not define his civilizations, that he does not say whether he is for or against Christianity, or that he does not explain how the deterministic aspects of his results can be reconciled with his liberalism and his avowed belief in free will. Yet if Toynbee had given precise answers to these and other questions, if he had come forward with a cut-and-dried philosophical system, these same critics might well have been the first to complain that he was imposing a priori conceptions on the facts of history—a charge that has been made against every philosophy of history, and one which it is very difficult to refute. Surely we can respect the integrity of a historian who declines to go beyond the facts, or adopt opinions before compelled by the evidence. (shrink)

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the ability to (...) ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (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)

It is argued that a second-order belief to the effect that I now have some particular propositional attitude is always true (Incorrigibility). This is not because we possess an infallible cognitive faculty of introspection, but because that x believes that he himself now has attitude A to proposition P entails that x has A to P. Incorrigibility applies only to second-order beliefs and not to mere linguistic avowals of attitudes. This view combines a necessary asymmetry between 1st and 3rd (...) person ascriptions with Objectivism about the propositional attitudes. The epistemic justification of second-order beliefs is shown to be a further question. (shrink)

With a new chapter This new edition of Herbert Fingarette's classic study in philosophical psychology now includes a provocative recent essay on the topic by ...

A central feature in contemporary discussions of selfknowledge concerns the epistemic status of mental selfascriptions, such as “I have toothache” or “I believe that p”. The overall project of such discussions is to provide an account of the special status of mental self-ascriptions vis-à-vis other knowledge-claims, including ascriptions of mental states to others. In this respect, two approaches have gained currency in contemporary philosophy. Some authors have focused on the notion of expression, stressing that self-ascriptions are expressions of one’s mental (...) life; whereas others have singled out the notion of transparency as crucial, since self-knowledge involves self-beliefs, and the latter are transparent to one’s available evidence. This critical notice explores one instance of each approach, in order to assess their prospects of success. It concludes that both approaches fail to articulate an account that satisfactorily accommodates the first-person component in the notion of self-knowledge. (shrink)

