Can We Be Self-Deceived about What We Believe? Self-Knowledge, Self-Deception, and Rational Agency

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00469.x

Can We Be Self-Deceived about What WeBelieve? Self-Knowledge, Self-Deception, and

Rational Agency

Mathieu Doucet

Abstract: This paper considers the question of whether it is possibleto be mistaken about the content of our first-order intentional states.For proponents of the rational agency model of self-knowledge, suchfailures might seem very difficult to explain. On this model, theauthority of self-knowledge is not based on inference fromevidence, but rather originates in our capacity, as rational agents,to shape our beliefs and other intentional states. To believe that onebelieves that p, on this view, constitutes one’s belief that p and soself-knowledge involves a constitutive relation between first- andsecond-order beliefs. If this is true, it is hard to see how thosesecond-order beliefs could ever be false.

I develop two counter-examples which show that despite theconstitutive relation between first- and second-order beliefs instandard cases of self-knowledge, it is possible to be mistaken, andeven self-deceived, about the content of one’s own beliefs. Thesecounter-examples do not show that the rational agency model ismistaken—rather, they show that the possibility of estrangementfrom one’s own mental life means that, even within the rationalagency model, it is possible to have false second-order beliefs aboutthe content of one’s first-order beliefs. The authority of self-knowledge does not entail that to believe that one believes that psuffices to make it the case that one believes that p.

I. Introduction

Many common moral failures involve a kind of inconsistency between people’sactions and what they claim to believe, desire, intend, and value. Think, forexample, of the person who claims to be a committed environmentalist and yetblithely drives a gas-guzzling vehicle, or of the politician who campaigns againstcorruption only to be caught up in scandal himself. Such inconsistency betweenword and deed comes in many moral flavors, and takes many differentexplanations. It can be due to simple ignorance, to weakness of will, or to aninternal inconsistency in a person’s set of beliefs.

European Journal of Philosophy ]]]:]] ISSN 0966-8373 pp. 1–25 r 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.European Journal of Philosophy 20:S1 ISSN 0966-8373 pp. e1–e25 © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

An important source of inconsistency, however, is insincerity: people can fail toact in accord with their avowed beliefs for the simple reason that they do notalways believe what they say they do. This is most obvious in the case of lies, butnot all insincerity seems to involve calculated and intentional deception. Itcertainly seems that much of the hypocrisy and insincerity that we find morallytroubling involves people acting in ways that are inconsistent with the beliefs orvalues that they publicly espouse not because their claims are part of an elaboratelie, but because they have somehow deceived themselves about what it is that theygenuinely believe, desire, or value. A tempting response to the moralizing andinconsistent hypocrite is not ‘you’re lying’ but rather ‘you might think you believethat, but you don’t really’.

Is it possible, then, that among the sources of inconsistency is an error, on thepart of the inconsistent agent, about the very content of his own intentional states(his beliefs, desires, and intentions)? And if so, could such a lack of self-knowledge be the result of self-deception, motivated by a desire to see himself ina certain light? If this were possible, then self-deception could involve theformation of false second-order beliefs about the content of one’s first-orderintentional states. Someone self-deceived in this way would, unlike the liar,believe that his assertion ‘I believe that p’ was true, but this second order-beliefwould be false, since he would not in fact believe that p.

Are such deep failures of self-knowledge possible? Can there be aninconsistency between what people believe themselves to believe (or desire, orintend) and what they in fact believe (or desire, or intend)? On one recentlyprominent and influential view of the nature and authority of self-knowledge,such failures would seem very difficult to explain. According to the rationalagency model of self-knowledge, the authority of self-knowledge comes not from aparticularly reliable epistemic access to the content of our own intentional states,but rather from our ability, as rational agents, to determine the content of thosestates. Self-knowledge, therefore, involves a kind of constitutive relation betweenour first-order intentional states and our second-order beliefs about those states:to believe that you believe that p necessarily constitutes your belief that p.Because of its emphasis on the connection between agency and self-knowledge,this model can help us understand the ways in which we can hold agents morallyresponsible for their inconsistency, but it also appears to rule out the verypossibility of being self-deceived about the content of our own intentional states.

In this paper, I offer two different counter-examples which show that it ispossible to be mistaken, and even self-deceived, about the content of one’s ownbeliefs. The counter-examples, however, are not objections to the rational agencymodel of self-knowledge itself. In fact, the estranged nature of the counter-examples serves to indirectly highlight the ways in which self-knowledgenormally is authoritative in the way the rational agency model describes. Thetarget of the argument, therefore, is not the rational agency model as a whole, butrather the view that the model entails that to believe that one believes that psuffices to make it true that one believes that p. On the contrary, I will arguethat some such second-order beliefs can be false, and that such failures of

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self-knowledge are perfectly possible within the framework of the rationalagency model.

Section II sets out the basic features of the rational agency model, according towhich the authority of self-knowledge is non-epistemic in character. Section IIIdescribes the dominant view of self-deception, according to which the self-deceived form false beliefs under the influence of a desire by mishandlingevidence. Since the rational agency model denies that self-knowledge is formedon the basis of evidence, this would seem to rule out the possibility of self-deception with regard to the content of our intentional states. Section IV exploressome of the ways we can be wrong about what we believe that fall short of beingmistaken about the content of our presently held beliefs. Finally, Sections Vand VIpresent two different ways in which, despite the rational agency model’scommitment that genuine self-knowledge is non-evidential, it is neverthelesspossible to be mistaken, and even self-deceived, about the content of one’sbeliefs. In Section V, I explore the case of estranged or third-personal self-deception about one’s beliefs, and in Section VI I develop an example ofgenuinely first-personal failure of self-knowledge.

While my main interest is the possibility of a kind of self-deception about ourown mental lives, this is approached by considering the question of whether wecan bemistaken about the content of our own intentional states, before then askingwhether such errors can be the product of self-deception. The argument is alsogenerally restricted to the case of belief. Some of the points I make will extend toother intentional states, notably desires, but not all of them will. My focus, then,is whether we can have false second-order beliefs about the content of our first-order beliefs, and, if so, can these false second-order beliefs be the result of self-deception? I argue that we can have such false second-order beliefs, and that theycan be the product of self-deception. Nevertheless, I do not believe that thepossibility of such failures of self-knowledge stands as an objection to the rationalagency model of self-knowledge.

II. Self-Knowledge, Authority, and Agency

For the most part, we assume that people are authoritative with regard to theirown mental lives: when someone says that she believes that p, we suppose thatshe is correct. She could be lying, of course, but if she is sincere, then thepresumption is that she does, in fact, believe it. In other words, claims to self-knowledge are (normally) taken to be authoritative.

Part of self-knowledge’s apparent authority stems from the differencesbetween the ways in which we form our beliefs about the content of our ownintentional states and the ways in which others form beliefs about those samestates, or in which we form our beliefs about the intentional states of others.When we want to know what someone else believes, we normally do so bydrawing inferences from the evidence provided by their behavior, including theirwords and deeds. Sometimes, this will be an easy task, but it is also open to

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uncertainty and error. This seems to stand in marked contrast to the way in whichwe normally know what it is that we believe. My beliefs about the content of my ownintentional states do not seem to require any kind of inference from observationalevidence. That is not to say that such evidence is unavailable to me, but rather that Ido not normally need it. Indeed, when I do need it, as in some therapeutic contexts,it seems to suggest that something has gone awry with my self-understanding. Myown intentional states are among the things that, in Anscombe’s phrase, I know‘without observation’ (Anscombe 1957: 13). There appears to be, then, an importantasymmetry between the first- and the third-person perspectives on the content ofour intentional states. Others discover what we believe on the basis of evidence, butwe do not: indeed, we do not discover it at all.

