Sentential Attitudes/Inner Assertion
So earlier I suggested that we should think of judgment as silent assertion. The reason is primarily phenomenological: when I deliberate about what to do I talk silently to myself. I start out asking myself - in English -- whether P is true. And then I talk myself through considerations pro and con P. The upshot of the deliberation is, or feels like anyway, saying to myself "P". Presumably, others are the same.
An additional reason to think that judgment consists in inner assertion would be to make some sense of claims about concepts. Judgment is supposed to be conceptual, while experiential representation is not. Now I'll admit that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A CONCEPT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Some for example, seem to hold that concepts are constituents of thoughts. (If you're a Fregean "concept" probably just is a term of art meant to indicate whatever sort of entity might be part of a thought -- construed as a sense.) One tidy way to organize a lot of the things that people have said about concepts is to link them to natural language: concepts are vocabulary.
Now inner assertion would be a different matter from mere inner utterance. I can say to myself, but without conviction, "Dogs have fins". I have not thereby judged that dogs have fins. On the other hand, I have not exactly asserted it either. I did not say it to myself with conviction.
What about this saying to oneself with conviction? Perhaps the conviction with which one says P to oneself is, as it were, prior to the saying. Perhaps, moreover, the prior conviction is the judgment: First you reach a state of conviction - and thereby judge - and then you inwardly assert. So inward assertion is not judgment, but rather the inward expression of judgment already performed. It is as if inward assertion is like an intentional action, in which we imagine there must be an act of will - a prior state of deciding - which then finds expression in action. Indeed, the view of this paragraph internalizes the Gricean picture of communication: according to which acts of assertion are the expression of a prior Plan of Communication (which is something like a practical syllogism, including what is judged and a plan to effectively replicate that judgment in my audience).
But I worry: the conviction, supposing it is the judgment and prior to its inward expression, seems to be below my conscious radar until such a time as I express it with inward assertion. Can such a thing constitute judgment? That is, can such a thing constitute the end of my conscious deliberation about what is true? It can seem that I am playing catch up with my own judgments: I become aware of them via their manifestation in inward assertion, though they are not something I do. Or, if I count as judging on this picture, I do so by courtesy, as I count as digesting, when my stomach digests, or I sneeze, when my sinuses do their thing.
Consider the Libet-Wegner view of willing, according to which conscious willing is epiphenomenal. The conscious will is like an inner eye that reports - well after the fact - on the activity of the motor cortex. There is the will, the wellspring of action, and then we are along for the ride, merely aware of its action. Here I have decided this! Here I have decided that! But, really, my decisions are mine in the same sense in which my digestion is mine. But this seems all wrong - or, if our willing is like this, then it seems I am not truly the author of my action, but rather a gifted observer of my own decisions... which sucks. [Actually it gets even worse: Wegner marshals tons of evidence that suggests that we are rather bad observers of our own wills - of why we decide and, even, whether we have decided this way or that.]
OK, then, am I committed to the view that judgments are sentential attitudes - rather than propositional attitudes? Does this mean that I think that judgments have narrow contents?
It seems I must conclude that when I think to myself "Fred likes cheese" and when Jacque thinks to himself "Fred aime le fromage" we have made different judgments. Is that a problem? And am I really committed this conclusion? According to the "gricean picture" I sketched above, this conclusion might be troubling, since it might rule out what would count as genuine cross-linguistic communication. I am remain sanguine about this: it is not clear to me why communication must consist in the contagion of the exactly similar judgments.
Note: it needn't be that there is actually, somehow, a sentence in my mind/brain. It is sufficient merely that I go into a state that is like the state of hearing myself assert sentences. No one thinks that "seeing" a blue afterimage requires that there actually be something blue in my mind/brain. It is enough that I go into a state like the state I am in when I see a blue thing. In a certain way, then, judgment would involve extensive aural hallucination. But I don't see why this is a problem. Hallucinating is not always a sign of malfunction: consider, e.g., the sensory imagination and its proper function.
