How would you answer this question? Can dispositional analyses of belief account for first-person authority?

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, various analyses of beliefs in terms of dispositions have been advanced. One principled objection against dispositional accounts of belief is that they cannot accommodate first-person authority. While people can infallibly state their beliefs without the need for any kind of evidence, their assertions about their dispositions are fallible and in need of evidential support. Hence, the argument goes, beliefs are not the same thing as dispositions. In this paper, I defend a linguistic version of dispositionalism against this objection, namely the thesis that the belief that p is the disposition to answer the question whether p in the affirmative. I offer a detailed account of first-person authority with regard to belief, and argue that linguistic dispositionalism can account for first-person authority. Further, I discuss the appeal of dispositionalism, argue that it is a mistake to understand first-person authority primarily as a matter of privileged (epistemic) access, and explain the importance of the distinction between self-ascriptions and manifestations of beliefs and dispositions.

KEYWORDS:

• Dispositions
• beliefs
• first-person authority
• criteria
• self-knowledge
• dispositionalism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sam Coleman, David Dolby, Hans-Johann Glock, Elia Haemmerli, Selim Heers, Michelle Liu, Michel Meliopoulos, Jakub Mihalik, Basil Müller, Christoph Pfisterer, Franziska Poprawe, Constantine Sandis, Peter Schulte, and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the 21st century, dispositional accounts of belief are defended most prominently by Schwitzgebel (2002, 2013) and Stout (2006).

2 Versions of this objection can be found, e.g. in Collins 1987 and Hacker 2013.

3 Additionally, a proponent of a dispositional account of belief might point out that the claim that having a belief is the same thing as having a certain disposition does not entail that beliefs are dispositions. Since this subtlety is not relevant for the questions discussed in this paper, I go back and forth between formulations such as ‘beliefs can be analysed in terms of dispositions’ and ‘beliefs are dispositions’ relatively liberally, but the distinction would have to be considered in a more comprehensive account of the dispositional analysis of belief.

4 I use the counterfactual conditional rather than the material conditional, because the falsity of the antecedent (that S is asked whether p) would be sufficient for the truth of the material conditional.

5 Thanks to Constantine Sandis for drawing my attention to this issue.

6 There is, however, an ongoing debate about whether or not the relation between a disposition and its manifestation, in general, is a causal one (see e.g. McKitrick 2004, 2005; Rives 2005). This question is, of course, closely connected to the controversy as to whether dispositions are to be identified with their causal bases (for this debate, see e.g. Prior, Pargetter, and Jackson 1982; Armstrong, Martin, and Place 1996; Mumford 1998).

7 Self-deception is much more than being mistaken. It involves conflicting motivations, for example. Evidently, there are kinds of beliefs, such as sexist and racist beliefs, where we put less weight on what a person would say when assessing whether they have the relevant belief. This is not only because people are more likely to be insincere in such contexts, but also because they have a motive not to think of themselves as racist or sexist and so are susceptible to self-deception.

8 Of course, we can decide to harass other people with unsolicited arguments and try to get them to rethink their positions, but (1.) this kind of influence is still more indirect than it is in the first-person case, and (2.) its success depends on the other person’s willingness to reconsider the matter.

9 Note, however, that in cases where my mind is already settled, I can answer the question ‘Do you believe that p?’ without having to think about either p or myself.

10 An instructive discussion of the later Wittgenstein’s criterial account is given in Wright 1998.

11 This argument, which is inspired by Taylor’s (1981) writings on feelings, is discussed at length in Moran 2001, Chap. 2. However, Moran does not himself take the argument to be sound.

12 Formulations such as ‘to have knowledge about what one believes’ or ‘to know what one believes’ are ambiguous between (a) to know that things are as one believes them to be and (b) to know that one has the relevant beliefs (Kemmerling 2012, 406). The remarks in this paper invariably concern reading (b).

13 Interestingly, however, there still seems to be some kind of first-person/third-person asymmetry with respect to the ascription of dispositions: For example, if I want to estimate what my reaction would be to stumbling upon a dead dog’s body, I can try to put myself in the relevant perspective and check what my emotional response is. This strategy cannot in equal measure be applied in the assessment of other people’s dispositions.

14 A referee has pressed me on the question whether my reflections do not nevertheless have a more direct effect on what I believe than on what dispositions I have: Do my reflections not primarily influence my belief and—as a result of this—my respective disposition? Similarly, on the matter of Sovereignty, do I not have some sort of direct control over what I believe, but can only indirectly—through my beliefs—affect my dispositions? In both cases I think the answer is no. In order for one of the two effects to be more direct than (or the cause of) the other, it would have to be possible in principle for the two to come apart. But all of the cases in which my belief as to p might be thought not to coincide with my disposition to answer the question whether p are ruled out by the ceteris paribus-clause in the definition of the relevant disposition or, more specifically, by the exclusion of self-deception, conceptual confusion, and lying.

15 Note, however, that different formulations of the question require different forms of answer. We can, for example, use the following formulation of the above question: ‘Would you answer the question whether p by saying “no”?’ And then, if somebody’s answer to the question whether p is ‘yes,’ they should say ‘no.’

16 In this paper I cannot discuss in detail what avowals are. Simply put, avowals are utterances in the case of which truthfulness normally guarantees truth.

17 This line of argument might be criticised by appeal to the way in which dispositions are individuated: Saying ‘yes’ in response to the question ‘How would you answer the question whether p?’ seems to manifest a different disposition from the one originally identified with the belief that p, which was the disposition to say ‘yes’ in response to the question ‘p?’ However, as noted above, the questions ‘p?’ and ‘How would you answer the question whether p?’ (as well as ‘Would you say that p?’ or ‘Would you say “yes” to the question whether p?’) ultimately amount to the same thing. Hence, I would suggest that we read (2), our original statement of the dispositional analysis, in a liberal way, such that S can be asked whether p in many different ways.

18 Thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this idea. A further question that should be included in future research is that of the extent to which the presented account of belief is transferrable to other attitudes, such as desires and intentions. It would be interesting, for example, whether it is possible to find counterparts of all of the mentioned aspects of first-person authority for the cases of these other intentional states.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Foerderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung: [grant number P2ZHP1_184194].

Notes on contributors

Nicole Rathgeb

Nicole Rathgeb is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire. Her main research interests are in the philosophy of mind (belief, self-knowledge, and first-person authority) and philosophical methodology (conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering, ordinary language philosophy). She is currently co-editing the Metzler Handbook of Philosophy of Mind and a collection of articles with Routledge, and writing a book on conceptual analysis.