Identifying this asymmetry, however, does not explain the authority of self-knowledge. Indeed, it might even make such authority rather puzzling. After all,how can a belief that is not formed on the basis of justified inference fromcompelling evidence, or indeed justified by any evidence at all, be moreauthoritative than a belief that is formed on the basis of such evidence?

The presumed authority of self-knowledge, combined with the way in whichself-knowledge does not rely on inference from evidence, has led somephilosophers to develop an account of self-knowledge that is non-epistemic (e.g.,Bilgrami 1998, 2006; Burge 1996, 1998; McGeer 1996, 2007; Moran 1997, 2001;Wright 1998). In its place, they offer accounts of self-knowledge that emphasize theauthority we have, as rational agents, to determine what it is that we believe, desire,and intend. Call this family of views the rational agency model of self-knowledge.

Defenders of the rational agency model are particularly concerned withrejecting any account of self-knowledge that models it on something like a kindof inner perception. Their target is often called ‘Cartesian’ (and not just byproponents of the rational agency model), though perhaps its clearest expressionis in Locke’s discussion of reflection as ‘the perception of the operation of ourown minds within us’ (2008: Book II, ch. 1). To describe self-knowledge’sauthority as based on privileged access to an internal theatre from which othersare denied access is, such philosophers argue, not only problematic in its ownterms, but also radically under-describes the asymmetry between self and other.

One way to explain this asymmetry is by noting two very different ways inwhich someone can be described as an ‘authority’. A distinguished professor ofpolitical science might be described as ‘a leading authority on the formation ofgovernment policy’, which is to say that she understands better than anyone theprocess by which policy is made. She is an epistemic authority. A Prime Minister’sauthority over government policy, on the other hand, is not simply epistemic: he isauthoritative in virtue of his ability to set that policy. He might also be an epistemicauthority (his citizens can hope that he is) but he may, for all his power, knowrelatively little about political theory, policy alternatives, or the policy formationprocess. Rather, his authority is practical: he has the ability to determine governmentpolicy. This is an ability that the epistemic authority does not have: the politicalscience professor might understand the process better than the Prime Minister, butshe may nevertheless be powerless to determine the direction of that policy.

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The rational agency model conceives of the authority of self-knowledge aspractical in this sense, and takes the distinction between epistemic and practicalauthority to explain the asymmetry between self-knowledge and the knowledgeothers have of my intentional states. The observational or epistemic view of self-knowledge treats my knowledge of my own beliefs as relying on a kind ofobservation that only I can undertake, but such observation is how others formbeliefs about my intentional states. To treat self-knowledge in this way is to fail tocapture what is essentially first-personal about self-knowledge. My authority overthe content of my own mental states does not, on the rational agency model,derive from my having authoritative access to a particularly decisive form ofevidence. Rather, it comes from having the authority, as a rational agent, to makeup my mind: to consider what it is that I have most reason to believe, or to do, andto thereby shape my intentional states. As Richard Moran puts it: ‘being a personwhose mental life is brought to self-consciousness involves a stance of agencybeyond that of being an expert witness’ (Moran 2001: 4). Self-knowledge, on thisview, is an achievement of agency: it is ‘maker’s knowledge’ (McGeer 2007: 82).

This model of self-knowledge, therefore, reconstitutes the relation between oursecond-order beliefs and our first-order intentional states. For the observationalmodel, our first-order states are the independent objects of our second-orderbeliefs in much the same way that any other independent empirical fact can bethe object of any other belief, and our authority comes from our privileged anddirect access to these objects. But our ability, as rational agents, to shape our ownbeliefs, desires, and intentions means that, in the case of self-knowledge, theobjects of belief are not independent of the belief in this way. So defenders of therational agency model, therefore, conceive of a ‘constitutive relation between the[second-order] judgments and their subject matter’ (Burge 1996: 98. See alsoWright 1987: 401).

Akeel Bilgrami’s Self-Knowledge and Resentment extensively defends the viewthat self-knowledge is authoritative because of this constitutive relation betweenfirst- and second-order intentional states. On Bilgrami’s account, self-knowledgehas two important characteristics, both of which can be expressed by aconditional claim. It is, first, transparent: If I believe that p, I will thereforebelieve that I believe that p (Bilgrami 2006: 119). It is, second, authoritative: if Ibelieve that I believe that p, then I believe that p (Bilgrami 2006: 279).

For Bilgrami, both of these conditionals are true, and so self-knowledge is bothtransparent and authoritative, because of the essentially normative character ofintentional states such as beliefs and desires. To have a belief or a desire is to havemore than a psychological disposition—it is to be committed to something. As heputs it:

to desire something, to believe something, is to think that one ought tothink various things, those things that are entailed by those desires andbeliefs by the light of certain normative principles of inference . . . It is notto be disposed to do or think those things; it is to think one ought to do orthink them. (Bilgrami 2006: 213)




This is a normative account of intentional states—mental states that are meredispositions and that are not associated with such ‘internal oughts’ (Bilgrami2006: 212) are not genuine intentional states, which is to say that they are notgenuine beliefs (or desires).

On Bilgrami’s account, the authority of self-knowledge expressed by theconditional ‘If you believe that you believe that p, then you believe that p’ is onlytrue within what he calls the ‘realm of responsible agency’, which is to say, fromwithin the properly first-personal deliberative perspective (Bilgrami 2006: 146).This tie to agency is important: for Bilgrami, genuine first-personal self-knowledge is only possible for those who can be properly held responsible fortheir intentional states, since such self-knowledge is only possible for those whohold the beliefs (and desires, and intentions) that they do because they arecommitted to them as internally justified.

Restricting the authority of self-knowledge to the realm of responsible agencyis no concession, however, since it is only from within this realm that we can beproperly said to have genuine, full-fledged intentional states in the first place.And, because of way those states involve normative commitments, Bilgramiunderstands authority as requiring a strong constitutive relation between second-and first-order beliefs. As he says, ‘authority . . . is the property of second-orderbelief being invariably true’ (Bilgrami 2006: 272). Because of the way that ourbeliefs are an achievement of first-personal agency, our beliefs about those beliefscannot possibly be false.

Richard Moran defends a somewhat different version of the rational agencymodel in Authority and Estrangement (2001). He, too, argues that self-knowledge isnon-empirical and an achievement of agency, but he is hesitant about the claimthat there is a logically constitutive claim between first-order intentional statesand second-order beliefs. In part, he worries that some readings of theconstitutive claim undermine the possibility that self-knowledge involves a‘substantial epistemology’ and counts as genuine knowledge (Moran 2001: 44).Our knowledge of our own intentional states takes the same objects—our beliefsand desires—as the knowledge others have of those states, something that theconstitutive claim has a hard time making out. Moran’s view is that while we areself-constituting in an important sense, our self-constitution does not arise out ofa bare logical relation between first- and second-order states, but because of thefact that self-interpretation makes a difference to the subject being interpreted.

This form of self-constitution is most vivid when we consider our self-assessments of emotional life: forming beliefs about the character of an emotionsuch as pride can, in the first-personal case, change the character of that veryemotion. Someone who decides that his pride is sinful, or perverse, is no longerproud in quite the way that he was prior to this self-assessment, even if heremains proud in some sense (Moran 2001: 49–50). But the example of emotionallife also shows that there is not a straightforward logically constitutive relationbetween first-order attitudes and second-order beliefs, since our emotions seemopen to the possibility of incomplete or mistaken self-description: even fromwithin the first-person perspective, we can be unclear how to properly describe

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or assess emotional attitudes such as pride, envy, fear, anger, gratitude, andresentment.

