Transparency, Justification and The Achievements of Self-Knowledge

Luis Manuel Valdés-Villanueva
Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of Self-Knowledge

Author(s): Josep L. Prades
Source: Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofía, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2015), pp. 107-119
Published by: Luis Manuel Valdés-Villanueva
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teorema
Vol. XXXIV/1, 2015, pp. 107-1 19

ISSN: 0210-1602
[BIBLID 0210-1602 (2015) 34:1; pp. 107-1 19]
Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of

Self-Knowledge
Josep L. Prades
I. The Program
In his book Transparent Minds, Jordi Fernández proposes a high-

ly original and articulated model that systematically exploits the
transparency of desires and beliefs: it is not the power of certain intro-
spective acts what can explain the relevant epistemic privileges of the
first person. He constantly insists on this basic principle: the task of
deciding about my beliefs about p does not require examining my
mind. It requires finding out whether, in fact, p. If I am questioned
whether I believe that Wittgenstein was the most important philoso-
pher of the 20th century, I will answer by considering certain facts
about contemporary philosophical culture. At first glance, exactly the
same facts that I should have considered had the original question
been whether Wittgenstein was the most important philosopher of the
20th century. Obviously, this intuition can only be the beginning of
any philosophical reflection on the problem of self-knowledge. We
must find a satisfactory explanation of it that, in turn, could illuminate
many more aspects that are supposed to be associated to the first-
person epistemic privileges.
There are two key assumptions that explain that argumentative
strategy of the book. The first one is the idea that there should be a
basic symmetry between the transparency of our beliefs and the trans-
parency of our desires. In the same way in which I answer the ques-
tion whether I think that p by investigating if p is the case, I answer
the question whether I desire that p by considering the desired thing:
(possible) situations in which p is the case. The second assumption is
107
108 Josep L. Prades
that our self-knowledge is a

tuition that beliefs about ou
case of genuine knowledge, a
ically linked in the book to
quirements that apply to all
also justification), and it mu
wants or believes, in the sam
the world.
In fact, the way in which F
tion of epistemic achievemen
program. When he insists th
feat, he explicitly agrees tha
belief. As in other forms of
relevant kind of justification
accessible to the subject. In t
monest models in epistem
about the world when the formation of the belief has fulfilled certain
requirements of correctness or reliability, even if that fact is not epis-
temically accessible to the subject. Fernandez seems to believe that
only the generalization of this conventional model can explain that our
peculiar epistemic authority over our own beliefs and desires is com-
patible with the possibility of making mistakes: it is easy to imagine
cases of self-deception about what we really want or what we really
believe.
The problem is that the very idea that any case of self-knowledge
of desires or beliefs should be conceptualized in terms of justification,
evidence or reasons seems to be in tension with some fundamental as-
pects of the privileges of the first person. If I tell you that I believe
that Wittgenstein was the most important philosopher of the 20th cen-
tury or that I want to take an aspirin, you could ask for certain reasons:
my reasons to believe that Wittgenstein was a more important philos-
opher than Russell, or the reasons for which I desire to take an aspirin.
But it does not seem adequate to ask for my reasons for another kind
of belief, the corresponding belief about my belief or my desire. Fer-
nandez does not deny this. But, according to him, this does not mean
that the very notions of reason, justification or evidence do not apply.
He tries to provide an explanation of this kind of self-knowledge
which could preserve the intuition that it involves a genuine cognitive
achievement, and, in fact, his whole account is a way of trying to re-
Transparency, Justification and the A chievements of... 1 09
duce the differences between those cases and some other cases in
which it seems easy to imagine that the subject recognizes that she has
made a mistaken self-attribution. For instance, on the basis of certain
evidence, someone can notice that, contrary to what she previously
thought, she desires the death of an old and ill relative. Self-
knowledge is not always an easy task. And one of Fernandez's basic
assumptions seems to be that a similar kind of cognitive achievement
should be present in both kinds of cases. Even when it does not seem
obvious that the subject might be mistaken about her own beliefs or
desires, her self-attribution is still justified by some kinds of reasons
or evidence.
There is an obvious price to pay. And it is a price that Fernandez
accepts. He renounces the goal of a unified account of many aspects
of what are normally considered the privileges of the first person.
Once we assume that an explanation of some of those aspects has to
involve this very demanding conception of a cognitive achievement, it
is difficult to see how this explanation could also account for the au-
thoritative and basic character of paradigmatic self-attributions. The
same explanation that accounts for certain epistemic privileges in
terms of evidence or justification seems unable to explain why it is not
possible to ask for the justification that the self-attributing subject
might have. It is not that I object to the idea that we should give up the
goal of providing a unified account of our self-knowledge of so-called
"prepositional attitudes". Nevertheless, I will argue that the way in
which Fernandez understands the assumption that self-knowledge is a
cognitive achievement is the reason why he excludes from his unified
account aspects that, perhaps, should not be excluded, while, on the
other hand, assimilating cases that should be considered as slightly
different.
II. The Bypass Model
The proposed model assumes that desires and beliefs are groun
ed on certain mental states, which also operate in the causal genes
our beliefs about those attitudes. In the case of beliefs, for examp
such states would be perceptual experiences, memories, beliefs abo
other people's testimony or certain relations of logical consequenc
mere intellectual intuitions... In the case of desires, the relevant st
1 1 0 Josep L. Prades
would be other desires, urges, o

