Evans describes the transparency phenomenon in the following passage. (For the purpose of future reference, we label the two sentences.)
[A] If someone asks me ‘Do you think there is going to be a third world war?’, I must attend, in answering him, to precisely the same phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question ‘Will there be a third world war?’ [B] I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p. (Evans, 1982, 225)
In [A], Evans compares two questions, “Do you think that p?” and “p?”, with respect to the phenomena we must attend to in order to give epistemically warranted responses to those questions.Footnote 3 He claims that, in order to give such responses, we must merely focus on the state of current politics, if p concerns the third world war, and on the weather, respectively, if p states that it will rain. In short, Evans claims that we must consider the state of the world, not our state of mind. Assuming, with Evans, that a positive answer to “Do you think that p?” has the form “I think that p”, [A] is concerned with the epistemic warrant of doxastic self-ascriptions, and hence with the epistemic rationality of linguistic acts: in order to be warranted in affirmatively uttering “I think there is going to be a third world war”, one must attend to those facts whose consideration might warrant the affirmation of “There is going to be a third world war”. Since [A] describes a special feature of doxastic self-ascriptions, it is concerned with what we call ascriptive transparency: warranted self-ascription of a belief that p requires attendance only to the p-justifying phenomena.
Let us have a closer look at the transition from [A] to [B]. We may ignore the unproblematic lexical switch from “think” to “believe”: evidently, “think” is here used as a synonym for “believe”, i.e., the holding true of a proposition.Footnote 4 Also, we don’t want to quibble over the transition from the second person (“Do you think”) to the first person (“whether I believe”): in the question “Do you think …?” the pronoun refers to the addressee of the question, who thereupon reflects upon it first person–style. The important step in Evans’ transition from [A] to [B] consists in the change from a direct question (“Do you think that p?”) to an indirect question (“whether I believe that p”), as this marks a switch in one’s epistemic concern: it turns a question concerning the self-ascription of belief—the warrant for saying “I believe”—into a question about self-belief—the warrant for believing that I believe. In [B], Evans states that self-belief, the belief with the content I believe that p, can be based on the very same reasons the belief that p itself can be based on. Call this the thesis of doxastic transparency.
[A] is concerned with the rationality of self-ascriptions and has—as such—nothing to do with self-belief or self-knowledge. It is only doxastic transparency which captures Evans’ claim that self-knowledge is, at least sometimes, transparent. Thus [B] is required to state the idea of transparent self-knowledge. Yet although [A] and [B] represent logically independent theses, Evans moves from the one to the other without further argument. We must therefore ask: what licenses the transition from [A] to [B]?
Plausibly, Evans’ (implicit) reasoning relies on the following auxiliary principles:
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(AP1) An affirmative utterance of the form “I believe that p” is the assertion of, and hence the expression of a belief in, the proposition that I believe that p.
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(AP2) Whatever epistemically licenses an affirmative utterance also licenses the belief expressed by that utterance.
Based on these auxiliary principles, Evans is then able to argue as follows: By (AP1), the speaker, with “I believe that p”, asserts and expresses the belief that she believes that p. For example, with “I believe that it will rain”, the speaker asserts and expresses the belief that she believes that it will rain. By (AP2), the epistemic warrant for the utterance is also the warrant for the (higher-order) belief expressed by means of the utterance, viz., the speaker’s belief that she believes it will rain. Hence, if saying “I believe that it will rain” is warranted by extrospection, then so is the speaker’s belief that she believes that it will rain. Thus, given (AP1), (AP2), and ascriptive transparency, doxastic transparency follows. In this way, the two auxiliary principles permit the move from the thesis that the self-ascription of belief can be based on extrospection (in [A]) to the thesis that self-belief can be based on extrospection (in [B]).
We will assume that (AP2) is correct, at least for the cases at hand, but argue that (AP1) is highly problematic and actually untenable in the present context. (AP1) is an instance of the general affirmation–belief principle stating that the affirmative utterance of “φ” is the assertion and hence expression of the belief that φ. With “It will rain”, the speaker asserts and expresses the belief that it will rain, and with “There will be a third world war”, she asserts and expresses the belief that international politics will take a disastrous turn. Thus, if the affirmation–belief principle holds unrestrictedly, with “I believe that it will rain”, the speaker expresses the belief that she believes it will rain, and with “I believe that there will be a third world war”, the belief that she believes in a catastrophic development of politics. Thus, the affirmation–belief principle might explain why (AP1) appears initially plausible and why Evans blithely moves from [A] to [B].
Yet even though the affirmation–belief principle is plausible for many cases, it is arguably incorrect precisely for those cases we are interested in here: self-ascriptions of mental states in general, and self-ascriptions of belief in particular. Amongst many others, Wittgenstein, in a famous passage from the Philosophical Investigations, states that doxastic self-ascriptions are not self-reports, as their surface grammar would suggest, but hedged assertions of the embedded proposition itself. He thus contrasts statements of the form “I believe that p” with “He believes that p” and “I believed that p”, which are reports about another person’s present doxastic state and the speaker’s own past one, respectively. Wittgenstein’s claim is captured by
[W1] “I believe that p” is not an assertion about one’s belief that p at all, but a “hesitant assertion” of p itself.Footnote 5
Yet if [W1] is correct, (AP1) arguably isn’t: if “I believe that p” is used to (hesitantly) assert p, it expresses the belief in the embedded proposition p, not the (higher-order) belief in the proposition that one believes that p: “I believe that it will rain” and “I believe that there will be a third world war” would not be used to express higher-order beliefs about the speaker’s beliefs. Rather, the speaker would use them to (hesitantly) assert and express her first-order beliefs concerning the future of both the weather and the world.
