I am the world’s leading
expert on the current contents of my left pocket (a handkerchief, some change).
I can also lay claim to being the world’s leading expert on the contents of my
mind — if I say that I think it is too warm in here, I can be assumed to be
right about this. But the two cases are perhaps only superficially alike. No
one else knows much about the current contents of my pockets, because no one
else has checked my pockets. If someone else were to go through the steps
needed to check my pockets, she would know as much as I do about their
contents. The persons checking my pockets could find out that I had made a
mistake — perhaps I had overlooked a subway ticket. The steps required for
finding out such things are essentially the same as the steps I have to take
(insert hand, empty pocket, check contents). This does not hold for the
contents of my mind. My claim to know what I am thinking right now seems to be
of a different kind, when compared with my knowledge of the contents of my
pockets. My thoughts are mine, and I have a special relation to them. This
relation seems to be special in many ways. Perhaps even the idea of being an expert
on the contents of one’s own mind is misguided; perhaps the analogy with
ordinary experts is misleading — there seems to be nothing like getting better
and better at judging something that is there for the experts to judge. Perhaps
the whole idea of there being something there to be an expert about is
wrong. When trying to come to grips with questions concerning the first person,
we quickly get entangled in a whole bunch of tricky issues, issues that have
occupied philosophers at least since Descartes. Descartes’ particular views on
what there is to know about the contents of my own mind, and how I could come
to be so good at this, have to a great extent set the agenda for virtually all
later discussions of the first person, even though there is a widespread
agreement that Descartes got most things wrong.

Bar-On’s new book on issues
concerning the first person is a comprehensive, systematic and carefully argued
treatment of virtually all the major current subjects in this area. The level
of discussion is generally very high, and the book both demands and repays
careful study. In view of the size of the book, and the complexities of the
problems dealt with, even a pretty long review will only give a superficial
taste of what is going on in the book. The book is not for the easily daunted
or for the uninitiated. It will send most readers back to a decent library, in
order to refresh or acquire knowledge of a great many ideas, concepts and
thinkers. Descartes, Evans, Moran, Crispin Wright, Wittgenstein and Shoemaker
are but a few (central) examples. They are all handled with fairness and
argumentative skill. This book will be a natural starting-place for someone
studying these issues. The book can also be used by advanced undergraduates.

The main task of the book is
presented at p. 11: "My main task in this book is to provide an account
assigned to avowals that respects both Semantic Continuity … and Epistemic
Asymmetry". Semantic Continuity means that there is some systematic
connection between the uses of for instance "pain" in "I am in
pain" and "He is in pain"; semantically, first-person avowals
should be on a par with the usual employment of the terms. Epistemic Asymmetry
is the "claim that there are genuine and important epistemic contrasts
between avowals and their semantic cousins." (ibid.) Bar-On’s strategy is
as follows. First, there are a few natural observations we can make about our
remarkable success in saying things about the contents of our own minds. We can
normally be presumed to get things right when we say that we feel or think so
and so. What accounts for this success? It seems that virtually every possible
answer to this question has been tried at one time or another, from appeals to
certain ultra-reliable epistemic faculties (as in Descartes), to saying that
the appearance of extra reliability in reports about the first person just is
an appearance; we are tricked by grammar into thinking that these utterances
are reports about anything at all (Wittgenstein, on some readings). Bar-On
strives to find a new take on these issues, taking avowals, the subject’s
own expressions of her point of view, having a normal form "I am in such
and such a mental state" as a point of departure. Bar-On formulates three
questions that a satisfying treatment of the first person would have to sort
out.

Short formulations of the
questions are:

i.                   
Why are
avowals so secure and rarely questioned?

ii.                 
What
qualifies avowals as articles of knowledge at all, and why would such knowledge
have a privileged status?

iii.               
How can we
have privileged non-evidential knowledge of our present states of mind?

In the first part, Bar-On
presents a defends a set of desiderata that a theory of the first person’s
avowals should meet (p.20, they reappear on p. 144).  There are eight
desiderata. In my somewhat shortened formulations, they are:

D 1. We should explain the difference
between avowals and ordinary epistemic assessments.

D 2. We should explain avowals are so secure.

D 3. This security appears to be
non-negotiable, or "non-transferable".

D 4. The account should hold for both
intentional and non-intentional avowals.

D 5. Avowals should be handled as
truth-assessable. Avowals are semantically continuous with other types of
utterances featuring the same expressions.

