Abstract
In this paper, I present a dilemma for neo-expressivist accounts of self-consciousness. Such accounts are united by the idea that we can elucidate self-consciousness by appreciating the thought that some self-ascriptions both function as expressions and are truth-evaluable statements. The dilemma, I argue, is that the neo-expressivists either have to accept a circular element into their accounts or else the accounts lose their appeal. I recommend embracing circularity and argue that this is a case where circularity—far from being a failure—is a precondition for a successful account. This is because “self-consciousness” and “expression” are mutually dependent concepts.
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Notes
The distinctiveness is often pointed out by appealing to a difference between ascribing certain properties to oneself and ascribing them to others. But, as will be discussed later in this paper, the distinctiveness of self-conscious statements can be highlighted equally well by appealing to an intuition about different cases of attributing properties to oneself. This is for instance how Boyle (2010) introduces the topic.
It should be noted that “self-consciousness” is the preferred term for the topic neither for Finkelstein nor Bar-On. I do not mean the term to carry heavy philosophical weight. I chose this term over others, such as “first-person authority,” both for stylistic reasons (it is less cumbersome in its adjectival and adverbial forms) and because it seemed to me to be the most neutral and widely used philosophical term for the topic.
Finkelstein thinks that speaking about one’s own past mental states can also be accounted for by appeal to expression, whereas Bar-On restricts her thesis to present mental states. And Finkelstein addresses the issue of whether self-consciousness is a form of knowledge in a deflationary manner: as long as we keep in mind how different self-consciousness is from “someone’s knowing that he has termites in his basement” (2003: 151) there is nothing wrong with saying that it is a form of knowledge, but it’s not very important that we do. Bar-On, on her end, wants to build a case for the legitimacy of calling it a form of knowledge (2004: 340–396).
It is important to note that whether or not a self-ascription is an avowal cannot be judged on the basis of its content alone. That is, not all sincere and true self-ascriptions of mental states are avowals. “Alienated” self-ascriptions—e.g., “I must be angry with my sister,” said on the basis of noticing a pattern in one’s conduct towards one’s sister—are examples of this. This distinction will become important in the last section of this paper.
Finkelstein and Bar-On also criticize other positions; they both provide useful and insightful critical overviews of the plethora of alternative conceptions of avowals.
Finkelstein cites Rosenthal (1993) as someone who attributes this view to Wittgenstein. Finkelstein himself argues that Rosenthal is wrong in thinking that Wittgenstein is a simple expressivist. Rather, he claims, Wittgenstein is more charitably read as a neo-expressivist. See Finkelstein 2003: 93–99.
A note on the connection between the various expressivist positions in ethics and neo-expressivism about self-consciousness: Expressivism in ethics begins from the suspicion, or explicit assumption, that no (so-called) ethical statement has truth-value. Anti-realism about ethics is thus the starting point for expressivism in ethics. The task for an ethical expressivist such as Blackburn or Gibbard is, consequently, to show how to reconstruct the entire discourse of ethics in line with the idea that ethical statements are acts of expression. Expressivism about self-consciousness, by contrast, is a response to a problem about a certain region of thought and talk about mental states. The realism of the discourse as a whole is not called into question. See Bar-On 2004: 233–240 and Finkelstein 2010: 192–193.
The distinction is actually tri-partite; there is also a semantic sense of expression (EXP3) which signifies the semantic relation of representing a fact or proposition. Bar-On thinks that an avowal is special in that it is both an EXP1, that is an action which gives expression to a mental state, and an EXP3, that is a representation of the fact that one is in the mental state.
What, then, is Anscombe’s conception of a reason? These things appear important: (1) that a reason is something one can “argue against” (1957: 24), (2) that it is something which involves “good and evil,” (Ibid: 21), and (3) that it provides an element in a calculative structure, the so-called “A-D order” (Ibid: 87–88).
Has not Bar-On provided us with what we need in order to avoid the problem I have just been raising? Her idea, remember, was to say that in its “act-dimension,” an avowal is an intentional action (and as such similar to non-verbal expressions such as smiles and sighs) on a suitably hospitable conception of intentional action. On her view, the agent does not intend to express anything, or even need to have a particular purpose in mind. Rather the agent knows, non-observationally, what she is doing and why. Is this not a way of avoiding the worrying hybrid?
Putting aside the issue of Bar-On’s appeal to non-observational knowledge, this conception does not avoid the troublesome hybrid. For though the person in Bar-On’s story needs to have non-observational knowledge of some aspect of what she is doing, she does not need to know that her saying something is her expression of her mental state. Bar-On claims, remember, that “Our behavior is intentional to the extent that we know what we are doing (nonobservationally, if Anscombe is right); but our expressing need not be (though sometimes it may).” (Bar-On 2010: 58) So, we are to imagine that the agent who is issuing an avowal knows, say, that she is saying that she is angry but not that she is thereby expressing her anger. Under the description “expression of anger,” her act is not intentional. This is still a hybrid conception, where the utterance is done knowingly but where the act considered as expression is something the agent is doing unwittingly; it is a sort of parallel process. We are thrown back upon the question how the avowal can have its special features, considered from the point of view of the person issuing the avowal.
For more examples of this phenomenon, see Finkelstein 1999.
It is similar but not the same in all aspects. My judgment about myself undoubtedly comes with different ethical implications, for instance.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to David Finkelstein for comments on drafts of this text and for discussing this topic with me for a number of years. I received constructive comments on a previous version of this text from audiences at Åbo Akademi University and University of Potsdam. Helpful conversations with Dorit Bar-On lead me to revise some parts of the paper. An anonymous reviewer provided useful suggestions in the final stage of preparation. My work on this essay has been supported by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland (within the project “The Philosophical Import of Ordinary Language: Austin, Ryle, Wittgenstein, and their contemporary significance”).
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Bäckström, S. A Dilemma for Neo-Expressivism—And How to Resolve It. Acta Anal 31, 191–205 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0274-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0274-8