[W1] blocks the transition from [A] to [B]: if “I believe that p” is used by the speaker to (hesitantly) express a first-order belief about p, then it tells us nothing about which higher-order beliefs the speaker might have. Indeed, [W1] seems to directly contradict [B]. After all, [W1] strongly suggests that “I believe that p” does not express a higher-order belief in the first place; hence the mental state expressed wouldn’t even be a candidate for self-knowledge. It would be a candidate for knowledge concerning the state of the world, not concerning one’s state of mind.
In defence of Evans’ transition from [A] to [B], one might try to undermine Wittgenstein’s view on doxastic self-ascriptions and argue in favour of (AP1). Yet, this move isn’t open to Evans, as he even derives his transparency claims from Wittgenstein’s views. Evans begins his famous discussion of transparency with the following quote from Wittgenstein:
[W2] If a man says to me, looking at the sky, ‘I think it will rain, therefore I exist,’ I do not understand him. (originally in Coope et al., 1970, 21; quoted from Evans, 1982, 225; Evans’ italics)
Evans comments as follows: “I think Wittgenstein was trying to undermine the temptation to adopt a Cartesian position, by forcing us to look more closely at the nature of our knowledge of our own mental properties, and, in particular, by forcing us to abandon the idea that it always involves an inward glance at the states and doings of something to which only the person himself has access” (Evans, 1982, 225). Evans thus takes Wittgenstein to propose an anti-Cartesian epistemology of the mind and to identify the phenomenon of doxastic transparency as described in [B]. So, Evans does not defend his claim of doxastic transparency against Wittgenstein, but ironically takes it from Wittgenstein.
But couldn’t Evans simply use his interpretation of [W2] for his purposes and ignore [W1]? We think that this isn’t a live option. For one thing, interpreting [W2] in terms of [B] is clearly at odds with a plausible reconstruction of the remark. In [W2], Wittgenstein is apparently concerned with the validity of the inference of “I exist” from “I think it will rain” if the latter is uttered in the context of extrospection (“looking at the sky”).Footnote 6 Yet questions of validity concern the logical relation between premises and conclusion alone and are hence independent of the justification (and even the truth) of the premises. In other words: if Evans’ epistemic interpretation in terms of [B] were correct and [W2] were meant to show that the premise expresses a self-belief warranted by extrospection, then not the inference from “I think” to “I exist” but rather Wittgenstein’s critique thereof would be incomprehensible. Furthermore, Evans’ interpretation would put [W2] in straightforward conflict with Wittgenstein’s denial of (AP1) in [W1]. Now, [W2] is not only consistent with [W1], it can even be explained in terms of [W1]. If “I think it will rain” is but the hesitant assertion of the embedded proposition that it will rain, then “I exist”, as a statement about the speaker’s own existence, cannot be inferred from said assertion—just as “I exist” cannot be inferred from “It will rain”.
The thesis of doxastic transparency [B] is in conflict with both [W1] and [W2] and thus in conflict with Wittgenstein’s ideas. Since Evans’ reasons for accepting doxastic transparency are actually based on an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remark [W2], and since he does not provide any further, independent support, he gives us no reason to believe in doxastic transparency. We thus take the thesis of doxastic transparency to be unfounded.
What about ascriptive transparency, described in [A]? Evans makes a second comment about [W2]: “The crucial point is the one I have italicized: in making a self-ascription of belief, one’s eyes are, so to speak, or occasionally literally, directed outward—upon the world” (Evans, 1982, 225; our italics). In this second comment, Evans does not refer to self-knowledge at all, but to self-ascription of belief. Thus, we take it, Evans identifies the “crucial point” of [W2] to be that of ascriptive transparency (which is then explicitly stated in the sentence that immediately follows, [A]): in order to self-ascribe a doxastic state, the agent does not have to look inward, at her state of mind; she simply needs to look at the state of the world.
Note that [A] is fully in tune with both passages from Wittgenstein, even more so as [W1] does not only explain [W2] but also the phenomenon of ascriptive transparency. If “I think it will rain” is the hesitant assertion of the proposition that it will rain, its warrant is naturally the same as that of the assertion “It will rain”—e.g., the perception of dark clouds on the horizon.
It appears therefore that Evans’ claim of doxastic transparency is the result of, first, an important insight and, second, a subtle confusion. The insight is that self-ascriptions of belief can be grounded in the observation of external facts. This is the phenomenon of ascriptive transparency. Yet, perhaps due to the acceptance of an unrestricted affirmation–belief principle, he mistakes ascriptive transparency for doxastic transparency, thus creating the impression that transparency also applies to self-knowledge. Once we have disentangled the two kinds of transparency at issue, it emerges that Evans does not provide any good reason for assuming that there is such a thing as doxastic transparency. And since doxastic transparency leaves us with the aforementioned transparency puzzle, there are actually good reasons to be sceptical of it.
It emerges that the transparency debate has focused on the wrong explanandum. It should be concerned with the phenomenon for which Evans actually makes a convincing case: ascriptive transparency. To this we will now turn.