We seem to ascribe mental states and agency to groups. We say ‘Google knows such-and-such,’ or ‘Amazon intends to do such-and-such.’ This observation of ordinary parlance also found its way into philosophical accounts of social groups and collective intentionality. However, these discussions are usually quiet about how groups self-ascribe their own beliefs and intentions. Apple might explain to its shareholders that it intends to bring a new iPhone to the market next year. But how does Apple know what it intends? (...) How do groups get to know their own mental states? This is the question of collective self-knowledge. I argue that collective self-knowledge is a distinct phenomenon that deserves our attention. In particular I suggest: that we should be interested in collective self-knowledge, because our behaviour indicates that we already engage with collective self-knowledge in practice; that groups can collectively avow, which indicates that they have privileged and peculiar access to their own intentional states; and that collective self-knowledge is not reducible to intentional states of individuals and therefore is an independent explanandum. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with Richard Moran's account of self-knowledge in his book Authority and Estrangement. After presenting the main lines of his account, I contend that, in spite of its novelty and interest, it may have some shortcomings. Concerning beliefs formed through deliberation, the account would seem to face problems of circularity or regress. And it looks also wanting concerning beliefs not formed in this way. I go on to suggest a diagnosis of these problems, according to which (...) they would arise out of a view of agents too strongly dependent on the will. /// Este trabajo se ocupa de la concepción del autoconocimiento en el libro de Richard Moran Authority and Estrangement. Tras presentar las líneas maestras de dicha concepción, sostengo que ésta, a pesar de su novedad e interés, podría adolecer de defectos importantes. Así, con respecto a las creencias formadas mediante la deliberación, la propuesta de Moran parece enfrentarse a problemas de circularidad o de regreso. Y parece también insatisfactoria acerca de creencias no formadas de ese modo. Finalmente, sugiero un diagnóstico de estos problemas, según el cual éstos surgirían de una concepción de los agentes excesivamente dependiente de la voluntad. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recovering One's Self from PsychosisA Philosophical AnalysisThe author reports no conflicts of interest.Rosanna Wannberg (2024) has given us a dense but helpful introduction to certain philosophical questions raised by the fact that many patients recovering from psychotic illnesses describe their recovery in terms of gaining or regaining a 'sense of self' and a 'sense of agency,' which often involves acceptance of the 'fact' of being mentally ill, for example, (...) of 'having schizophrenia.' She raises two important questions: How should we understand what is going on in these accounts? and What are the implications of these reports for our understanding of what it is to have a 'sense of self' or a 'sense of agency'—of 'subjectivity' generally—which might have, both, clinical and nonclinical implications?What does it mean to have a self or a sense of having one, agency or a sense of having it? One might think these are the possession or experience of something 'inner' such as feelings of confidence or assurance, perhaps having a kind of inner structure or a set of deeply held ideas which give us coherence, motivate us and justify our actions, and which we can know by 'looking inward,' in an introspective act which provides direct, privileged acquaintance.Yet Wittgenstein called this a dangerously misleading 'picture' which 'held us captive,' and needed always to be 'gotten rid of' (Wittgenstein, 1958). One way of seeing the problem is to consider that no inner 'object,' no thing inside us, can be, or give us a sense of having, a self or agency, because no mere thing (whether an experience of confidence, or having an inner structure) can have any meaning or provide any explanation. A thing (like a word on a page) is just a thing—inert, dead— and must be interpreted, that is used, before it can play a role in our 'forms of life' (Wittgenstein, 1958) including explaining our sense of self or agency.Semantic externalists (Burge, 1979; Putnam, 1975), have argued that even what is internal to our minds—like thoughts—have contents which are determined by experiences in the 'outside' world in which we have lived and learned: if our experiences in the world, they have shown, were different, then so, also, would be the contents of our thoughts. It has even been argued that internal mental experiences which appear to be purely phenomenological (such as an image or a thought-token, so-called narrow content) can only [End Page 67] be identified and thought about using concepts having references in the external world: there is, so it is claimed, no narrow content (Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne, 2018); or, if there is, it is of no explanatory use in psychology (Fodor, 1994).If this is the philosophical background from which Wannberg confronts first-person accounts of recovery from psychosis which include (re)gaining a sense of self or agency, and if this philosophy is right, what becomes of the accounts? How are they to be understood?To meet this challenge, Wannberg invokes an alternative account of self-possession and firstperson authority provided by Richard Moran (2001). Moran's position is that we find or possess ourselves when we find or hold beliefs about the world which we do not merely believe but endorse or avow, where to endorse or avow a belief about the world is to find and endorse reasons in the world, which support that belief. Thus, I can avow that it's raining if I can look outside and see that it is raining. This Moran calls the transparency condition. Endorsing or avowing both a belief and the external reasons for it gives the self what Moran refers to as authenticity and which also might be said to provide cohesion, consistency and intelligibility—plausibly, a 'sense of self.'The transparency condition also applies to beliefs that justify actions. We act intentionally when we can give good reasons for what we do (Anscombe, 1957; Moran, 2001) and we can give good reasons for what we do when we can identify facts in the world that support those reasons. Thus, the transparency condition can explain both a sense of self and a sense... (shrink)

Psychologists have studied paranormal belief for over a century, but have been concerned with belief in the paranormal rather than disbelief. However, disbelief in the paranormal is a position in its own right and, for many, by no means a self-evident position. An avowal of disbelief is, therefore, a social phenomenon that may involve some interesting discursive work. This article examines the discourse of self-ascribed ‘sceptics’, and analyses how they warrant their expressed position when faced with an ostensibly (...) paranormal event for which they cannot provide a ‘normal’ explanation. We show how, for example, through the use of ‘definitely/something’ constructions, they appeal to an explanation that exists in principle, though the details are not available to them. Such devices can be seen as social and discursive forms of belief maintenance, in that they are designed to maintain a social position established through an avowal of belief. (shrink)