Note: there is nothing here to suggest that beliefs must be the same way. Neither that other non-sentential, judgment-like states cannot be postulated for various purposes.
An additional reason to think that judgment consists in inner assertion would be to make some sense of claims about concepts. Judgment is supposed to be conceptual, while experiential representation is not. Now I'll admit that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A CONCEPT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Some for example, seem to hold that concepts are constituents of thoughts. (If you're a Fregean "concept" probably just is a term of art meant to indicate whatever sort of entity might be part of a thought -- construed as a sense.) One tidy way to organize a lot of the things that people have said about concepts is to link them to natural language: concepts are vocabulary.
Now inner assertion would be a different matter from mere inner utterance. I can say to myself, but without conviction, "Dogs have fins". I have not thereby judged that dogs have fins. On the other hand, I have not exactly asserted it either. I did not say it to myself with conviction.
What about this saying to oneself with conviction? Perhaps the conviction with which one says P to oneself is, as it were, prior to the saying. Perhaps, moreover, the prior conviction is the judgment: First you reach a state of conviction - and thereby judge - and then you inwardly assert. So inward assertion is not judgment, but rather the inward expression of judgment already performed. It is as if inward assertion is like an intentional action, in which we imagine there must be an act of will - a prior state of deciding - which then finds expression in action. Indeed, the view of this paragraph internalizes the Gricean picture of communication: according to which acts of assertion are the expression of a prior Plan of Communication (which is something like a practical syllogism, including what is judged and a plan to effectively replicate that judgment in my audience).
But I worry: the conviction, supposing it is the judgment and prior to its inward expression, seems to be below my conscious radar until such a time as I express it with inward assertion. Can such a thing constitute judgment? That is, can such a thing constitute the end of my conscious deliberation about what is true? It can seem that I am playing catch up with my own judgments: I become aware of them via their manifestation in inward assertion, though they are not something I do. Or, if I count as judging on this picture, I do so by courtesy, as I count as digesting, when my stomach digests, or I sneeze, when my sinuses do their thing.
Consider the Libet-Wegner view of willing, according to which conscious willing is epiphenomenal. The conscious will is like an inner eye that reports - well after the fact - on the activity of the motor cortex. There is the will, the wellspring of action, and then we are along for the ride, merely aware of its action. Here I have decided this! Here I have decided that! But, really, my decisions are mine in the same sense in which my digestion is mine. But this seems all wrong - or, if our willing is like this, then it seems I am not truly the author of my action, but rather a gifted observer of my own decisions... which sucks. [Actually it gets even worse: Wegner marshals tons of evidence that suggests that we are rather bad observers of our own wills - of why we decide and, even, whether we have decided this way or that.]
OK, then, am I committed to the view that judgments are sentential attitudes - rather than propositional attitudes? Does this mean that I think that judgments have narrow contents?
It seems I must conclude that when I think to myself "Fred likes cheese" and when Jacque thinks to himself "Fred aime le fromage" we have made different judgments. Is that a problem? And am I really committed this conclusion? According to the "gricean picture" I sketched above, this conclusion might be troubling, since it might rule out what would count as genuine cross-linguistic communication. I am remain sanguine about this: it is not clear to me why communication must consist in the contagion of the exactly similar judgments.
Note: it needn't be that there is actually, somehow, a sentence in my mind/brain. It is sufficient merely that I go into a state that is like the state of hearing myself assert sentences. No one thinks that "seeing" a blue afterimage requires that there actually be something blue in my mind/brain. It is enough that I go into a state like the state I am in when I see a blue thing. In a certain way, then, judgment would involve extensive aural hallucination. But I don't see why this is a problem. Hallucinating is not always a sign of malfunction: consider, e.g., the sensory imagination and its proper function.
Note: there is nothing here to suggest that beliefs must be the same way. Neither that other non-sentential, judgment-like states cannot be postulated for various purposes.
posted by Idris at 3:07 PM
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