Person:

Boyle, Matthew

“Additive theories” of rationality, as I use the term, are views that hold that an account of our minds can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms which do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational thought as an independent capacity to “monitor” and “regulate” our believing-­‐on-­‐the-­‐basis-­‐of-­‐perception and our acting-­‐on-­‐the-­‐basis-­‐of-­‐desire. I show that a number of prominent recent discussions of rational perception and action are committed to an additive approach to rationality, and I argue that this approach faces two basic difficulties, each of which is structurally analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The Interaction Problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The Unity Problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject’s entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he oversees as “I” rather than “it”. I argue that these difficulties give us reason to reject the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, “transformative” framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal.

I critically discuss the account of self-knowledge presented in Dorit Bar-On’s Speaking My Mind (OUP 2004), focusing on Bar-On’s understanding of what makes our capacity for self-knowledge puzzling and on her ‘neo-expressivist’ solution to the puzzle. I argue that there is an important aspect of the problem of self-knowledge that Bar-On’s account does not sufficiently address. A satisfying account of self-knowledge must explain not merely how we are able to make accurate avowals about our own present mental states, but how we can reasonably regard ourselves as entitled to claim self-knowledge. Addressing this aspect of the problem of self-knowledge requires confronting questions about the metaphysical nature of mental states, questions that Bar-On’s approach seeks to avoid.

Kant famously characterizes our human understanding as a “spontaneous” faculty, but what can this mean? I criticize some recent interpretations of Kant’s claim and suggest that we can only understand what Kant means by “the spontaneity of understanding” if we recognize certain basic differences between how Kant conceived of cognition and how philosophers commonly think of it today. I go on to argue that Kant’s conception of cognition represents an appealing alternative to the unsatisfying options that contemporary ways of thinking seem to force on us.

I argue that cognitively mature human beings have an important sort of control or discretion over their own beliefs, but that to make good sense of this control, we must reject the common idea that it consists in a capacity to act on our belief-state by forming new beliefs or modifying ones we already hold. I propose that we exercise agential control over our beliefs, not primarily in doing things to alter our belief-state, but in holding whatever beliefs we hold. Our beliefs are thus not normally things on which we act; they are themselves our acts, in a sense I seek to explicate.