Moran, then, rejects the strong logical reading of the constitutive claim in partbecause he accepts the idea that, at least in self-knowledge of emotional states, thepossibility of error remains. He does not, however, mention any parallel concernfor the case of belief. Moreover, he does think that we constitute our own first-order intentional states in important ways, and that this explains the authority wehave over the content of those states.

When we do not know what we believe, or desire, or intend, this is notnormally because there is a definite answer about the content of our intentionalstate, but we simply cannot figure out what it is. To suppose so would be, again,to think of introspection as a kind of inner perception or observation. Rather,when do not know what we believe, it is normally because we do not know whatwe should believe. We are uncertain, or still gathering evidence, or pulled in morethan one direction. Here, we are faced with ‘a practical or deliberative question[which is] answered by a decision or commitment of some sort, and is not aresponse to ignorance of some antecedent fact about oneself’ (Moran 2001: 58). Inanswering the question of what we believe, we do not direct our attention inward,at the content of our own beliefs. Rather, we direct our attention outward, at theworld, and consider the question of what it is that we should believe. It is in thispractical, outward directed sense that we constitute our own second-orderbeliefs. For Moran, then, as well as for Bilgrami, Burge, and Wright, the first- andsecond-order perspectives are united. As Burge puts it, the ‘first- and second-order perspectives are the same point of view’ (Burge 1996: 110).

III. Error, Self-Deception, and Evidence

If the relation between our second-order beliefs about our beliefs and the first-order beliefs themselves is logically constitutive, such that to believe that onebelieves that p suffices, in normal conditions, to make it true that one believes thatp, then the possibility of error here seems unlikely. Second-order beliefsunderstood in this way are their own truth-makers, and so it is hard to seehow they could ever be false. And if they cannot be false, then a fortiori theycannot be the result of self-deception.

For Moran, the issue is more complicated. He does not hold that the relationbetween first- and second-order beliefs is logically constitutive, and so the logicalpossibility of error remains. He does, however, insist that genuinely first-personalself-knowledge is non-epistemic, and not known on the basis of inference fromevidence. In this section, I argue that a non-epistemic account of self-knowledgemakes self-deception about the content of our own intentional states seemimpossible.

Self-deception involves forming or maintaining a belief in the face of strongevidence that it is false. This is standardly attributed to the presence of a desire:the self-deceived person believes that p is true because she wants p to be true.




The problem is that a desire that p be true is no reason at all for believing that p istrue. How, then, does self-deception work? The two dominant accounts of self-deception disagree over whether the self-deceived agent’s desire leads her tointentionally adopt the false belief that p is true. Intentionalists argue that suchintentions are necessary (Davidson 1986; Pears 1984, 1991), while deflationists arguethat they are not (Mele 2000; Johnston 1988). Both agree, however, that self-deception occurs because we interpret and gather evidence in a biased way. As weshall see, the view that self-deception involves biased treatment of evidence raises aquestion about the possibility about self-deception with regard to our own attitudes.

For intentionalists, an agent is self-deceived if he is motivated to believethat �p, believes that p is more likely than �p, and so acts ‘with the intention ofproducing a belief in the negation of p’ (Davidson 1986: 208, my emphasis). Self-deception is more than an innocent mistake: it is, on this view, an intentionalmistake, since it is a belief adopted despite, and indeed because of, clear evidencethat it is false.

Intentionalists are clear that self-deception involves the manipulation ofevidence. Davidson even takes the fact the self-deceived agent handles evidencein a way that promotes the belief he wants to be true as support for his claim thatthis self-deception is intentional. He suggests that the self-deceived agentacquires his false belief by ‘obtaining new evidence in favour of believing’ whathe desires to be true, and by ‘pushing the negative evidence into the backgroundor accentuating the positive’ (Davidson 1986: 209). The self-deceived agent isirrational because he realizes he does not have sufficient warrant for his belief,but he nevertheless manipulates the evidence to find some reason for his belief.1

Intentionalist accounts of self-deception confront an apparent paradox, sincethey require that the self-deceived agent believe that p and therefore believethat �p. The problem here is not simply that the self-deceived person hasinconsistent beliefs, but that, to successfully deceive herself, she must be aware ofher deceitful strategy, and yet to be successfully deceived, she must be unawareof it. But how could she both carry out and be taken in by the same deceptivestrategy? The standard intentionalist way of dealing with this paradox is tosubdivide the self-deceived mind, sometimes by positing the existence ofintentional sub-agents that manipulate the evidence to produce the desired belief(Davidson 1986; Pears 1984, 1991; Rorty 1988). Self-deception occurs when onepart of the self deceives another part of the self. This homuncular strategy aims todissolve the paradox of intentional self-deception by making self-deceptionanalogous to interpersonal deception, which is uncontroversially intentional.

The deflationist account of self-deception rejects this intentionalist picture.Deflationists point out that the homuncular responses to the paradox ofintentional self-deception raise as many problems as they solve, and that self-deception is only paradoxical if it is understood as intentional: it is the possibilityof both intentionally carrying out and unknowingly being taken in by the samedeceptive strategy that requires the homuncular solution. If the claim that self-deception is intentional is abandoned, however the paradox dissolves, and self-deception becomes relatively easy to understand.

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As Alfred Mele points out, when one’s desire that something be true leads oneto falsely believe that it is true, it need not do so ‘as part of an attempt to deceiveoneself, or to cause oneself to believe something, or to make it easier for oneself tobelieve something’ (Mele 2000: 18).2 Desires can have an effect on what I believewithout my ever taking them as a reason for adopting one belief rather thananother. Mele’s explanation relies on a model for how we test hypothesesaccording to which we normally do so in a way designed to minimize costlyerrors, rather than simply to track the truth.3 Which errors we consider costlydepends on our desires, and so desires can influence the process of belief-formation and maintenance without rationalizing attempts to adopt anyparticular belief.

While deflationists disagree about whether self-deception is an intentionalprocess, however, they agree that it occurs when evidence is mishandled. Desirescan cloud our evaluation of evidence in many different ways that fall wellshort of intentional. They can cause us to fail to count as relevant data thatwe should see as important, or even to count it as relevant in the wrong way.They can cause us to focus our attention selectively, concentrating on evidencethat supports our point of view at the expense of data that contradicts it. Theycan affect the ways in which we gather evidence, causing us to be more sensitiveto data that conform to them than to data that contradict them. Moreover,they can make us subject to the confirmation bias: people testing a hypothesistend to search for, and recognize, confirming instances more often thandisconfirming ones. The hypotheses that we test can the result of desires: if Iwant a proposition to be true, the hypothesis that I test is likely to be that it istrue, rather than that it is false. Likewise, a desire that some proposition is truecan cause us to evade or to rationalize away apparent evidence to the contrary.Deflationists describe much the same motivated manipulation of evidence asintentionalists—the disagreement is simply over whether that process islaunched by an intention.

If we combine this view of self-deception with the rational agency model, weseem to get the following result: we cannot be self-deceived about the content ofour own intentional states. This is because, on the rational agency model,standard cases of self-knowledge are non-evidential. But if self-deception occursbecause we form beliefs on the basis of mishandled evidence, but we do not formour second-order beliefs on the basis of evidence, then it seems that themechanisms of self-deception can get no purchase on those beliefs. Since oursecond-order beliefs are non-epistemic and, therefore, not formed on the basis ofevidence, it appears that we cannot be self-deceived about the content of our ownintentional states.

IV. Common Failures of Self-Knowledge

The apparent impossibility of having false second-order beliefs that are the resultof self-deception might be taken to be a reason for rejecting the rational agency




model outright. After all, isn’t self-deception about our own mental liveswidespread? And if it is, doesn’t that count against the rational agency model?Such self-deception may be common, but it can nevertheless be explained in away that is consistent with the rational agency model’s claims about the authorityof self-knowledge.

