Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind

✍ Scribed by Eric Marcus

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 172
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person's beliefs. Here,
Eric Marcus argues that the unity of the rational mind--what makes it one mind--is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can't believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special sense. What explains this is that beliefs, and the inferences by which we acquire them,
are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and
inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Belief and Judgment
I. Belief and Truth
II. Judgment and the Limits of Irrationality
III. Objections
2: The Self-Consciousness of Belief
I. Belief and Honest Assertion
II. Honest Assertion and Belief Avowal
III. Belief Avowal and Doxastic Self-Knowledge
IV. Explaining the Self-Consciousness of Belief
3: Making Nonsense of Moore’s Paradox
I. What is Moore’s Paradox?
II. Neo-Expressivism
III. What Avowals Express
4: The Challenge for an Account of Inference
I. The Taking Condition
II. The Causal Theory
III. Dispositions to the Rescue?
IV. Broome’s Rule-Following Account
V. The Constitution Theory
VI. Inference as an Evaluative, Causation-Constituting Act
5: Inference without Regress
I. Two Regresses
II. What I Can’t Believe
III. What I Must Believe
IV. Taking as Understanding (and Not Intuition)
V. Further Issues
VI. Summary
6: The Unity of the Rational Mind
I. The Self-Consciousness of Inference
II. Self-Consciousness as the Source of Mental Togetherness
III. Belief and Judgment Redux
Conclusion: Philosophical Judgment
Bibliography
Index