Self-Luminous Mental States
It is commonly enough remarked that our knowledge of our own beliefs and deliberations is unlike our knowledge of the beliefs and deliberations of others. The case of occurrent stream-of-thought believing and deliberating exemplifies these asymmetries. (On the other hand, your knowledge of your own non-conscious beliefs and deliberations is qualitatively similar to your knowledge of others'.)
How do we know about our own conscious beliefs and deliberations? Begin with the thought that our knowledge of our own conscious belief and deliberation is non-inferential. This is mainly a negative thought: however it happens, we have an access to our own mind that is non-theoretical. For example, I do not usually realize that I believe that P (where this is a conscious belief) by concluding, based on some evidence, that a belief that P would best explain my own behavior or some such.
(I normally do this in the case of my own non-conscious beliefs, assuming there are such. But note that this is what I also do in the case of others' beliefs.)
Wacky Form of Self-Knowledge #1) Quasi-Perceptual Access:
One can imagine that our knowledge of our own minds is quasi-perceptual, since it ain't inferential and perception is a paradigm for non-inferential access to the facts. But there are regress worries here.
Paraphrasing Ryle from memory: I might say "it came to me in a flash that I believed that P". I knew that I believed that P in virtue of this flash. But now, one might wonder, what was the character of this flash? It seems that, in the moment it occurred, I knew I had such a flash without the benefit of inference. How did I know I was subject to it (the flash of insight into my beliefs)? It had better not be that we must postulate another flash -- one in virtue of which I knew of my flash. End paraphrase.
Suppose that quasi-perceptual access to the facts requires that I have an experience of them. Thus, if I have quasi-perceptual access to the facts of my own mind, then I must have an experience of those facts. You might worry that unless this experience is something to which we have conscious access, then it could not deliver the requisite self-access. But then, we must postulate another experience... and so on.
At a certain point, it seems, some mental state must simply constitute my non-inferential awareness of my own mind, not itself requiring another mental state to bring it into awareness. It constitutes my being aware.
Such states are self-luminous. That is supposed to be intentionally provocative, b'zatch!
This is the same kind of regress worry we get about the role of rules in deliberation. I might infer that P based on some considerations. (I begin by thinking to myself: "Ah yes, X, Y, and Z".).
I also use a rule that tells me that given those considerations, P follows. (I think to myself: "Well, given X, Y, and Z and the rule that things of this sort license the conclusion that P... P.)
I take it that this sometimes happens. However, it cannot be the case that every rule that governs my inferences is explicitly represented as a premise. In the end, I'll need some rule that gets my premises together and spits out a conclusion. So suppose I have drawn an inference. In what lies my confidence that my conclusion follows? I can point to my premises, and any rules explicitly represented therein. But at a certain point, my account will have to stop listing rules. [OK: this needs some serious precisification. But something along these lines is clearly right. See: Achilles and Tortoise.]
Deliberation must have a self-luminous nature.
Also note how wacky a quasi-perceptual account of our knowledge of our own deliberation would be. In what does my license to believe that P consist? Well: I observed a process in my mind, which involved, first, thinking X, Y, and Z. And next thinking P, which was accompanied by a feeling of conclusive-ness. So something that happened in my mind licenses the belief that P. So P. This is crazy.
How do we know about our own conscious beliefs and deliberations? Begin with the thought that our knowledge of our own conscious belief and deliberation is non-inferential. This is mainly a negative thought: however it happens, we have an access to our own mind that is non-theoretical. For example, I do not usually realize that I believe that P (where this is a conscious belief) by concluding, based on some evidence, that a belief that P would best explain my own behavior or some such.
(I normally do this in the case of my own non-conscious beliefs, assuming there are such. But note that this is what I also do in the case of others' beliefs.)
Wacky Form of Self-Knowledge #1) Quasi-Perceptual Access:
One can imagine that our knowledge of our own minds is quasi-perceptual, since it ain't inferential and perception is a paradigm for non-inferential access to the facts. But there are regress worries here.
Paraphrasing Ryle from memory: I might say "it came to me in a flash that I believed that P". I knew that I believed that P in virtue of this flash. But now, one might wonder, what was the character of this flash? It seems that, in the moment it occurred, I knew I had such a flash without the benefit of inference. How did I know I was subject to it (the flash of insight into my beliefs)? It had better not be that we must postulate another flash -- one in virtue of which I knew of my flash. End paraphrase.
Suppose that quasi-perceptual access to the facts requires that I have an experience of them. Thus, if I have quasi-perceptual access to the facts of my own mind, then I must have an experience of those facts. You might worry that unless this experience is something to which we have conscious access, then it could not deliver the requisite self-access. But then, we must postulate another experience... and so on.
At a certain point, it seems, some mental state must simply constitute my non-inferential awareness of my own mind, not itself requiring another mental state to bring it into awareness. It constitutes my being aware.
Such states are self-luminous. That is supposed to be intentionally provocative, b'zatch!
This is the same kind of regress worry we get about the role of rules in deliberation. I might infer that P based on some considerations. (I begin by thinking to myself: "Ah yes, X, Y, and Z".).
I also use a rule that tells me that given those considerations, P follows. (I think to myself: "Well, given X, Y, and Z and the rule that things of this sort license the conclusion that P... P.)
I take it that this sometimes happens. However, it cannot be the case that every rule that governs my inferences is explicitly represented as a premise. In the end, I'll need some rule that gets my premises together and spits out a conclusion. So suppose I have drawn an inference. In what lies my confidence that my conclusion follows? I can point to my premises, and any rules explicitly represented therein. But at a certain point, my account will have to stop listing rules. [OK: this needs some serious precisification. But something along these lines is clearly right. See: Achilles and Tortoise.]
Deliberation must have a self-luminous nature.
Also note how wacky a quasi-perceptual account of our knowledge of our own deliberation would be. In what does my license to believe that P consist? Well: I observed a process in my mind, which involved, first, thinking X, Y, and Z. And next thinking P, which was accompanied by a feeling of conclusive-ness. So something that happened in my mind licenses the belief that P. So P. This is crazy.
posted by Idris at 7:19 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry, I didn't mean luminosity to require infallibility. I meant to introduce the notion that is defined soley by being such as to, by its being tokened, constitute consciousness. It would be an additional question whether or not the luminous state need to infallibly represent other states -- say, those (if any) that are in virtue of its tokening conscious states. I can imagine that there might be a sense in which a luminous state -- a consciousness constituting one -- would be self-representing... it might be hard for such a state to misrepresent itself... of course that depends on the details of how it represents itself... hmm...
Anyway, sorry for using terminology that suggests Williamson's usage. I still take it as an interesting and, in light of Ryle-ish worries, controversial claim that a certain kind of regress could come to an end.
Thanks for the comment.
Matt, your last comment suggests that we are on basically the same ground regarding the central claims of my post. We agree that consciousness constituting states needn't infallibly represent the internal states that are their objects.
I disagree with some details of your presentation of the facts, but you're on the right track -- my track, anyway.
A detail: the case of missing you invoke at the beginning of your comment doesn't provide a slam dunk.
The missing that goes on might be better described as a case of belief, rather than a case of being subject to a consciousness-constituting mental representation, whatever that might turn out to be. I'm supposing that consciousness-constituting states aren't going to be beliefs.
They are not, for example, creatures born of deliberative judgement.
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