Consider, first, Bilgrami’s example of someone who sincerely avows that hebelieves himself to be healthy, but whose behavior reveals a considerable degreeof anxiety about his health (Bilgrami 2006: 274–7). He might well be described asself-deceived: if he is unhealthy, and avows that he believes that he is healthy inthe face of the evidence because that evidence frightens him, then he has amotivated false belief. Moreover, we might say that the false belief in this case isthe second-order belief—his first order belief is that he is not healthy, and his self-deception consists in having falsely convinced himself that he does not have thisbelief (or that he has a belief he does not in fact have). His genuine first-orderbelief, we might suppose, should be associated with the clear behavioralevidence of his considerable anxiety about his health.

But, as Bilgrami points out, such self-deception should not be taken to showthat his second-order belief is false. Instead, it should only be taken to show thathe has ‘inconsistent first-order intentional states’ (Bilgrami 2006: 273). He bothbelieves that he is healthy and he believes that he is not healthy.4 On Bilrami’saccount, to have a the belief that one is healthy does not require having thedisposition to act as if one were healthy—it requires only the commitment to beself-critical if one fails to act in the relevant way, along with the commitment toacquire the relevant disposition. So a first-order belief that one is healthy isconsistent with behavioral evidence that reveals considerable anxiety about one’shealth. In fact, on Bilgrami’s normative account, this behavioral evidence neednot be taken to represent a belief that he is not healthy, given that for him tobelieve that he is not healthy is for him to have certain commitments that he maywell lack, despite the behavioral disposition.

In this example, then, the first-order belief that he is healthy may wellbe both false (the person may in fact be quite unhealthy) and the productof self-deception (the belief might arise precisely because the person fears theevidence that he is unhealthy). This means that the second-order belief—hisbelief that he believes he is healthy—is in a sense the product of self-deception:but for the self-deceptive first-order belief, there would be no correspond-ing second-order belief. Nevertheless, it is only indirectly the product ofself-deception, and it is a belief that is true despite its connection to self-deception. It really is the case that he believes that he is healthy, even if this first-order belief is the product of self-deception. Such standard cases of self-deceptiondo not show that we have false second-order beliefs about the content of our first-order beliefs.

The possibility of self-deception shows that the rational agency model is not inany way committed to the view that self-knowledge is infallible, or that we arecompletely transparent to ourselves. The model readily admits that self-knowledge can fail, and looks only to preserve a restricted domain in which

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we are in some respects transparent and authoritative. It holds that when, fromwithin the perspective of rational agency, we consider the content of our ownbeliefs, there is a constitutive relation between our first-order beliefs and oursecond-order beliefs such that to believe that one believes that p just is to believethat p. And so the error that the model appears to rule out is an error about thecontent of one’s beliefs and other intentional states. Other potentially quiteprofound mistakes about one’s own intentional states, by contrast, are not ruledout by the rational agency model. Before considering whether it is possible to bemistaken about the content of one’s own intentional states, it will be worthreviewing some such mistakes.

It is certainly possible to be mistaken about the content of one’s past intentionalstates. The experience of embarrassment upon reading something one wroteyears ago is surely a common enough phenomenon, and suggests that we quiteoften forget what we used to believe, desire, intend, and care about. This is nosurprise, of course, since memory is by its nature fallible. Such forgetting can be akind of self-deception, as it is in a process nicely described by Nietzsche: ‘‘‘I havedone that’’, says my memory. ‘‘I cannot have done that’’ says my pride, andremains adamant. At last—memory yields’ (Nietzsche 1990: 91). Since we canforget the content of our previous intentional states, we can fall into error(motivated or otherwise) when we try to recall them.

Indeed, there is a great deal of empirical evidence to show that these kinds oferrors are widespread, and that we make much the same sorts of mistakes aboutour own past beliefs as we do about the beliefs of others: there is a symmetrybetween the first- and third-personal errors (see for example Nisbett and Wilson1977; Nisbett and Ross 1980; Patten 2003). When asked to recall our own pastbeliefs or desires, or to recount why we did something, we are prone to certainsystematic errors, and we make precisely the same errors in attributing beliefs,desires, and motives to others. These errors are particularly common amongchildren, which suggests that robust self-awareness is a developmental process,and that the development of moral agency is tied to the growth of self-knowledge.5 But these mistakes are not confined to children: there is alsoevidence, for example, that adults recall their own recent motivational statesbased on their expectations about the sorts of motivations typically associatedwith their behavior, and that these expectations can lead them into error (fordiscussion, see Patten 2003).

Such mistakes reveal that our grip on self-knowledge can be tenuous andfleeting, but this should come as no surprise, even to proponents of the rationalagency model. The fact that there is a symmetry between the kinds of errorspeople are likely to make about their own past mental states and the kinds oferrors they are likely to make in attributing mental states to others might seem tothreaten the agency model’s claim that there is important asymmetry between thefirst- and third-person perspectives, and so to undermine the support for thatmodel. In fact, this symmetry is what the rational agency model would expect: inrecalling our past mental states, we do so from the empirical perspective, andfrom that perspective, such errors are to be expected. Here, something like the




observational model seems appropriate. We can be in error about what it is thatwe used to believe for much the same reason that we can be mistaken about anyother fact: in the case of past belief, there is a gap between what is the case andwhat we take to be the case. This gap opens up the possibility of error. What therational agency model takes to be distinct about self-knowledge is that, when itcomes to second-order beliefs about the content of our currentmental states, thereis normally no such gap, because we are engaged, as agents, in determining thatcontent. To believe that I presently believe that p can constitute my belief that p,but to believe that I used to believe that p is not constitutive of the belief that p inat all the same way. The rational agency model takes the inability to recognizethis distinction to be a flaw in the observational model of self-knowledge.

In addition to being mistaken about the content of our past beliefs, we can alsobe mistaken in various other ways about our current beliefs. For example, we allhave a false second-order belief about each of our false first-order beliefs: viz.,that the belief in question is true. Since to believe that p just is to believe that p istrue, all false first-order beliefs will constitute a corresponding false second-orderbelief. False beliefs, then, demonstrate not only a failure to know the mind-independent facts, but also a failure to know about the status of one’s own beliefs:in other words, false first-order beliefs about the world entail false second-orderbeliefs about oneself. Here is a case where the third-person perspective on aperson’s mental life is quite often privileged over the first-person perspective—others can know that my belief that p is false in a way that I cannot.

The mistaken second-order belief that comes from having a false first-orderbelief is not, however, a mistake about the content of that first-order belief. It is amistake about the proper assessment of the belief as true or false. Nor is a mistakeabout the truth of our beliefs the only such error of assessment. Another commonerror is the false belief that our current first-order beliefs are reasonable, welljustified, impartial, or objective. Indeed, something like this is at the heart of self-deception: as Richard Holton puts it, self-deception ‘is more concerned with theself’s deception about the self than the self’s deception by the self’ (Holton 2001:53). Self-deception normally involves an important failure of self-knowledge: theself-deceived person does not know that he is self-deceived. He is led by a desireto believe something that is false, but he often believes that his belief is the well-justified result of an impartial and objective evaluation of the evidence. He isblind to the ways that his desires bias his interpretation of the evidence, and so is,in Holton’s terms, ‘mistaken about whether he is living up to his own beliefforming standards’ (Holton 2001: 60). It is in this sense that the self-deceivedare deceived about the self. Since a belief can be false though well justified,and true though unjustified, this kind of mistake in the assessment of thejustification of one’s beliefs is distinct from the mistake in the assessment of thetruth of one’s beliefs.

