Abstract
We present counterexamples to the widespread assumption that Moorean sentences cannot be rationally asserted. We then explain why Moorean assertions of the sort we discuss do not incur the irrationality charge. Our argument involves an appeal to the dual-process theory of the mind and a contrast between the conditions for ascribing beliefs to oneself and the conditions for making assertions about independently existing states of affairs. We conclude by contrasting beliefs of the sort we discuss with the structurally similar but rationally impermissible beliefs of certain psychiatric patients.
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Notes
Moore (1944, pp. 203–204). While Moore was, to our knowledge, the first philosopher to draw attention to these sentences, the label “Moore’s Paradox” is attributed to Wittgenstein.
Moore himself (1944, pp. 203–204) argued that since people in general do not assert p unless they believe p, in asserting p, we imply that we believe p, despite the fact that in asserting p, we neither assert that we believe pnor is our believing p entailed by our asserting p. Contemporary solutions tend to center on the relationship between first-order beliefs and second-order awareness of first-order beliefs (see Rosenthal 1986; Shoemaker 1995). The relationship between first- and second-order beliefs in connection to Moore’s paradox is discussed in Larkin (1999), Kriegel (2004), Kind (2003), Kobes (1995), Fernández (2005) Lee (2001) and Williams (2006), among others.,
Heal (1994), in a discussion of Wittgenstein’s proposal, suggests that the problem is to explain why Moorean sentences cannot be uttered with sincerity or thought with conviction at all, and not simply why they cannot be asserted without irrationality. We note, therefore, that if we succeed in convincing the reader that Moorean assertions can be made without irrationality, the weaker claim that they can be made at all will follow.
For an unusual example, see Sorenson’s (2001) Vagueness and Contradiction, pp. 28–29, where he argues for the irrationality of Moorean sentences even with respect to borderline cases.
Crimmins (1992), Turri (2010) and Pruss (2012). Crimmins’ example involves learning that a person you know to be very intelligent is also someone whom, under a different guise, you consider an idiot. You can then assert sincerely, “I falsely believe you are an idiot,” which is arguably equivalent to the Moore-paradoxical, “You are not an idiot, but I believe you are an idiot.” Turri gives an example of an eliminativist about belief who nonetheless cannot abstain from having beliefs. Thus, she may say, “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is” (since there are no beliefs). Pruss’s main example involves a therapeutic case: an expert analyst persuades me that p is the case, but that I don’t believe that p. Pruss does not fill in the details here, but we could imagine, for instance, that the analyst persuades me that although my parent is not to blame for X, I believe the parent is to blame for X.
There is a body of literature on cases involving tension between explicit judgment and behavioral and emotional attitudes (for instance, the explicit judgment that all races are equal coupled with an implicit racist bias with behavioral manifestations). These cases have been labeled “dissonance” cases. Discussion of them has proceeded largely independently of the debate on Moore’s Paradox, with the exception of Gertler (2011) and Borgoni (2015), who interpret (some) instances of dissonance as Moore-paradoxical cases. The sorts of examples that interest us are a subset of dissonance cases. We will have something to say about Gertler’s and Borgoni’s discussions later (see note 14 below).
An example along these lines was previously discussed in Gendler (2008).
Moran (2001).
Kahneman (2011). Kahneman summarizes his decades-long empirical research on areas of human thought and action shown to be “not-rational.”
James (1890) spoke of “associative” reasoning and reasoning-proper, or true reasoning. For Freud (1900), the “primary processes”—association-based and impulsive, very different from reflective, rationally-based secondary process assessments—predominate not only in psychiatric symptoms, but also in the normal mental life of children, as well as in much of the non-conscious and implicit cognitive activity of adults. See also Piaget (1926), Vygotsky (1987), Niesser (1963), Johnson-Laird (1983) and Stanovich and West (2000).
Dostoyevsky (2002, p. 501).
Borgoni (2015, p. 108) writes, “This paper’s view is that the person is irrational in being dissonant, although not irrational in asserting (or believing) a Moorean proposition.” Gertler (2011, p. 140), similarly, writes, “Most importantly, Nick [subject in a dissonant state]’s willingness to take the psychologically difficult step of confronting the disparity between his belief and his reasons may reflect an especially strong commitment to norms of reasoning. So while one who endorses a Moore paradoxical thought is not ideally rational, the act of endorsing that thought may itself be one for which the thinker deserves cognitive credit rather than blame.” Chislenko (2016, p. 687) also, in the context of a discussion of an anorexic who realizes his belief that he needs to lose weight is groundless, says, “His belief that he does need to lose weight may well be irrational; but the belief that he has that belief, and that it is false or that he should not have it, can itself be a rational one. The ‘anorexic’ belief may be the product of insecurity and a warped body image; but the Moorean and belief-akratic-paradoxical beliefs themselves can indicate an impressive and hard-won self-awareness.” We note here that we accept Chislenko’s interpretation of the specific example of the anorexic, because on our view, the anorexic’s Moorean belief, unlike those of Luke and Kolya, is irrationally held unless the anorexic is sufficiently moved by the evidence in order to act on it rather than on the recalcitrant belief he is fat (see Sect. 5 of this paper). However, for Chislenko, it is true more generally (and not just of anorexics) that when it comes to Moorean states, rationality can accompany only the sort of second-order recognition of one’s contradictory beliefs, not the subject’s arrival at those beliefs or the beliefs’ persistence in light of conscious recognition.