D 6. But avowals should not be made out
as absolutely infallible or incorrigible.

D 7. No appeals to a Cartesian dualist
ontology.

D 8. There should be room for the
possibility that avowals represent privileged self-knowledge.

These desiderata have much to
recommend them (and some are perhaps very obviously attractive), but meeting
them all is a tall order. But is it impossible to fulfill all of the above
desiderata? Most (all?) earlier theories of the first person have given up or
violated one or other of the desiderata, but according to Bar-On, there is a
way of meeting them all. In the process of showing this, the desiderata are
motivated and explained further, and it is also argued that other theories
about the first person fail precisely in violating the desiderata. Towards the
end of the book, the author sets out to see how well the desiderata have been
accommodated in the final theory. 

The book is packed with
arguments, most of which are quite persuasive, and it is also very carefully
argued, perhaps to a fault. Sometimes the discussions get too long and a reader
could lose track of where the discussion is heading. There is also some
repetition, which makes the book unnecessarily long. The repetitions will no
doubt be helpful to someone who is not set on reading the entire book, however,
so they do fulfil a purpose.

The main thought in the book
is that we speak our minds — when we avow that things are such and such with
us, we express ourselves, we give voice to our inner workings. This is a
kind of expressivism, somewhat inspired by Wittgenstein, but the author takes
great care to avoid the usual difficulties with an expressivist view of avowals
(mainly variations of the Geach-Frege point about assertions). Ordinary
expressivism will not have Semantic Continuity for avowals, but Bar-On’s theory
will, so the term neo-expressivism is no misnomer. I express myself by
avowing that things are thus-and-so with me.

But what, more precisely, is
it to express oneself in this sense? The discussion in chapter 7 characterizes
several different senses of expressing oneself. To avow something is to give
voice to how things are with one, to make oneself visible to others in a
certain respect. Expressing oneself is making one’s self, one’s mind, visible
to others. This is not the same as traditional behaviorism, however. Expressing
oneself in some particular way is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in
a certain intentional state, so the state cannot be identified with, or reduced
to, the overt expression of being in the state (p. 421). The notion of
expressing at work here is something that is not readily captured by the
ordinary understanding of materialism.  It is also held that this conception of
expression is a kind of commonsense theory (424). The things expressed are "conditions
the subjects are in, not states that are in the subjects" (ibid.). Bar-On
admits that this distinction between conditions-the-subject-is-in and
states-that-are-in-the-subject is somewhat unexplained to date, but sketches a
way in which it is consistent with a materialist ontology.

Some of these ideas may be a
bit tentative and underdeveloped, but they do make good sense. They also seem
to be quite close to McDowell’s views. McDowell also sees expressive behaviour
as making the conditions of the subject perceivable by other (suitably
equipped) people. McDowell also rejects the form of materialism that thinks of
the mental as something that can be captured from a third-person point of view.
There is also a kind of disjunctivism for self-knowledge (though not for
perception). So there may be a great deal of overlap with McDowell’s position,
and this should have gotten a more extended treatment.

Bar-On closes the book with
the following words:

Speaking my mind is something I am in a
unique position to do. Only I can express, or give voice to, my own present
states of mind. And it is only states of my mind that I can express, or give
voice to. Bodily conditions such as having high blood pressure, a raised arm,
or a weak heart are not conditions one can speak from. I can speak my mind, but
I cannot speak my body.

In the end, it is perhaps with this,
rather than Cartesian incorrigibility, that our search for an epistemic mark of
the mental should rest. (p. 428)

All this is fine, and not just
a rhetorical flourish. No one else speaks my mind in the way I speak my mind.
To this reader, there may still be a lingering sense of mystery when finishing
the book, however. Why is it that I can express myself and no one else, why is
it that I can express my mind but not my body — have all the remaining
problems been handled? The expressivism developed here gives a direct response
to some of the desiderata above, such as D2 and D3, since the connection
between the thing expressed by an avowal and the person avowing is so tight,
but at least to me, there is still something mysterious here. How can the
relation be of such a tight kind?

To sum up, Bar-On’s book is a
very well executed and argued book, which is a useful and important contribution
to a difficult field.

 

© 2006 Fredrik
Stjernberg

 

Fredrik Stjernberg, Linkoping University,
frest@irk.liu.se

Categories: Philosophical