Doxastic Agent's Awareness

Abstract

When performing actions, we can be aware of what we are doing in virtue of being the one doing it. Or, at the very least, we can be aware that we are doing something. While to an extent contested, this is nevertheless a familiar claim – that we can enjoy a so-called ‘agent's awareness’ and/or ‘sense of agency’ in acting on the world. For example, suppose that Sally is opening a jar. The thought is that she can be aware of opening the jar even if her eyes are closed, and arguably even if her fingers happen to be numb. Or in any case, her experience is different from how it would be if she passively watched things happen to her. She wouldn't be surprised to find the jar unscrewed once she opens her eyes – the jar is open because she opened it. And the thought isn't just that we can form beliefs about what we are doing. It is a claim about certain forms of conscious experience which can then ground our self-ascriptions.

Standardly, philosophers have limited the scope of agent's awareness to intentional actions, or at the very least actions – as we might initially expect. In contrast, I argue here that agent's awareness also extends to beliefs. This is to broaden the framework to introduce doxastic agent's awareness: an agentive awareness of making up one's mind and keeping it made up with regards to one's beliefs. Such awareness is possible because our awareness of performing a given action can be more or less rich, and I will suggest that in performing certain mental actions we see ourselves as forming and sustaining our beliefs. For example, suppose that Julia deliberates about Smith. She weighs the pros and cons and makes up her mind, thus concluding that Smith is a bad politician. I want to say that in doing all this, Julia is aware of making up her mind and forming a belief. This is still to ground the relevant awareness in our performance of actions, but to argue that in this way our experience can also encompass an awareness of mental states.

In order to grip onto its significance, I initially motivate doxastic agent's awareness as a way of accounting for our self-knowledge of belief, and in particular, our use of the so-called ‘transparency method’. I also offer independent arguments, and the thesis bears additional importance for the agent's awareness and sense of agency research programme.

The paper proceeds as follows. In §1, I introduce the question of what warrants our self-ascriptions of belief. By way of a reply in §2, I start presenting the thesis on the table – that we have an agentive awareness of them. This prior awareness, I propose, grounds our self-ascriptions. In §3, I offer additional arguments that we can possess doxastic agent's awareness.

I also want to clarify that my ultimate aim in this paper is to advocate relevant phenomenological and epistemic parities from the practical domain to that of belief. To a large extent, for example, I will assume that we at least sometimes have a distinctive form of experience when we act and which represents what we are doing. But ultimately, I would also be satisfied if the reader extended their preferred deflationary picture of agent's awareness to provide a similar account of doxastic agent's awareness.

In what way do we learn of our beliefs? In this section I set out the question, what I take to be the most promising rough strategy, and several desiderata for a precise answer. I then introduce my picture of doxastic agent's awareness in §2 as way of providing a concrete account, and suggest that in deliberating and judging we have a prior awareness of our belief which warrants us in self-ascribing it. As such, this detour into self-knowledge highlights the broader significance of doxastic agent's awareness. Further, this section partly functions as an argument to the best explanation, although it cannot be complete since eliminating all the possibilities would take too much time given the lively nature of this debate.

Let's start by saying something about the nature of belief. Belief is a standing state. For example, I believe that Barcelona is in Catalonia even when not considering the matter at all. The belief can be manifested in various ways: e.g., I provide it as an answer if someone queries Barcelona's location and I will visit Catalan websites when researching local traditions. But believing that Barcelona is in Catalonia is not itself something I do, or at least not in any straightforward sense.¹ On the other hand, judgement is something like the event of sincerely endorsing a proposition, and is arguably also a (mental) action. Suppose I judge that Barcelona is in Catalonia. This is an occurrence which happens and then passes. And it is something I do.

That said, belief and judgement do importantly relate (see e.g., Peacocke 1998: 90). Paradigmatically, judging that p is true is a way of coming to believe that p – I can deliberate on some issue, judge in conclusion that p is true and, standardly, come to believe that p. And I can change my beliefs by forming a different judgement on the issue. E.g., perhaps I initially judge that Barcelona is in Galicia and believe accordingly, before actually viewing a map and later concluding that Barcelona is in Catalonia and updating my belief in line with this. And judging that p can manifest one's standing belief that p. For the most part, if subjects believe that p, they will be disposed to judge that p. But I can also allow for cases where subjects aren't – instances of so-called ‘epistemic akrasia’. E.g., suppose Sally explicitly concludes that a friend likes her, but ever suspicious due to low self-esteem, she fails to act accordingly: she doesn't trust her friend with secrets, she seeks reassurance, and engages in suspicious questioning when her friend says they're busy etc. In this case, I am happy to say that Sally believes that her friend dislikes her despite the mismatch with what she judges to be true.²

Regarding the way in which we come to know our beliefs, an influential and plausible first pass is that we can use the so-called ‘transparency method’ (TM) first attributed to Evans (1982). Suppose you ask me whether I believe that it will rain. The thought is that I don't turn my attention inward via a detection mechanism that monitors my mental states or by considering evidence about myself such as my behaviour.³ Rather, I look outside and/or check the weather forecast. Suppose on this basis I conclude that it will rain. I can thereby tell you that I believe that it will rain. The question about what I believe is ‘transparent’ to a question about the outside world.