desire. These states are supposed
they can justify the formation
tive experiences, for example, c
sponding beliefs about the exter
is the original point of the model,
beliefs about our own minds: if
ed on the same perceptual exp
order belief, then that second-o
there is a systematically adequa
type of perceptual experience a
liefs. It is fundamental in the a
required for a grounding state t
is different from the correlation
of the corresponding second-or
sion in which the content of th
of what in fact happens in the w
perience does not maintain the s
resents, and in fact can generate
this, the experience may still be
of the first-order belief: it is t
not, tends to reliably produce i
not, justified or not, about the w
ond-order beliefs are originate
But the latter can be adequately
former is not. Fernández insists
sires are normally grounded on
quirements which I have just
mind are supposed to be ground
mine the content of my desires
that extent, their truth seems a
there is a reliable, systematic
states and the propositional atti
reliable mechanism of formation
propositional attitudes seem to s
knowledge.
The central insight in the book,
liant. On the one hand, it gives
On the other, it tries to preserv
Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of... Ill
that, according to Fernandez, should be applicable to most ordinary

self-attributions, by using a notion of justification that is fully recog-
nizable against the background provided by common epistemological
discussions. Fernandez warns us that the important relationship of jus-
tification is not completely internalist: even if the existence of the
grounding state should be accessible to a reflective subject with the
necessary conceptual equipment, it is not at all necessary that the sub-
ject is aware that there is the relevant justifying correlation. In the
same way as it is commonplace in contemporary epistemology to as-
sume that a belief can be justified by a reliable mechanism of belief-
formation, without it being necessary that the subject should know
about the reliability of the mechanism. All this is a very original way
of trying to accommodate some desiderata about the kind of justifica-
tion that must be present in ordinary cases of self-knowledge. Howev-
er, my main objection to the argument will rely on the intuition that
the putative desiderata are, in fact, too demanding. Perhaps, we should
abandon the goal of providing the kind of unified account of transpar-
ency that Fernandez is looking for. This is, I think, that final source of
the problems that can still be detected in the subtle strategy of the book.
III. Knowing Our Beliefs About Our Own Beliefs
Suppose, for example, the following situation: I am looking at a

stick in a glass of water and, although it has the visual appearance o
being slightly bent, my perceptual experience originates the belief tha
it is a completely straight stick. After all, I am familiar with this com
mon optical illusion. What would the content of the perceptive state
the grounding state of my belief, be? Can Fernandez assume that th
content of my experience is that there is a bent stick? At first glance, if
he accepts such a thing, he should also deny that there is a systemat
correlation between the relevant kind of perceptual state and the kind
of perceptual belief I have. Typically, perceptual experiences who
content is "bent-stick" generate the belief that there is a bent stick, n
a straight stick. That means that, according to the model, he could no
accept that my second-order belief is justified. However, no on
would doubt that there is no problem with self-knowledge: we can say
that I know that I believe that there is a straight stick, with the sam
112 Josep L. Prades
right with which we can say

