Cristina Borgoni

Many authors agree with McGeer’s (1996, 2007) view that we owe people first-person authority. While this feature is widely acknowledged, accounts rarely ask who is entitled to such authority. As a result, over-intellectualized models have often, even unintentionally, excluded many individuals from the scope of such accounts. This paper addresses this gap by examining the social practice of deference to first-person authority in its earliest form: communicative interactions between infants and adults. The paper adopts a methodological focus on the phenomenon’s early occurrence, enabling us both to avoid the narrow scope of overly intellectualized models and to achieve a more accurate understanding of its constitutive aspects. My central claim is that this practice of deference can be traced back to our interactions with pre-linguistic infants, whose communicative acts elicit responses governed by the same norms we apply when deferring to linguistic expressions of mental states.

This paper explores the relationship between the failure to defer to first-person authority and the concept of epistemic injustice. Specifically, it argues that this failure cannot be classified as either hermeneutical or testimonial injustice, as it results in a general harm to the subject as an autonomous agent rather than exclusively to their epistemic capacity. The paper achieves two main goals. First, it identifies important limits in the notion of epistemic injustice. Not all communicative interpersonal interactions that involve intertwined epistemic and ethical failures can be categorized as epistemic injustice. Second, the paper shows that the norms of deference to first-person authority are unique to this phenomenon, as are the corresponding failures to adhere to such norms.

Sellars’ and Davidson’s conceptions of self-knowledge have a common ground in their rejection of the given. Both offer arguments against the idea that raw sensations can justify corresponding introspective judgments and thus challenge core observational models. Although it is widely acknowledged that both philosophers reject the aforementioned conception of introspection, their shared perspectives on self-knowledge, resulting from this critique, are seldom explored. In fact, there is a noticeable disparity between Davidson’s impact on contemporary debates concerning self-knowledge, particularly within the rationalist tradition, and Sellars’ relatively limited recognition in this discussion. This chapter aims to address these gaps. The chapter begins by explaining Sellars’ and Davidson’s criticisms of the given and how they constitute arguments against observational models of self-knowledge. It then proceeds to reconstruct their alternative conceptions of self-knowledge. We argue that the primary difference between the two authors concerns their conceptions of self-knowledge as an epistemic achievement. Whereas Davidson's view is typically understood as a non-epistemic explanation, Sellars seems to offer resources for a genuinely epistemic understanding of self-knowledge, free from any commitments to the given, if developed within an externalist framework.

This paper focuses on the puzzling situation of having beliefs that are resistant to one’s own critical reasoning. This phenomenon happens, for example, when an individual does not succeed in eliminating a belief by evaluating it as false. I argue that this situation involves a specific type of irrationality—not yet properly identified in the literature—which I call ‘critical doxastic resistance’. The aim of this paper is to characterize this type of irrationality. Understanding such a phenomenon sheds light on the type of agency that we exercise when we reason critically. Moreover, it illustrates one relevant relationship between agential rational control of our beliefs and the rational functioning of beliefs as being responsive to reasons. I argue that critical doxastic resistance is characterized by a failure to meet the following rational norm: in critical reasoning, the results of evaluative reasoning should automatically transfer into, and be implemented by, the reasoning or beliefs under evaluation.

This is an open access book that addresses how we treat others and, in particular, infants and children, with first-person authority. We respond to people’s first-person authority when we give our interlocutor’s communication of their mental states more significance in establishing their thoughts, desires, and feelings than if another person were to report those mental states for them. But what happens when our interlocutors are infants and children? Increasingly, practices of responsive childrearing ascribe first-person authority to very young children. Despite this tendency, philosophy seems to be one step behind. The accepted view is one in which first-person authority has its locus in linguistic expressions of one’s self-knowledge. This is an over-intellectualized conception, however, that consequently tends to exclude children. By combining philosophical resources with empirical findings about the onset of human communication, play, and our nature as social beings, this text advances a non-intellectualized, anti-individualist, and non-adult-centered view of first-person authority. This is a view that both accommodates our daily experiences and provides material for advancing the philosophical debate around the phenomenon in an enriched and more inclusive way.