This raises the question of how in fact self-ascriptions formed using TM are rational and knowledgeable. After all, employing TM involves transitioning from a proposition about one subject matter to a conclusion about something entirely different (namely, from the outside world to my own mental states). In the rest of this section, I note several non-exhaustive desiderata for our answer to this question.

1. TM is not inferential. A belief-forming process can be described as inferential in two ways (see Cassam 2014: 138–9). One concerns the psychological transitions involved. We don't deliberate thusly: ‘p, I have thereby judged that p, my beliefs and judgements normally match up, therefore I believe that p’. Belief formation could also be inferential in an epistemic sense. This would be to say that any justification for one belief would be transmitted to the second (e.g., from my belief that p, or my belief that I judge that p, as well as my beliefs in relevant supporting propositions).⁴ But this isn't the case with transparency either (pace Cassam (2014). If asked for the grounds of our self-ascription, we wouldn't straightforwardly rattle off these considerations.

2. Nevertheless, the transition from ‘p’ to ‘I believe that p’ is one which seems rational to the subject herself. It is not simply reliable and one which results in warranted and knowledgeable self-ascriptions. After all, one's conclusion might be epistemically valuable in various sorts of ways without one being at all aware of this. Yet upon using TM, the resulting belief that I believe that p seems rational by the individual's own lights. For example, TM isn't simply on par from one's own perspective with transitions from ‘it will rain’ to ‘penguins exist’ or even ‘my friend believes that it will rain’. Employing TM is such that the conclusion makes sense to the subject, and she recognises that the resulting belief has ‘something going for it’ epistemically speaking.

Reliablist accounts of TM, such as Byrne (2018, 2011, 2005) and Fernández (2013, 2003), fail to capture this. Roughly, they claim that one's resulting self-ascription is warranted in virtue of TM's reliability – after all, when we judge that p, at the very least normally we believe that p as well. Yet this isn't to say that the subject herself grasps this reliable connection.

This also holds for accounts that rely on transcendental entitlements without appealing to anything the subject can herself grasp. We can see something like this in Moran (2003, 2001). Moran builds on the natural thought that employing TM and considering whether p is true is a way of making up our minds on the subject of p. In making up our minds like this, ‘it is only because I assume that what I actually believe about X can be determined, made true by, my reflection on X itself, that I have the right to answer a question about my belief in a way that respects the Transparency Condition’ (2003: 406). And we are entitled to this assumption because it is a precondition on engaging in deliberation in the first place.⁵ There is something germane about appealing to prior assumptions about our capacity to determine what we think, and my eventual account will be in some way sympathetic. But it's not clear what an ‘assumption’ in this context amounts to (which itself is a reason to doubt this proposal). The standard way of cashing out this intuition makes it seem like whatever the warrant is, it falls outside my grasp – it is not a reason per se. Just because the subject happens to have this entitlement isn't to say that she is at all aware of this (O'Brien 2005).

3. TM forms part of a broader phenomenon: as a general rule, reasoning, deliberation and judging all seem to put us in a position to self-ascribe our beliefs, even when we haven't set out to do so.

If we engage in a piece of reasoning and form a conclusion, and then someone asks us what we believe on the matter, this reasoning presumably puts us in a position to cite our conclusion as what we believe. And it does so just as much as if someone asked us the question beforehand and not after. Or perhaps no one actually has to ask me this question, but I make this observation spontaneously (‘huh, I believe that!’). Suppose that I happen to consider the weather and conclude that it will rain. I seem just as well-placed to then self-ascribe the belief that it will rain if I so wish as if I was setting out from the start to answer a question about my mental life.

I therefore find Antonia Peacocke's (2017) account of TM insufficient. She writes that judging that p when employing TM is an ‘embedded mental action’ as part of the broader intentional mental action of self-ascribing one's belief. As such, ‘you already self-attribute a belief with the same content just in making this judgment’ (2017: 365). The transition from ‘p’ to ‘I believe that p’ isn't really a substantial ‘move’ at all. The self-ascription is warranted by a combination of agential awareness in performing this intentional mental action and the conceptual grasp of belief required to use the method appropriately. Again, I have sympathies with this approach. But whatever underpins the epistemology of TM will also plausibly operate in cases like the above where we haven't intentionally set out to learn of our beliefs.

So far I have introduced an epistemological question: in what way does answering the question ‘whether p?’ put one in the position to learn whether they believe that p? Primarily we might wonder how judging that p puts one in this position, but the broader process of reasoning and deliberating prior to the judgement may well also play a role. I'll now introduce doxastic agent's awareness as a way of providing an answer. I first introduce the agent's awareness framework (§2.1). I then set out doxastic agent's awareness and how it might in fact be possible given that beliefs are states, not actions (§2.2). I end by answering the initial question thus illustrating the view's importance (§2.3), before presenting further arguments in §3.