cat in front of me, when I clear
One might think that this g
ly blocked by a more accurate
ing state. By suggesting, for
merely the "bent-stick" perc
about certain optical illusion
mation of my belief that ther
line of defense could work:
grounding states (perceptions
the model, must constitute th
ond-order beliefs, in a way th
requires, for example, that th
riences is not fixed by mere
ceptual beliefs which they
experiences whose content is t
in fact , produce the belief th
the basic content of the perce
It is not my purpose to discus
seems that we have to accept
belief about the world we per
tors, or by some temporary a
of the subject. And, when th
model seems to be unable to e
affected.
To see this, let us return to
visual appearance of being be
I have mentioned? Perhaps,
scription of the content of t
sist that, in this particular
experience, but a complicate
that is not present in more ba
systematically correlated, at l
of the belief that there is a co
what the details of the chosen
cess of the assumption will de
grounding state that could sub
tematic correlation between it
beliefs. And this is the prob
Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of... 113
conceive of a situation in which the process of formation of the first-

order belief deviates from the proposed correlation without jeopardiz-
ing in any way the epistemic pedigree of the corresponding self-
attributions. We must remember that Fernandez's basic idea is that a
second-order belief is justified when it is based in the right way on a
state that has grounded both the first- and the second-order belief.
And, as he explicitly insists, his argument needs that the grounding re-
lation can be identified in merely causal, not normative, terms.2 It is
not difficult to understand why: the model would not work at all, if
those grounding states could only be individuated by its justificatory
role. We can describe as justificatory the correlation between ground-
ing states and certain beliefs, only if the relevant grounding states are
not identified by means of the adequate, justificatory correlation.
Now, imagine a variation of the previous example: suppose that
our subject is very nervous, or has taken some drugs, or has not slept
in the last 48 hours. As a result of his anomalous psychological condi-
tion, he has the psychological disposition to trust the visual appear-
ance of the stick, and he forms the belief that the stick he is seeing is
bent. This would be an abnormal belief-formation process: normally,
the same subject would have formed the perceptual belief that there is
a straight stick before his eyes. Or we can imagine another slightly
different case: suppose that John is a convinced atheist who has al-
ways argued that there is no reason at all to believe that there is life af-
ter death. When he is diagnosed with lung cancer, he suffers a sudden
spiritual crisis and becomes an orthodox catholic. I do not think that
we have any right to say that he is deceived in his beliefs about what
he believes now. Possibly, he needs to believe that there is life after
death. It does not seem plausible to insist that the acquired belief that
he is going to die soon, even if it is a crucial causal factor in the for-
mation of his new belief, can play the role of a grounding state in the
bypass model. There is no relationship between the content of the be-
lief that I will die within a few months and the belief that, when my
body dies, my soul will live forever. And we can even imagine that
the causal role of the belief about his imminent death is completely
strange, even in relation to John's psychology: only because the diag-
nosis of lung cancer has occurred at a time of extreme psychological
weakness, has it been able to generate the extraordinary religious con-
version. It could be the case that our John, the same John, would not
have reacted in this way to the news of a prompt death, if (say) his
wife had not just left him. The

tion of the case and, again, not
beliefs about his own beliefs ar
Given the kinds of states tha
our beliefs, nothing seems to p
belief is originated in a type o
would have generated a complet
in the first of our examples, th
perceptual experience, all of us,
tual beliefs on the basis of grou
them in an adequate way. And i
ficiency in self-knowledge, at a
not avoid this conclusion by tr
grounding state. After all, it s
can form a first-order belief o
not correlated in the relevant w
prising: the processes by which
affected by purely contextual
can be more or less cautious, r
of belief-formation. And I am sure that Fernandez is not interested in
considering all those possible interfering factors as grounding states.
After all, the relevant grounding states can only fulfill their role in the
model if there is an internal relationship between their content and the
content of the beliefs they ground.
IV. Knowing Our Beliefs About Our Own Desires
In the case of non-instrumental desires, Fernandez says that the