In practice, of course, these two mistakes will quite often come as a pair: manyinstances of self-deception, for example, will involve both a false second-orderbelief about the truth of some first-order belief, and a false second-order beliefabout the justification of that belief. Moreover, self-deception about the truth, or

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objectivity, or justifiability of particular current beliefs can also be bound up withmore general self-deception about a person’s disposition to form true, well-justified beliefs. That is, not only can someone be mistaken about whetherparticular beliefs are true, or justified, or arrived at through objective andimpartial interpretation of the evidence, she can also be mistaken about whethershe characteristically forms beliefs in these ways, and these mistakes can bemutually reinforcing. Pride can lead her to edit her memory of her past beliefs,and such self-deception about the content of her previous beliefs will ofteninvolve believing that she used to believe what she now takes to be the truth. This,in turn, can increase her confidence that her current beliefs are true, objective, andjustified. After all, she might reason, she has always been right in the past, so shelikely to be right in the present. And both of these mistakes can lead her tosuppose that she is the sort of person who generally gets things right. In the otherdirection, her confidence in her own epistemic abilities can increase herconfidence in her exercise of those abilities in the past, and so lead her to falselyconclude that she used to believe what she now takes to be the truth. In general,mistakes about the content of our previous intentional states can lead to mistakenself-assessments in the present, and such mistaken self-assessments can, in turn,color the ways in which we look back upon the past. The mistaken self-assessments that emerge from self-deception are woven very fine, and can bemutually reinforcing.

V. Estranged Second-Order Self-Deception

The examples in the previous section involve potentially serious failures of self-knowledge, but they do not involve failures to know the content of our beliefs.And so we are left with the initial question: are such failures possible? And, if so,can they be the result of self-deception? Defenders of the rational agency modelargue that failures of self-knowledge often involve, not simply false beliefs, but akind of estrangement from one’s own mental life: a failure to approach one’sintentional states from the first-person perspective of agency. To be estrangedfrom one’s mental life in this way is to know it only through empirical means, onthe basis of behavioral evidence, rather than as an agent who determines whatone believes. If it is possible to be estranged from one’s own beliefs in this way—that is, to come to recognize that one has a belief only via empirical means—thenone’s recognition should be, in principle, open to the same kinds of error as therecognition others have of my beliefs. This opens the possibility for us to make thekind of second-order mistake under examination.

One common way in which we suppose that we can be estranged from ourown mental lives is by having intentional states—beliefs and desires—of whichwe are unconscious or unaware, or which we have repressed, but whichnevertheless play a role in our mental economies by, for example, generating andexplaining our behavior. If this is right, and such estrangement is in fact possible,then these repressed intentional states might be open to discovery from the third-




person perspective even as they are obscured from the first-person perspective.Indeed, they can even be obvious from the third-person perspective.

One way to discover an intentional state from which one is estranged in thisway is through therapy, either in a formal setting with a psychoanalyst, or in amore informal setting: those who know us very well can often read things intoour behavior that we ourselves do not recognize. Moran and Bilgrami both singleout therapy as a context in which self-knowledge is often not transparent orauthoritative (Moran 2001: 85; Bilgrami 2006: Appendix I). In the course of such aprocess, a person’s psychoanalyst—or his best friend—might consider theevidence supplied by his behavior and his sincere avowals, and come to theconclusion that he has beliefs that he is unaware of having. A therapist might, forexample, conclude, on the basis of her patient’s statements and his anxiety, hisself-sabotaging behavior, and his lack of ambition, that he believes himselfunworthy of success. Such a conclusion might come as a surprise to the patient—in fact, he might even deny that he has the belief in question. Nevertheless, if it ispossible to repress beliefs or to be unconscious of them but for those beliefs to berevealed in behavior, then the therapist, from the third-person perspective, candiscover intentional states that are inaccessible to the patient from the first-personperspective.

The possibility of such discovery highlights the fact that the asymmetrybetween self and other is not primarily a matter of privileged access on the part ofthe self, but of different modes of access. As Moran puts it, it is the asymmetrybetween the first- and third-person perspective that is basic, and not the priorityof one or another of those perspectives (Moran 2001: 157). In the standard case,we know our own minds in a different way than we know the minds of others.Normally, this means that we are alsomuch more reliable about the content of ourown intentional states, but it is also consistent with the third-person perspectiveon those states being much more reliable, in certain contexts, than the fist-personperspective. There are situations, such as therapeutic ones, in which it is quiteclear that others know us much better than we know ourselves: they can get us tosee that we have beliefs of which we were previously unaware.

For a skilled therapist, conclusions from the third-person perspective aboutwhat a patient believes might be extremely reliable, and such a therapist might beproperly said to be an authority in the epistemic sense: when it comes to herpatients, she knows better than anyone else—including her patients themselves,perhaps—what it is that they believe, desire, wish, intend, fear, and so on. Buteven in the case of the skilled therapist, there is no presumption of a specialagential practical authority attached to conclusions from the third-personperspective. She may be extremely reliable in discovering the content of herpatients’ intentional states, but there is no presumption that (in the standard case)she determines the content of those states, let alone that there is anything like aconstitutive relation between her beliefs about what an agent’s beliefs are, andthose beliefs themselves. It is the thought that we do determine our first-personalbeliefs, or even that there is a such a constitutive relation between first- andsecond-order beliefs, which is taken by the rational agency account of self-

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knowledge to mark both the special authority we have with regard to such beliefs,and the important asymmetry between the first and third-person perspectives.

Because there is no presumption of such authority from the third-personperspective, there is always the possibility of error from that perspective. Eventhe best therapist relying on the best available evidence can mistakenly concludethat her patient has a belief that he does not in fact have. It is just this kind ofmistake that the rational agency model seems to suggest is not possible from thefirst-person perspective, since second-order beliefs from within this perspectiveare not formed on the basis of inference from evidence. Indeed, the possibility ofsuch error appears, on the rational agency account, to be a mark of theasymmetry between the first- and third-person perspectives.

The possibility of such error on the therapist’s part, however, reveals a way inwhich it is possible for a person to be mistaken about what he himself believes: thatis, it shows how a person can believe that he believes that p, and yet for this second-order belief to be mistaken. This sort of mistake seems impossible on the rationalagency model, but only from within the first-person perspective. And even if wecannot be mistaken about the content of our intentional states from the first-personperspectives, that does not mean that we cannot be mistaken about the content ofthose states at all, since the first-person perspective is not the only perspective fromwhich we evaluate our own mental lives. We also form beliefs about the content ofour intentional states from the third-person perspective, and when we do considerour own intentional states in this way, we are as liable to error as anyone else whooccupies that perspective, and perhaps even more liable than most.

One reason that people engage in therapy is to discover just what beliefs anddesires they have repressed. They do this by having someone else adopt anobjective third-personal perspective on their mental lives that they cannotproperly adopt themselves. But in order for this process to lead to discovery, theymust initially accept that they have the intentional states in question on the basisof the evidence supplied by their therapists, or simply on the basis of theirtherapists’ testimony. If they trust their therapists’ judgments, then they will firstcome to believe, on the basis of evidence from the third-person perspective, that theyhave beliefs of which they are unaware from the first-person perspective.

That is to say: someone in therapy might come to believe that he believes thathe is unworthy of success because that is what his therapist has concluded, andhe trusts his therapist’s conclusions. In such a case, his second-order belief is notthe transparent result of forming the first-order belief in the standard way—thatis, by considering the question of whether he is worthy of success and forminghis belief on the basis of the evidence for and against the proposition. His second-order belief is not transparent to his first-order belief. In such a case, he will beaware of his belief, but he will remain estranged from it, and recognize it only fromthe empirical perspective. The person who learns of his beliefs only in this third-personal, therapeutic fashion has gained self-knowledge, but of a corruptedform—it is knowledge of the beliefs of someone who only happens to be himself.