The following arguments are aimed at further supporting the two parts of my claim: that our awareness is rich enough to concern making up our minds with regards to our beliefs and also that this awareness is agentive in character. In contrast to the second claim, for example, one might appeal to other forms of experience and in particular, forms of cognitive phenomenology rather than anything agentive per se. For example, Valaris (2013) develops an account of TM whereby belief has a phenomenal character which we experience when judging that p and which warrants us in self-ascribing the belief that p. Also, Dorsch (2016, 2009) and Kriegel (2015: 67–8) argue that judging for a reason possesses a distinctive phenomenology. But they understand this phenomenology as having a wholly passive character. I have instead appealed to the agent's awareness framework, and need to persuade the reader of this move.

1. We can contrast the normal case with one in which we clearly aren't aware of reasoning under the richer description of making up our mind.¹¹ One such instance might be that of epistemic akrasia, whereby the subject judges that p but nevertheless believes that not-p. Another is amnesia – even if the subject can form a belief, it wouldn't be a normal standing belief that endures and plays the familiar roles in long-term action guidance. If subjects are aware of being in these conditions, they would presumably engage in reasoning with a very different outlook to normal, i.e., without any hope that the state would stick as a standing belief. In both cases, the whole exercise would have a sense of futility. This suggests that there is something distinctive about our experience in the normal case, namely, the sense that we are in fact exerting agency over our beliefs.

2. Another argument stems from the way in which subjects' actions can seem rational from their perspective and the role that action awareness plays in this. Take the normal case in which I flick a light switch in a dark room or add paprika to bland food. To borrow Quinn's (1993) language, it ‘makes sense’ to do these things, and they seem like ‘sensible’ things to do. Indeed, they make sense from my own perspective.

Contrast this with a case whereby I do something intentionally but which nevertheless seemed nonsensical to me, like if kept adding salt to very salty food out of compulsion. Importantly, for my action to seem rational or irrational to me in that moment, I must be aware of what I am doing. And I seem to be aware in a way that does not necessarily require explicit reflection. This is because these actions feel nonsensical to me in that moment, or at least they can do. It's not that I always need to explicitly reflect on them in order to figure out what I am doing and that there is in fact no reason to do it. Importantly, this awareness would have to be rich to a relevant degree and to concern what I am doing under a particular description. After all, flicking switches in and of itself isn't what seems rational from my perspective, but rather, only in so far as in doing so, I am also turning on the light.

We can apply this observation to consider the mental actions involved in reasoning. Reasoning generally seems like a sensible thing to do, even in the moment and from our own perspective. It's worth emphasising that reasoning is practically speaking a sensible thing to do. It is not just that our conclusions are (hopefully) epistemically rational and have something going for them as far as we are concerned in virtue of having evidence in their favour. And for reasoning to seem sensible in this way requires action awareness under the relevant mode of description. It wouldn't seem that way if instead of seeing ourselves as forming a belief we only saw ourselves as forming a judgement on the matter. This is because beliefs, unlike judgements, are standing states with behavioural dispositions. Figuring out whether p is true is only significant if it leads to behavioural change. This is especially the case for deliberating about future states of affairs, such as if my favourite band are playing tomorrow – there's little point to just deliberating for the sake of it if our answer won't inform our plans and behaviour come the next day. Especially in cases such as these, simply forming a judgement on the matter wouldn't be a sensible thing to do. So, another reason for thinking that we have doxastic agent's awareness is that it's required for deliberation to seem sensible to us.

3. As far as we are concerned, we don't have to do anything further upon recognising evidence in order to acquire a belief, apart from in unusual cases. As such, reasoning about p and making up our mind at least normally seems to be one and the same activity for us. For example, suppose I read that a concert is tomorrow in a reliable newspaper and judge that the concert is tomorrow – I will thereby believe that it is tomorrow without further ado and without having to do anything else. And importantly, neither does it seem like a multi-step process as far as I am concerned. This isn't to deny, though, that multiple other causal processes are involved at other levels of explanation. And neither is it to say that the process will be completed in any one session – it might take some time to decide whether p is true. But, in reasoning we are in the process of making up our mind which we complete when we form our conclusion, and which we seem to be aware of.¹² As further support, note that this is even the case in instances where it's surely important that we form a belief and not a judgement, such as if we're thinking about the concert tomorrow. If there was any question in normal cases, we would need extra reassurance in these situations. So, to sum up, the claim is that reasoning about p and making up our mind at least normally seem to be the same activity from our perspective, something which, in the absence of explicit beliefs, would be to have what I'm calling doxastic agent's awareness.

I've argued that we have an agent's awareness and sense of agency concerning our beliefs: a doxastic agent's awareness. This is an awareness of forming and sustaining our beliefs in performing relevant mental actions, i.e., of making up our mind and keeping it made up. One upshot is epistemic, and I suggested that doxastic agent's awareness warrants self-ascriptions made using the Transparency Method. This paper also bears significance for understanding agent's awareness more broadly, such as if we are trying to understand the underlying mechanisms. This will also relate to our preferred account of doxastic agency itself, which I have remained neutral on here.¹³

Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.