paradigmatic grounding states are urges or evaluating beliefs. Thirst i
described as an urge that grounds my desire to drink; the value that I
award to writing a book can ground my desire to write it. As in the
case of beliefs, Fernandez does not assert that he has provided a proo
that his description of the grounding states for non-instrumental de-
sires is exhaustive, but he seems to accept that all instrumental desire
are, in fact, grounded on states of these two basic types. I have man
doubts about the status of this assumption: is it simply, as he seems t
imply on page 85, a contingent fact that humans form their non
instrumental desires from states of those two types? My own intuition
is that these states can be considered as privileged generators of de-

sires only insofar as they can also be themselves described as forms of
desire. If this were the case, they could not play the role that the model
requires.
Consider thirst, for example. Thirst is more than just the physio-
logical need for water. It does not seem unreasonable to also describe
it as the desire to drink. It is a desire that can be present in non-
linguistic animals. There is a fundamental difference with other needs
that do not generate the corresponding desire: given a certain physio-
logical imbalance, my body may need that I swallow substances that I
find repulsive. And it also seems that this difference can only be de-
scribed by saying that thirst is constitutively a form of desire. This
connection with desiring also seems to be present in evaluative judg-
ments. Certainly, there is something strange in asserting that some-
thing is valuable, without showing any desire towards it. But I am not
alone in believing that this connection should be explained because
the content of basic value judgments has a conative element.3 To say
that I consider that the end of world famine is valuable, worthy, good
but I do not care at all, involves a non-normal use of the correspond-
ing evaluative terms - a use according to which we are only describ-
ing the adjustment of something to a pattern of evaluation, perhaps the
prevalent in our community, without assuming that it is our own pat-
tern. This is not evaluation proper; it is mere description. If I do not
care at all, I cannot seriously judge it as valuable: this is a condition of
our being competent in the practice of seriously making value judg-
ments. If this is right, urges and evaluative beliefs can hardly play the
role of grounding states in the bypass model. They are better conceived
as forms of desiring.
On the other hand, nothing in all this entails that every form of
desiring requires a positive evaluation. Even if judging something
good requires desiring it, desiring does not require judging that the de-
sired thing is worthy of our desire. We constantly desire things that,
we know, we should not desire. Fernandez assumes that, in those cas-
es, our desire should be grounded on a mere urge. But this does not
seem to be right. Consider, for example, vanity, or the more specific
desire to be famous. Those are desires that we all recognize. And their
existence is acknowledged even by the same people who insist that we
must not desire those things, that there is nothing worthy in being fa-
mous, or in the fact that posterity remembers us, or our stupid, insig-
116 Josep L. Prades
nificant feats: vanitas vanitat

that those desires are grounded
teria for the presence of the pu
termine what we desire. It is
disposition to form unground
grounds postulated by the by
who recognizes that he has th
exhibit any defective form of
Fernandez assumes that de
tional attitudes. I think this i
fend this claim.4 In any case,
difficulties for the bypass mo
Consider the following case: I
ends soon, and I think, in fac
tend to take a strong painkille
vious intuition is that, at leas
by the world. Even if it is fa
of the effects of an aspirin, it
of my previous beliefs was, a
said, no desire of mine has be
sides is not satisfied by the f
my head in the process. I gue
specification of my desire, "t
specification. I desire the end
in undesirable ways, not by d
fundamental problem is this c
if I believe that the headache
preserves the truth of at leas
as an undesired way of satisfy
tile to try to eliminate the di
cated propositional content in
What we desire does not have
tions, properties. A fact, how
in a certain more specific wa
certain way. And, if those wa
the original desire has not bee
This is crucial to assess Fe
knowledge of instrumental de
explained because the relevant belief is based on the non-instrumental

desire and the relevant instrumental belief. And it is assumed that
If S desires P and S believes that Q is the case, then S is justified in be-