The fact that such evidence-based self-knowledge is estranged and alienated isone reason that proponents of the rational agency model are critical of the




observational/epistemic model of self-knowledge: it is an account of self-knowledge that leaves us similarly estranged from all of our beliefs. We do notcease to be estranged from our beliefs simply by coming to know that we havethem. In other words, someone who has a justified true belief that he believes thatp can, nevertheless, demonstrate a failure of self-knowledge if he is estrangedfrom the belief in question and only knows that he believes it on the basis ofevidence supplied by his therapist. So the process of developing self-knowledgeneed not end there. By coming to know, in this estranged way, what he believes,the patient can eventually end the estrangement, and come to adopt the belieffrom the first-personal perspective (which is to say, believe it because he seesgood evidence for its truth), or else expunge the belief altogether. But thisreconciliation or extirpation is not an automatic process.

The point to emphasize here is that we can, on occasion, form second-orderbeliefs from the third-person perspective: we do this, for example, when we formbeliefs about the content of our intentional states on the basis of evidence ortestimony supplied by a therapist. And it is precisely because we can formsecond-order beliefs from this perspective that such second-order beliefs can bemistaken, since beliefs formed on the basis of inference from such evidence are,like all such beliefs, liable to error. Therapists, after all, can make mistakes, sincefor them the content of a patient’s intentional attitudes is an epistemic question,to be discovered by evaluating the evidence. And if a therapist’s patient comes tobelieve on the basis of his therapist’s testimony that, for example, he believes thathe is unworthy of success, the patient, too, can be mistaken about what hebelieves. That is to say, the patient can believe that he believes that he isunworthy of success, and his second-order belief will be false if his therapist ismistaken, and he does not, in fact, believe that he is unworthy of success. It iscertainly possible that some of his behavior can suggest that he has this beliefwithout it being the case that he does, and so possible that his therapist canmisinterpret his behavior and draw mistaken conclusions about his beliefs. If shedoes, and he trusts his therapist’s conclusions, then he will form false second-order beliefs of the relevant sort.

What this shows, then, is that the possibility of being estranged from thecontent of our own intentional states means that we can also be mistaken aboutthe content of those states. Not only can we have states of which we are unaware,but we can also falsely believe that we have intentional states that we do not, infact, have. Forming a second-order belief on the basis of a therapist’s mistakenconclusion is an instance of just such an error. Moreover, such errors can resultfrom self-deception. If someone’s therapist tells him that he believes that he isunworthy of success, he might find this a welcome piece of news. He might evenwant it to be true that he has this belief: perhaps it flatters him by providing aconvenient explanation for his lack of success that he prefers to the alternative,which is that he simply lacks the talent required to succeed. But his therapistmight be wrong about his belief. What’s more, he might even have good reasonfor believing that his therapist is wrong, or at least unreliable: perhaps theconclusion is out of keeping with all of his other beliefs, or his therapist has

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proved to be mistaken in the past, or his therapist’s examination was cursory anddistracted. If, because he wants it to be true, he comes to believe it anyway,despite having good reason for doubting it, then his second-order belief will bethe result of self-deception. In general, someone who believes what his therapisttells him because his therapist tells him what he wants to hear (surely a commonenough phenomenon) runs the risk of being self-deceived in forming beliefsabout the content of his own intentional states.

Someone who is self-deceived in this way will therefore falsely believe that hehas a belief that p from which he is estranged. Moreover, he will have this falsesecond-order belief because he wants it to be true that he has the first-orderbelief. Clearly, someone in this position is doubly (at least) estranged from hisown mental life. Things have gone quite poorly for him, from the perspective ofself-knowledge. The possibility of such estrangement shows that it is indeedpossible to have false second-order beliefs about the content of our first orderintentional states.

One possible objection to this line of argument is that it fails to recognize theways in which, on Bilgrami’s account, intentional states are essentially normative.To believe that p is to be committed to the truth of p, and to be prepared to haveself-critical reactive attitudes if one fails to live up to that commitment (Bilgrami2006: 226). When we are dealing with the kind of estrangement discussed in theexample identified above, we are no longer dealing with mental states that havethe normative character of intentional states, and so we are no longer dealing withbeliefs, properly speaking. Therefore, this objection might continue, the sort ofsecond-order attitudes that the person in therapy develops is not a belief about abelief, because what he discovers in therapy are not beliefs and other intentionalstates, but some other sort of non-normative and so non-intentional mental state.In fact, this is precisely how Bilgrami characterizes psychotherapy (Bilgrami 2006:Appendix I). And if so, then we cannot, after all, have false second-order beliefsabout the content of our own beliefs.6

Bilgrami may be right that intentional states are normative states, and somental states from which we are suitably estranged and do not endorse are notintentional states, properly speaking. The idea that intentional states arenormative certainly fits quite neatly with the idea that self-knowledge is anachievement of rational agency. Nevertheless, this normative view of intentionalstates is perfectly consistent with the possibility of having false second-orderbeliefs about the content of our first-order beliefs. In fact, this view makes sucherrors much more likely.

If Bilgrami is right that genuine intentional states such as beliefs are normativecommitments, then to believe that one believes that p involves being committedto the proposition that one believes that p, and so leaving oneself open tocriticism (both self-criticism and criticism from others) if one fails to actconsistently with one’s belief that one believes that p, and so on. Otherwise, onthis view, one does not truly have the second-order belief in question. But notethat it is possible to be fully committed to the second-order belief without aconcomitant commitment to the first-order belief. The man in Bilgrami’s example




(discussed above) who was self-deceived about whether he was healthy wascommitted to the first-order belief that he was healthy, and it is this commitmentthat guarantees the truth of the second-order belief. His first-order belief mayhave been false, and it may have been the result of self-deception, but it wasnevertheless a genuine intentional state. But the patient in therapy may not be atall committed in the same way to the truth of his purported first-order belief. Thepatient in therapy might be fully committed to the proposition that he believeshimself to be unworthy of success, and so prepared to assert this second-orderbelief, defend it from doubts, and take action on the basis of his discovery. Butthis is consistent with his being uncommitted to the supposed first-order belief thathe is unworthy of success, and so unprepared to act on it. Indeed, though hebelieves that he believes it, he does not endorse the view that he is unworthy ofsuccess—the actions he is prepared to take on the basis of his commitment to thesecond-order belief might all aim at the elimination of the first-order belief. Andbecause he is not committed to the purported first-order belief, he therefore doesnot, in fact, believe it, though he believes that he does. That is to say, if intentionalstates involve normative commitments, then his second-order state is a genuinebelief, but his first-order state is not. And so his second-order belief is false.

Far from causing mischief for the suggestion that we can have false beliefsabout the content of our own intentional states, therefore, Bilgrami’s view thatsuch states are essentially normative in character actually strengthens the claimthat such false second-order beliefs are possible. In the way the counter-examplewas initially described above, the second-order belief was only false because thetherapist made an error in diagnosis, and there was in fact no mental statecorresponding to anything like a belief that the patient was unworthy of success.But if Bilgrami’s normative view of belief (and other intentional states) is correct,then even if the therapist’s diagnosis is in some sense correct, and there is somemental disposition causing behavior that might otherwise be attributed to a beliefin a lack of worth, the patient will nevertheless not properly speaking believe thathe is unworthy of success. Whatever the nature of the mental state that histherapist has uncovered, is cannot be a belief, since it is not a claim that heendorses or to which he is committed. In other words, if Bilgrami’s account ofbelief is correct, then patients in therapy will quite often have false second-orderbeliefs about what it is that they believe—such errors will occur any time thatthey take themselves to believe the content of a mental state that the therapeuticprocess has uncovered and which they do not endorse.

