Self-Knowledge, Hatzimoysis, ed. Oxford University Press, 2011

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access to dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze.

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure " the transparency method for belief. " How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude's being known transparently.

International Journal for Philosophical Studies, 2008

This paper argues that the cases of radical uncertainty about who one is that John Perry and David Lewis discuss do not show the need for a special first person kind of belief. I argue that the kind of uncertainty imagined is in fact incoherent.

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2010

Episteme

Nico Silins (2012, 2013, 2020) argues that conscious judgments justify self-attribution of belief in the content judged. In defending his view, he makes use of Moore's Paradox, seeking to show how his theory can explain what seems irrational or absurd about sentences of the form, 'p and I do not believe that p'. I show why his argument strategy is not available to defend the view that conscious judgments can justify the self-attribution of belief in the content judged. I then propose an amended version of his theory, which holds that sincerely asserting a proposition—whether aloud or silently—justifies self-ascribing belief in the proposition expressed. In doing so, I draw on an argument which I made in Gregory (2018) that there is something it is like to make a sincere assertion which is different from what it is like to make an insincere assertion. The phenomenology of sincere assertion provides immediate justification for self-ascription of belief in a proposition which has been sincerely asserted; nonetheless, it may be that we need to interpret our own assertions in order to determine which propositions they express. This paves the way for showing how two competing schools of thought about self-knowledge—one which holds that self-knowledge is immediate and one which holds that self-knowledge is inferential—might be combined.

The Causal Model of introspection has its more than fair share of critics and indeed in recent years the model has fallen out of favour in the philosophical world. In this paper I defend the model and argue that it is an excellent candidate, given a realist commitment about the mental, to explain our peculiar, but contingent, introspective access to beliefs.

2017

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe that p without believing that one believes that p.

Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. , Campinas, 2008

This paper is devoted to an examination of issues concerning the persistence and linguistic re-expression of indexical singular belief. I discuss two approaches to the topic: the directly referential approach, which I take as best represented in Kaplan's views, and the neo-Fregean approach, which I take as best represented in Gareth Evans's views. The upshot of my discussion is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that both Kaplan's account and Evans's account are on the whole defective. On the other, I claim that a broadly Fregean account is still to be preferred, since by positing semantically efficacious modes of presentation it is clearly better equipped to deal with the phenomena in the area. In particular, I argue that the notion of a memory-based mode of presentation of an object (a spatio-temporal particular, a region in space, a period of time, etc.), as introduced by Christopher Peacocke, turns out to be indispensable to account for the persistence and re-expression of intentional mental states over time.

Rivista di Filosofia, 2019

Belief is an epistemic state often contrasted with other epistemic states. The contrast varies depending on the kind of states one is interested in. If the relation with language is at stake, beliefs are compared with sub-doxastic states, implicit beliefs, dispositional beliefs or proto-thoughts. If the relation with certainty is at stake, we have credences, assents or opinions. After reviewing these concepts and the related theories, I argue that we need a multi-faceted and dispositional view of beliefs, one that incorporates four different parameters, as I call them. These are the degree of inferentially integration, consciousness of its content, the order of the belief and its degree of certainty. All of these parameters have been used by one author or the other, but none has used them all. However, they are compatible with each other and make a satisfactory explanatory and a metaphysically sound set.

Academia Letters, 2022