This paper explores the relationship between the failure to defer to first-person authority and the concept of epistemic injustice. Specifically, it argues that this failure cannot be classified as either hermeneutical or testimonial injustice, as it results in a general harm to the subject as an autonomous agent rather than exclusively to their epistemic capacity. The paper achieves two main goals. First, it identifies important limits in the notion of epistemic injustice. Not all communicative interpersonal interactions that involve intertwined epistemic and ethical failures can be categorized as epistemic injustice. Second, the paper shows that the norms of deference to first-person authority are unique to this phenomenon, as are the corresponding failures to adhere to such norms.

This chapter centers on the idea that Evans' notion of transparency, as a mode of knowing a person's mind by looking outward through their transparent lenses, is not exclusively tied to self-knowledge. On certain occasions, particularly those involving a deep history of second-personal interactions, our knowledge of other people's minds can be transparent. The argument of this chapter is, thus, a criticism of standard transparent theories of self-knowledge to the extent that transparency is not an exclusive trait of first-personal self-knowledge. However, the chapter also proposes a more constructive understanding of transparency in terms of "epistemic intimacy", which helps us grasp central features of self-knowledge, as well as of our knowledge of (some) other minds.

This chapter has two objectives. One is to explore possible social epistemological approaches to self-knowledge. These are outlined in the first section, which is primarily historical and exploratory yet critical. The second objective is to propose a view of first-person authority as an intrinsically social phenomenon. The second section argues that first-person authority is a different phenomenon than self-knowledge, although the two are linked in important ways. Thus, instead of arguing for a social epistemological approach to self-knowledge, the chapter proposes that a promising way to understand its social aspects is to focus on a related but different phenomenon, namely first person authority.

This chapter deals with the question of which notion of rationality best fits with a fragmentation picture of belief that holds that we are mostly rational. According to this picture, coherence is not a requirement of rationality for the entire belief system. Coherence is only rationally required within belief fragments. The chapter argues, however, that fragmentation still needs to offer a different rationality criterion across belief fragments to account for a variety of cases in which we would intuitively ascribe irrationality to the subject. It proposes that the requirement of evidence responsiveness is a good candidate for making sense of the idea that there are certain normative relations in place among beliefs from different belief fragments.

This volume brings together thirteen essays that centre on a single question: do semantic externalism and anti-individualism generate coherent and powerful sceptical threats to self-knowledge? The seven essays authored by Anthony Brueckner--six of them previously published--are guided by an affirmative answer to the question. The essays authored by Gary Ebbs, including two written for the volume, answer in the negative. The dialogue between the two authors is engaging and the arguments are rigorous.

RESUMEN: Este trabajo ofrece una lectura de la Paradoja de Moore que pone énfasis en su relevancia para nuestra comprensión de la racionalidad y de la interpretación lingüística. Mantiene que las oraciones que dan origen a la paradoja no necesitan entenderse en términos de ausencia de una contradicción, sino más bien en términos de ausencia de racionalidad, entendida esta como un término más amplio que el de coherencia y consistencia lógica. Se defenderá tal posición por medio de tres tesis, dos de las cuales se derivan de los enfoques dominantes (aunque insuficientes) a la paradoja: el de Moore, el de Wittgenstein y el de Shoemaker.ABSTRACT: This paper offers an interpretation of Moore’s Paradox that emphasizes its relevance for our understanding of rationality and linguistic interpretation. The sentences that originate the paradox do not need to be thought of in terms of the absence of a contradiction, but in terms of absence of rationality, where rationality is understood as a broader notion than coherence and logical consistency. This is defended through three theses, two of which stem from the dominant (but insufficient) approaches to the paradox: Moore’s, Wittgenstein’s and Shoemaker’s.

This paper examines a class of beliefs that I propose to call ‘unendorsed beliefs’. Unendorsed beliefs are beliefs whose content is not endorsed by the believer although the believer herself acknowledges their presence in her psychology. Recent work in philosophy – e.g. the discussion of cases in which an individual's explicit and supported views conflict with her overall arc of instinctive and unguarded responses – has highlighted the occurrence of such beliefs. However, there are open questions about their central psychological and normative traits. I advance a view according to which certain normative features of unendorsed beliefs are related to their psychological structure. Given the psychological structure of an unendorsed belief, the subject does not have rational control over unendorsed beliefs and has limited first-personal access to these beliefs. In the paper, I analyze such distinctive characteristics at length.

There is widespread disagreement about whether epistemic akrasia is possible. This paper argues that the possibility of epistemic akrasia follows from a traditional rationalist conception of epistemic critical reasoning, together with considerations about the fallibility of our capacities for reasoning. In addition to defending the view that epistemic akrasia is possible, we aim to shed light on why it is possible. By focusing on critical epistemic reasoning, we show how traditional rationalist assumptions about our core cognitive capacities help to explain the possibility of epistemic akrasia.