This combination of attitudes is only made possible by the patient’s ratherradical estrangement from his mental economy. So he may, from the third-personperspective, take himself (rightly or wrongly) to have a disposition to act in waysunworthy of success, and mistakenly take this disposition to constitute a belief.But it is an essential part of Bilgrami’s argument (and indeed of the rationalagency model) that even if he does have the disposition in question, it is still opento him to ask ‘I have this disposition, but should I have it? Should I endorse theview that I am unworthy of success?’ For Bilgrami, ‘to believe something . . . is tothink that one ought to think various things’ (Bilgrami 2006: 213). And far from

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thinking that he ought to think that he in unworthy of success, and so be willingto accept criticism for failing to live up to his belief, he takes this belief to be false,and so not one he will be self-critical for failing to endorse or live up to.

This means that the possibility of false second-order beliefs is consistent withthe view of beliefs as essentially normative states. But the possibility of thissevere estrangement, and even the possibility of its arising through self-deception, does not threaten the rational agency account’s claim that we havespecial authority over the content of our own intentional states. Defenders of thisaccount need not deny that it is possible to be mistaken, and even self-deceived,about the content of one’s own intentional states. What the rational agencyaccount claims is that standard cases of self-knowledge are the result of theexercise of agency rather than the evaluation of evidence, and so that from withinthe perspective of agency, we cannot be mistaken about what it is that we believe.But we can make the kind of mistake described above precisely because we donot always occupy that perspective, and can be estranged from our beliefs andconsider them from the third-person perspective, or outside of ‘the conditions ofresponsible agency’. This does not threaten the security of our authority fromwithin that perspective. What it does mean is that, since some second-orderbeliefs take as their objects purported first-order beliefs that are not entertainedfrom within that perspective, it is possible to have false second-order beliefs, andso Bilgrami is mistaken in claiming that ‘second-order beliefs that take first-orderbeliefs . . . as their objects are always true’ (Bilgrami 2006: 278). In cases ofestrangement, such beliefs are not always true.

VI. First-Personal Second-Order Self-Deception

The possibility of estrangement, and of occupying an empirical or third-personalperspective on our own mental lives, shows that rational agency view does nottake the special authority we have over the content of our own intentionalattitudes to carry with it any implication that we are either fully transparent toourselves or that we are infallible self-knowers. What the rational agency viewclaims, however, is that failures of self-knowledge such as the one describedabove are not internal to the first-person perspective, but rather consist in a failureto properly adopt that perspective. It is because we can sometimes consider thecontent of our intentional states from outside of that perspective that we can bemistaken about the content of those states. Indeed, for Bilgrami we cannot beproperly said to be talking about beliefs at all when we access our mental statesfrom outside the perspective of agency. Whatever it is that we are mistakenabout, then, it will not be about the content of our beliefs, but rather aboutwhether the state in question is a belief, properly speaking. So it seems that, forthe rational agency account, when we are properly occupying the first-personperspective, we are, in an important sense, infallible with regard to our ownattitudes.




But this, too, is not quite true, and the way in which Bilgrami argues thatstandard accounts of belief are mistaken suggests how. Because it is possible tomisunderstand what having a belief involves, there can be cases, from within thefirst-person perspective of rational agency, in which someone sincerely butmistakenly believes that he believes that p. Moreover, this false belief can be theresult of self-deception. In order to have a false second-order belief of this kind, Ineed only to have a mistaken view about what it is for a mental state of mine tocount as a belief. Provided that I am wrong about what it is to believe something,then I can be wrong about whether I believe it. So the possibility of a false second-order belief from within the perspective of agency depends here only on thepossibility of a (particular kind of) mistaken account of what it is to hold a belief,and there is good reason to suppose that such mistakes can in fact occur.

To see how such a mistaken first-order belief can occur, let us assume for thesake of argument that one condition of the correct account of belief is that, if anagent believes that p, she must be prepared to use p as a premise in practicaldeliberation (Williamson 2000: 99). This is a prominent position in discussions ofbelief, and one that fits nicely with Bilgrami’s view that genuine self-knowledgeis of intentional states that are ‘potentially linked by practical or theoreticalreasoning to actions or conclusions that can be internally justifiable objects of thereactive attitudes.’ (Bilgrami 1998: 226) We can imagine a philosopher whodisagrees with this account of what it is to have a belief on the grounds that it setsthe bar too high. Perhaps this philosopher accepts that belief that p does notrequire absolute certainty that p, and so he accepts that propositions that heregards only as extremely likely count as beliefs. He, therefore, accepts that aproposition to which he assigns a .9 degree of probability counts as a belief. But,impressed by the sorites paradox, he can see no non-arbitrary way of setting athreshold of probability below which he withholds belief, and he is (for the samereason) unwilling to draw a distinction between partial and all-out beliefs. He istherefore willing to count as full-fledged beliefs intentional states to which hegrants relatively low probabilities, and on which he is therefore unwilling to relyin practical deliberation. Such a constellation of positions might not be internallycoherent, of course, but that is no a barrier to its being accepted by someone. Sucha philosopher will, therefore, be willing to count as full-fledged beliefs intentionalstates that, on what we are assuming to be the correct account of belief, do notpass muster. Perhaps he holds that we believe any proposition to which we assigna probability even marginally higher than .5, but that greater certainty is requiredto legitimately use a proposition as a premise in practical deliberation. He will,therefore, believe that a willingness to use a proposition as a premise in practicaldeliberation is not a condition of belief.

Assuming again that the correct account of belief includes the condition thatone does not believe propositions that one is not prepared to use as a premise inpractical deliberation, then our hypothetical philosopher has a mistaken accountof what it is to hold a belief. In particular, his account entails a willingness tocount as beliefs intentional states which, on the correct account, are not in factbeliefs. Because of this, it will be possible for him, in some cases, to sincerely

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avow that he believes that he believes that p, and for his second-order belief to befalse, since he will not, in fact, have the first-order belief that his second-orderbelief takes him to have. In other words, provided he has a mistaken view ofwhat it is to hold a belief, he will be able to be mistaken about the content of hisown first-order beliefs.

This example does not rely on the correctness of any particular view of what itis to hold a belief. I have put it in terms of the view that to hold a belief is to beprepared to use it as a premise in practical deliberation, but perhaps this view ofbelief is mistaken, and some other view is right. The precise formulation of whatit is to hold a belief does not matter, for the purposes of the argument. All that isrequired for the example to work are two conditions. First, the correct account ofbelief must include some threshold below which an intentional state does notcount as a belief. Such a threshold could be drawn along various dimensions: itcould include a willingness to use a proposition in practical deliberation, or awillingness to sincerely avow it, or a willingness to bet on its being true, orperhaps the assignment of a minimum degree of probability, or perhaps somecombination of these. The second condition is that it is possible for someone toaccept a mistaken account of belief that includes a lower threshold along any ofthe possible dimensions included in the correct account. Provided that these twoconditions are satisfied, then it is possible for someone to hold an account ofbelief in which he considers an intentional state to be a belief when the state isnot, in fact, a belief, because it falls below the specified threshold. If this ispossible, then we will be able to say of him that he believes that he believes thatp, but that his second-order belief is mistaken, and that he does not, in fact,believe that p. The reason that we can truly describe him as having a falsesecond-order belief is that he has a mistaken view of what it is to hold a belief.7