Indeed, in some sense, one is more irrational in maintaining two contradictory beliefs knowingly than unknowingly, so what is gained in terms of second-order rationality may come at the expense of rationality at the first-order level, so that a knowingly irrational subject comes out more self-aware but not necessarily more rational overall compared to an unknowingly irrational one.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this option.
Chislenko (2016) argues that akratic beliefs need not be Moore-paradoxical, and that philosophers have been denying the possibility of akratic belief on the ground that accepting such a possibility commits us to accepting the possibility of Moore-paradoxical beliefs.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for this objection. The reviewer put the point in terms of “alief” rather than “belief*”, but we have opted for a more general term meant to capture all relevant belief-like states, whether or not those meet the precise criteria of “alief” specified by philosophers.
Jane Heal (1994, p. 15) entertains this possibility.
On strong versions of cognitivism about emotion, emotions are judgments regarding what there is a reason to feel (Solomon 1980; Nussbaum 2001). Thus, to feel fear is to judge that there is something to be afraid of. In this sense, a conflict between an emotion and an explicit judgment can be interpreted as a conflict between two judgments. But we do not wish to rely on this view of emotion.
“This structure is safe, but I doubt that,” is a Moore-paradoxical utterance, as can be easily seen if we consider the parallel, “It is raining, but I doubt that it is”.
Wittgenstein (1953, p. 192).
Heal (1994, p. 15) writes, “It is clearly presupposed in setting up the paradox that the ‘I’ spoken of in the explicit self description is the same as the person whose belief is expressed in the utterance as a whole...”
Banks et al. (1989, p. 456) describe a patient whose “left hand would tenaciously grope for and grasp any nearby object, pick and pull at her clothes, and even grasp her throat during sleep.” They go on to say that the patient, “slept with the arm tied to prevent nocturnal misbehavior. She never denied that her left arm and hand belonged to her, although she did refer to her limb as though it were an autonomous entity”.
See Schwitzgebel (2010).
Earth Magazine, January 28, 2013. Accessed November 28, 2016. http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/drinking-toilet-water-science-and-psychology-wastewater-recycling.
As proof of concept, we would predict that young children who have not yet associated toilets with excrement would have no trouble drinking from the new toilet bowls (absent disapproving parents). And, adding to our argument, dogs find nothing at all aversive about toilet water, a fact to which most dog owners will attest. Some dogs actually prefer drinking from toilets. In these situations, dog training includes aversively conditioning the toilet. (For example, a drop of a liquid, bitter, nauseating, and repulsive to dogs, can be placed on the toilet rim).
Of course, the encyclopedia case is not exactly parallel to the Train track and Skywalk cases, since the private seeming in the encyclopedia case is a result not of a-rational primary processes, but of reasoning. Nonetheless, the two cases are importantly analogous: in both, there is a conflict between what seems to me to be the case and what third-personal evidence supports.
Though we cannot develop the point fully here, we note that the patients in question do not have stand-alone, objective, third-person, evidence-sensitive beliefs about the toxicity of Huntsman spiders nor the fatness associated with very low BMIs; in addition (and often instead) they have “neurotic-beliefs.” Briefly, neurotic-beliefs are amalgams—composite propositions funded by evidence-insensitive, primary process-mediated unconscious phantasies, but treated as though they were beliefs-proper. See Brakel (2001, 2009), Chapter 7. Neurotic-beliefs are clearly quite similar to Gendler’s aliefs in that they are both associational, a-rational, and automatic rather than rationally mediated, but they are different, as we state above, in that neurotic-beliefs but not aliefs are miscategorized as beliefs-proper and treated as such.
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The authors would like to thank Mike Huemer, Cherie Braden, and three anonymous referees for comments on a previous draft and for editorial assistance.
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Fileva, I., Brakel, L.A.W. Just another article on Moore’s paradox, but we don’t believe that. Synthese 196, 5153–5167 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1703-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1703-1