SELF-BLINDNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS - Philosophy

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Self-Blindness and Self-AwarenessThis idea is endorsed explicitly, for example, by Akeel Bilgrami, who claims, "ourmental states lack a certain kind of independence from our knowledge of them…possessedby the things of which we have perceptual knowledge, from that perceptual knowledge." 2Bilgrami proposes that a person's knowledge of her own psychological states is "not comeby via anything at all…it comes with the states of minds themselves, for 'free', as it were." 3This suggestive metaphor of "knowing for free" is intended to capture the basic idea that apsychological state is not distinct from its owner's belief (or knowledge) of it. 4In addition toBilgrami, several recent philosophers have defended the idea that a person’s psychologicalstates are constitutively connected to her own beliefs about them. 5These “constitutivetheories” of self-knowledge aim to account for first-person access by grounding it innecessary, constitutive relations.Despite the popularity of constitutive theories, they oppose a natural and simplethought: a psychological state is one thing and a belief about it is something else. This isobviously true with our beliefs about psychological states that belong to others. Why is itnot equally true in our own case? Why should we not think that a person's psychologicalstates and her beliefs about them are also independent from each other? I propose tocapture this notion with the following thesis:2 Bilgrami (2006), pg. 29. cf. Bilgrami (2010).3 Bilgrami (2006), pg. 38.4 Although I am not aware of anyone who holds this view, someone persuaded by Williamson’s (2000) accountof knowledge as a distinct psychological type could think that a person’s psychological states areinterdependent with her states of knowledge but not with her beliefs. The arguments of this paper would applymutatis mutandis.5 See Boyle (2011), Heal (2001), Shoemaker (1994), Wright (1998), or Zimmerman (2006).2
Self-Blindness and Self-AwarenessDistinct Existence Thesis: For any subject a and psychological state M, ~ (M(a) only if abelieves that M(a)). 6Plausible considerations speak in favor of the Distinct Existence Thesis. First there is Hume'swell known opinion that, since all psychological states are distinguishable from each other,"they may exist separately, and have no need of any thing else to support their existence." 7Hume's point strikes me as prima facie true. It does seem that distinguishable psychologicalstates could exist without each other. 8Second, we are both ignorant of and mistaken aboutmany of our own psychological states. We can believe or desire something without believingthat we do and we can wrongly describe our own feelings, desires or beliefs. How does thishappen? Why do we make errors about our own psychological states? The combination ofignorance and error in this domain suggest that the Distinct Existence Thesis is true. Even ifthey turn out to be quite exceptional, we should nevertheless expect an account of why andhow they occur whenever they do. Yet the most promising explanations of error will rest onthe independence of psychological states from beliefs about them. They will maintain thatmistakes occur because a contingent causal relation connecting a person's psychologicalstates with her beliefs breaks down.6 Dependence is also a consequence of an infallibility thesis about self-knowledge. I shall not discuss this sortof view because few people, if any, believe we are infallible about our psychological states. However, ifnecessary, we can reformulate the Distinct Existence Thesis in a way that accommodates infallibility. In that case,the thesis becomes a bi-conditional: For any subject a and psychological state M, ~ (M(a) iff a believes thatM(a)).7 Treatise 1.4.5.5.8 This point is related to Moore's Paradox. The paradox arises because the conjunction (P and I believe ~P) isnot a logical contradiction. Does Moore's Paradox occur at a higher level? Consider the following: I believethat it is raining but I believe that I do not believe that it is raining. Someone who rejects the Distinct ExistenceThesis could claim that this conjunction does entail a logical contradiction on the grounds that the twoconjuncts were not really distinct facts. Thus, how we think about Moore's Paradox is closely related to how wethink about the Distinct Existence Thesis.3
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SELF-BLINDNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS - Philosophy

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