This chapter aims at characterizing the impact of the discussion on implicit biases––a politically loaded phenomenon––for some fundamental questions in philosophy of mind and at exploring new lines of investigation in epistemology. In the first part of the chapter, I focus on the still lively debate about the type of mental state that implicit biases are. In contrast to the current views that analyze implicit bias against a traditional view of beliefs, I propose that a more promising position is one that accommodates implicit biases within the belief category, while proposing a new paradigm for what beliefs are. The second part explores some epistemological issues centered on the question about what is biased in implicit biases. Implicit biases seem to be epistemically and ethically mistaken. Implicit biases are prejudice-based mental states. Also, very often, implicit biases diverge from what people explicitly hold to be the case. However, it is unclear whether implicit biases are constitutively inaccurate or unjustified. Moreover, it is not easy to understand what the source of such failures are, whether they have their origin in the individual’s cognitive system or in the individual’s social environment. I aim to formulate these epistemological problems and explore some possible routes to their answer.

In this review, I reconstruct Burge's position in Origins of Objectivity as standing on two distinctions: perception vs. sensory information registration and perception vs. propositional states. Based on these distinctions, I expose and articulate the main theses present in the book. On the one hand, I design a possible criticism to his position concerning the criteria for isolating psychological kinds in terms of veridicality conditions and, on the other hand, I indicate a possible gap in Burge's choice of not treating the relation between perception and propositional states. En esta nota crítica, reconstruyo la posición de Burge en Origins of Objectivity sobre dos pilares: la distinción entre percepción y registro sensorial y la distinción entre percepción y estados proposicionales. Basándome en estas dos distinciones, expongo las principales tesis presentes en el libro y la manera en que se articulan entre sí. Delineo, de un lado, una posible crítica que concierne el criterio que el autor propone para aislar géneros psicológicos en términos de condiciones de veridicidad y de otro lado, indico una laguna en la elección de Burge de no tratar la relación entre percepción y estados proposicionales.

In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while his/her overall automatic behavior suggests that he/she believes that not-P. According to Schwitzgebel, this is a case of in-between believing. This article raises several concerns about Schwitzgebel's account and proposes an alternative view. I argue that the in-between approach yields incorrect results in belief self-ascriptions and does not capture the psychological conflict underlying the individual's dissonance. I advance the view that in relevant cases the dissonant individual has two mutually contradictory beliefs.

Cogito-like judgments, a term coined by Burge, comprise thoughts such as, I am now thinking, I [hereby] judge that Los Angeles is at the same latitude as North Africa, or I [hereby] intend to go to the opera tonight. It is widely accepted that we form cogito-like judgments in an authoritative and not merely empirical manner. We have privileged self-knowledge of the mental state that is self-ascribed in a cogito-like judgment. Thus, models of self-knowledge that aim to explain privileged self-knowledge should have the resources to explain the special self-knowledge involved in cogito judgments. My objective in this paper is to examine whether a transparency model of self-knowledge can provide such an explanation: granted that cogito judgments are paradigmatic cases of privileged self-knowledge, does the transparency procedure explain why this is so? The paper advances a negative answer, arguing that the transparency procedure cannot generate the type of thought constitutive of cogito judgments.

In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while her overall automatic behaviour suggests that she believes that not-P. In contrast with several mainstream views, this paper defends the contradictory-belief view of some relevant dissonance cases and explores its consequences regarding Moorean propositions. The paper argues that in relevant cases, the dissonant person is justified in asserting a Moorean proposition on the grounds of her explicit view on the subject matter and the recognition of her opposing beliefs. The person is irrational in being dissonant, but not in asserting a Moorean proposition.

In this work, I argue for the possibility of epistemic akrasia. An individual S is epistemically akratic if the following conditions hold: S knowingly believes that P though she judges that it is epistemically wrong to do so and Having these mental states displays a failure of rationality that is analogous to classic akrasia. I propose two different types of epistemic akrasia involving different kinds of evidence on which the subject bases her evaluation of her akratic belief. I examine three objections to their possibility. I suggest that the key to defending the possibility of epistemic akrasia is to explain condition. I finally argue that epistemic akrasia is possible, and that it represents a failure of mental agency

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.