This example shows that it is possible for an agent’s second-order beliefs to bemistaken. Moreover, it can also show that it is possible for an agent to be self-deceived about what he believes, according to the standard view that self-deception involves motivated false belief brought about by the biased handlingof evidence. It is possible that the philosopher in our example holds his mistakenview of what it is to have a belief because he sees it as among the implications ofa controversial theory in the philosophy of mind, a theory to which he isprofessionally committed. He very much wants this theory to be true: it is noveland interesting, and he has spent much time developing it. If it is right (or at leastplausible), then he stands to gain considerable recognition, and if it is mistaken(or implausible), then he will be embarrassed and feel as if he has wasted histime. Believing that his theory commits him to the idea that we believepropositions that we are not willing to use as premises in practical deliberation(or to which we assign relatively low probabilities), he bites the bullet and acceptsthe implication. When asked ‘do you believe that you believe that p?’, when p is aproposition to which he assigns a relatively low probability, he will sincerelyreply that he does, in fact, have the first-order belief in question. But he will bemistaken: because he has the wrong view of belief, he does not in fact have thefirst-order belief in question, and so his second-order belief will be false. What’s




more, his false second-order belief could quite plausibly be the result of self-deception, since one of the reasons that he is willing to bite the bullet and acceptthat he believes that p is because he very much wants his novel but controversialview to be correct. If this desire blinds him is some way to obvious flaws in hisargument—such as the fact that it counts as beliefs intentional states whichclearly fall well short of belief—then his is a clear case of self-deception: a beliefheld because he wants it to be true, in the face of evidence that it is false, andsustained by the mishandling of evidence.

This particular form of self-deception could only occur to someone who has amistaken theory of what constitutes a belief, so it is likely to be confined rathernarrowly to those who actually a) have a worked out theory of belief, b) aremistaken in that theory, and c) are mistaken because they want the theory to betrue. In other words, it is a mistake that seems likely to be confined toprofessional academics. But the possibility of the mistake does mean that it ispossible to be mistaken about the content of one’s own belief, even when one isnot estranged from that belief. In other words, it is possible to be mistaken aboutthe content of one’s beliefs from within the first-person perspective. And thismeans that, from within that perspective, second-order beliefs do not alwaysconstitute themselves as true.

This example is different from the case of the person who forms a mistakensecond-order belief through therapy. In this example, our philosopher is not at allestranged from the content of the intentional state that he falsely sees as a belief.He is aware of the state from within the perspective of agency, and it is properlyunder his control: his evaluation of the proposition’s probability is perfectly inline with and determined by the available evidence. He might even, in Bilgrami’sterms, be prepared to accept criticism for failing to adjust his evaluation of theprobability of the belief relative to that evidence. Were decisive evidence againstit to come to light, he would no longer grant it any credence at all (and so ceaseeven to believe that he believed it), and were new evidence for it to come to light,he would increase the credence he granted it (and so actually come to believe it).This is a mistake that does not require him to be estranged from the content of hisintentional states, or even for him to approach the content of those states from athird-personal or empirical perspective. All it requires is that he has a particularkind of false belief—a false belief about what it is for an intentional state to countas a belief. And such false beliefs are possible for anyone with a view about whatbeliefs are.

VII. Conclusion

The two examples above show that it is possible to be mistaken, and even self-deceived, about the content of our own intentional states. Some such mistakesoccur because we can adopt the third-person, empirical perspective on our-selves, but others can occur from within the first-personal perspective of agencyitself.

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These two examples are not, however, decisive counter-examples to therational agency model of self-knowledge. Indeed, in describing them, I haverelied on that model. They represent a counter-example to what might be taken tobe an implication of the model, and to what Bilgrami takes to be a constitutiveelement of that model: the view that, from within the first-personal perspective, ifI believe that I believe that p, then I necessarily believe it. The failures of self-knowledge discussed above show that this is not the case. But this is consistentwith there being an important constitutive relation between first-order andsecond-order beliefs in cases where self-knowledge is genuine. Indeed, theparticularly estranged and third-personal nature of the counter-examplesindirectly supports the central claims of the rational agency model. Second-order beliefs can only be false when they take as their objects apparent first-orderbeliefs from which we are radically estranged or which we do not in any genuineway endorse. That is, the counter-examples only get off the ground when dealingwith beliefs the truth of which the agent is unwilling to avow or use in practicaldeliberation. And such beliefs can only occur by taking a decidedly third-personal or empirical perspective on our own mental lives. When we formsecond-order beliefs from the first-personal perspective described by the rationalagency model—by asking ourselves what we take to be true—then we do seemimmune from error in an important way.

What is important for the rational agency model is not preserving infallibilitywithin a narrowly constrained domain, but rather explaining the way in which self-knowledge involves the exercise of a kind of authority that is distinct from theauthority of an epistemic expert. Neither counter-example calls this into question:they simply show that there are ways in which we can be mistaken about thecontent of our own intentional states, even if, when we do know what it is that webelieve, or desire, or intend, we do so in a way that is the result of knowingourselves as rational agents who are the authors of our own intentional states,rather than as mere expert observers who only perceive those states.8

Mathieu DoucetDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of [email protected]

NOTES

1 In this respect, Davidson’s account of self-deception mirrors his account of akrasia.The akratic agent has a reason for action; it is just not a sufficient reason, according to theagent’s own judgment. Likewise, the self-deceived agent has evidence for his false belief; itis just not sufficient evidence.

2 Johnston’s account is slightly different: it relies on the work of ‘mental tropisms’ thataim at the reduction of anxiety rather than at true belief (Johnston 1988: 66).




3 This model is based on the ‘primary error detection and minimization’ analysis oflay hypothesis testing defended in Friedrich 1993. Cited in Mele 2000: chs 2–3.

4 As Davidson, 1986: 119, points out we can say of the person who is self-deceivedabout his health, both of the following:(a) He believes that he is healthy.(b) He believes that he is not healthy.This does not mean that either of the following are true:(c) He believes (that he is healthy and not healthy)(d) He does not believe that he is healthy.Neither of these is true, since (c) involves belief in a contradiction (as opposed to simplyhaving two conflicting beliefs), and (d) is clearly false, since he does believe that he is healthy.

5 For example: studies show that most three-year-olds seem incapable of makingcorrect judgments about their past beliefs once they discover them to be false. Show acandy box and asked what they believe is inside it, they report ‘candy.’ Once the box isopened, and it is revealed that it contains pencils, they are again asked what they used tobelieve was in the box. Three year olds (but not four-year olds) report ‘pencils’ (Gopnikand Astington 1988). Victoria McGeer argues that these results show that the first-personauthority is a developmental process, and that this process is a necessary component ofmoral development (McGeer 2007).

6 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer at the European Journal of Philosophy forsuggesting the possibility of this objection.

7 It is worth noting that someone who endorsed Bilgrami’s view of what it is to have abelief could not make this particular mistake. Someone endorsing his view would neverclaim to have a belief to which he was not suitably committed, and so would only havesecond-order beliefs that reflected genuine first-order commitments. Bilgrami, in otherwords, sets the bar for belief quite high. But precisely because there may be theories of beliefthat set the bar much lower, the truth of Bilgrami’s account of belief might make such falsesecond-order beliefs quite common among those with a worked out theory of belief.

8 A much earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2008 ‘Self and Other: SocialReason’ workshop at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Many thanks to OctavianBusuioc and Anthony Bruno for the invitation and for organizing an excellent workshop,and to the workshop participants for stimulating discussion. I am also grateful to RahulKumar, David Bakhurst, Steve Leighton, Andrew Lister, Sergio Tennenbaum, and ananonymous referee for helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper.

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Can We Be Self-Deceived about What We Believe? Self-Knowledge, Self-Deception, and Rational Agency

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