Self-Knowledge as Practical Knowledge
So one way in which our self-knowledge is going to be wacky is that it is going to involve self-luminous mental states.
I'd like to continue by focusing on wacky mode of self-knowledge #2: Practical Knowledge. By way of connection to the prior topic: could practical knowledge explain self-luminosity?
Richard Moran suggests that some of our non-inferential knowledge of our own belief is what might be called practical knowledge.
I (normally) know what I am about to do, in virtue of deciding to do it. This is a matter of several things. First, my decision makes it true that what I will do is intentional in some respect rather than others. So, that I have decided to serve my guests fish makes my action intentional with respect to being a fish serving. If my action should also be a guest poisoning, since (unbeknownst to me) the fish is off, it won't be intentional in that respect. Since certain features of my action are constitutively determined by my decision, I can, simply in virtue of having decided as I did know about those features. Second, a la Velleman, since I will normally do whatever I decide to do, my decision to act can constitute knowledge. Decisions have a belief-like face. Suppose, then that to decide is to represent my future being one way or other. This belief-like state is warranted because, since I will do whatever I decide, I have a license to represent my future in whatever way it is I do represent it in deciding to act. That my belief-like state is so licensed implies that it is knowledge. [By the way, this is my understanding of the take-home message of Velleman's account of the feeling of free-will.]
Moran thinks that occurrent belief is like action. I know what I occurrently believe, because my occurrent believing is agential... at least in normal cases. I am not very sure what this means. I suspect it means something along these lines: we decide what to believe, just as we decide how to act, and so if decisions to act constitute a special kind of knowledge, then so must decisions to believe.
Short Digression:
Note #1: It is often remarked that one cannot decide to believe with quite the same freedom as one can decide to act. Some have denied that there is any doxastic freedom. Obviously, reasons for belief govern believing in a way that differs markedly from reasons for action. But it is an open question in my mind whether these considerations will defeat a Moran-like account.
Note #2: Practical knowledge is confined to the Good Case. It might be that I find myself alienated from my own beliefs. Maybe some forms of madness involve this. Note that in the alienated state one's knowledge of one's own beliefs is more like one's knowledge of others' beliefs. Ah, this is what I must believe! ...or that is what the therapist tells me, anyway. Anyway, in such a non-Good Case, I won't have practical knowledge of my own beliefs.
End Digression.
Obviously, Moran's cannot be the whole story (even if it is correct). I clearly have a kind of non-inferential knowledge of my own decisions. But it ain't clear to me that our knowledge of our own decisions could itself be constituted by a decision to decide in such-and-such a way. If the model of practical knowledge is to be applied to our awareness of our own decisions, it requires that our decisions be known in virtue of being decided. While I am pretty sure I consciously decide to do things, I am not so sure that I ever decide to decide. If not, then we need non-practical explanation for the self-knowledge we have of our own decisions.
(There is probably also a regress problem here.)
Thus, even if deciding grants a kind of non-inferential knowledge, we still have a kind of non-inferential knowledge left over.
At the very least, self-luminosity cannot be explained as practical knowledge. If our decisions are self-luminous, they aren't so in virtue of being 2nd order decided.
Secondly, there are states that are plausible candidates for self-luminosity, but that are not decision-governed. Take being in pain. I can't choose to feel pain. [OK: I can, but the way in which I choose pain is rather different from the way in which I might choose to act... hands are waived.] Yet it seems that pain is especially inapt for treatment on a quasi-perceptual model. So pain is plausibly self-luminous. Yet its luminosity cannot consist in having been decided upon... since it was not decided upon. QED
I'd like to continue by focusing on wacky mode of self-knowledge #2: Practical Knowledge. By way of connection to the prior topic: could practical knowledge explain self-luminosity?
Richard Moran suggests that some of our non-inferential knowledge of our own belief is what might be called practical knowledge.
I (normally) know what I am about to do, in virtue of deciding to do it. This is a matter of several things. First, my decision makes it true that what I will do is intentional in some respect rather than others. So, that I have decided to serve my guests fish makes my action intentional with respect to being a fish serving. If my action should also be a guest poisoning, since (unbeknownst to me) the fish is off, it won't be intentional in that respect. Since certain features of my action are constitutively determined by my decision, I can, simply in virtue of having decided as I did know about those features. Second, a la Velleman, since I will normally do whatever I decide to do, my decision to act can constitute knowledge. Decisions have a belief-like face. Suppose, then that to decide is to represent my future being one way or other. This belief-like state is warranted because, since I will do whatever I decide, I have a license to represent my future in whatever way it is I do represent it in deciding to act. That my belief-like state is so licensed implies that it is knowledge. [By the way, this is my understanding of the take-home message of Velleman's account of the feeling of free-will.]
Moran thinks that occurrent belief is like action. I know what I occurrently believe, because my occurrent believing is agential... at least in normal cases. I am not very sure what this means. I suspect it means something along these lines: we decide what to believe, just as we decide how to act, and so if decisions to act constitute a special kind of knowledge, then so must decisions to believe.
Short Digression:
Note #1: It is often remarked that one cannot decide to believe with quite the same freedom as one can decide to act. Some have denied that there is any doxastic freedom. Obviously, reasons for belief govern believing in a way that differs markedly from reasons for action. But it is an open question in my mind whether these considerations will defeat a Moran-like account.
Note #2: Practical knowledge is confined to the Good Case. It might be that I find myself alienated from my own beliefs. Maybe some forms of madness involve this. Note that in the alienated state one's knowledge of one's own beliefs is more like one's knowledge of others' beliefs. Ah, this is what I must believe! ...or that is what the therapist tells me, anyway. Anyway, in such a non-Good Case, I won't have practical knowledge of my own beliefs.
End Digression.
Obviously, Moran's cannot be the whole story (even if it is correct). I clearly have a kind of non-inferential knowledge of my own decisions. But it ain't clear to me that our knowledge of our own decisions could itself be constituted by a decision to decide in such-and-such a way. If the model of practical knowledge is to be applied to our awareness of our own decisions, it requires that our decisions be known in virtue of being decided. While I am pretty sure I consciously decide to do things, I am not so sure that I ever decide to decide. If not, then we need non-practical explanation for the self-knowledge we have of our own decisions.
(There is probably also a regress problem here.)
Thus, even if deciding grants a kind of non-inferential knowledge, we still have a kind of non-inferential knowledge left over.
At the very least, self-luminosity cannot be explained as practical knowledge. If our decisions are self-luminous, they aren't so in virtue of being 2nd order decided.
Secondly, there are states that are plausible candidates for self-luminosity, but that are not decision-governed. Take being in pain. I can't choose to feel pain. [OK: I can, but the way in which I choose pain is rather different from the way in which I might choose to act... hands are waived.] Yet it seems that pain is especially inapt for treatment on a quasi-perceptual model. So pain is plausibly self-luminous. Yet its luminosity cannot consist in having been decided upon... since it was not decided upon. QED
posted by Idris at 8:29 PM
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