lieving that she wants that Q, as long as her belief is formed on the ba-
sis on that belief-desire pair [Fernandez (2013), p. 91].
If there is some truth in my earlier remarks, this does not seem plausi-
ble. My desire to end my headache and my belief that, if someone cuts
off my head, then the pain will stop could not justify any hypothetical
belief of mine that I want my head chopped off. And I have also ar-
gued that it does not seem feasible to try to solve the difficulty by try-
ing to specify better the contents of the generic desire. Furthermore,
the particular model proposed by Fernandez incorporates an additional
difficulty. We might think that, if the content of the generic desire is
specified in such a way that it incorporates all the particular ways in
which it can be satisfied, then we could avoid the unacceptable conse-
quence that my desire to end the headache justifies my desire to have my
head cut off. But this could not save the plausibility of the model: for
then, the very distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental
desires that Fernandez needs would disappear.
V. Conclusion
Jordi Fernandez's book is a highly sophisticated attempt to ex-

plain many of the phenomena associated with our epistemic privile
when accessing our own desires and beliefs. As mentioned, I think
is one of the most elaborate and subtle attempts to provide a satisf
tory explanation, while also assuming a very demanding requireme
on what we should consider as the relevant cognitive achieveme
We are offered a model that is extremely elegant and original that
nevertheless, does not seem to be free of some problems. I believe th
the final source of those difficulties should be found in some gene
features of Fernandez's program: basically, his conception of w
should count as a genuine cognitive achievement in all cases of self
knowledge. I do not deny that self-knowledge can be a genuine cog
tive success. As mentioned, it is not easy to avoid error when, for
ample, we want an elderly relative to die and we do not like recogniz
that this might be a desire of o

the case where a three-year-o
has learned to express her basi
pression. The difference betwee
complexity of the desired thin
cation. If the child expresses t
cream by her behaviour, if the
basic dispositions towards the
she is sincere, we would say th
competence. And, if I am right
any plausible analysis of Moo
describes the world, she also ex
her words. As long as she is
cannot make a self-attribution of belief whose content contradicts the
content that has been expressed by her own description.
Departament de Filosofia
Universität de Girona
PL Ferrater Mora 1, 17071 Girona, Spain
E-mail: josepll.prades@udg. edu
Notes
1 This contribution has been written in the context of the research pro-
jects FFI20 10-1 57 1 7, FFI2010-16049 and FFI2013-47948-P.
2 "This use of the term 'grounds' is idiosyncratic in that it is not meant
to carry any normative connotations. Grounds, as conceived here, are simply
states characterized by their causal roles" [Fernández (2013) p. 451.
3 A classical defense is Wiggins (1987).
This idea has been recently defended in Thompson (2008) and Steward
(2009).
References
Fernández, J. (2013), Transparent Minds , Oxford, Oxford University Pre

STEWARD, H. (2009), "Animal Agency", Inquiry , 52, pp. 217 -233.
THOMPSON, M. (2008), Life and Action, Cambridge, Harvard Univers
Press.
WIGGINS, D. (1987), "A Sensible Subjectivism?", in Needs, Values, Truth:

Essays in the Philosophy of Value, New York, Oxford University Press,
pp. 185-214.
Resumen
Se argumenta que el modelo sobre el autoconocimiento defendido en el libro de

Jordi Fernández, Transparent Minds , presenta problemas para explicar la justificación
de ciertas creencias sobre nuestras propias creencias y nuestros propios deseos. En el
caso de las primeras, parece que el modelo no puede explicar el autoconocimiento en
el caso de muchas creencias de primer orden formadas de una manera relativamente
anómala. En el caso de las creencias sobre deseos, parece que el modelo adjudica la
justificación relevante a creencias que no podrían tenerla. Se defiende que el tipo de
justificación que Fernández requiere para cualquier caso de auto-conocimiento parece
demasiado exigente.
Palabras clave: autoconocimiento, creencia, deseo, justificación epistémica, actitud

proposicional.
Summary
It is argued that the model of self-knowledge defended by Jordi Fernandez in
his book Transparent Minds , has difficulties to explain the justification for certain be-
liefs about our own beliefs and desires. In the former case, it seems that the model
cannot explain self-knowledge if a first-order belief is formed in a relatively abnormal
way. In the case of beliefs about desires, it seems that the model has to attribute ade-
quate justification to beliefs that could not have it. I argue that the kind of justification
that Fernandez requires for all cases of self-knowledge is too demanding.
Keywords: Self-Knowledge, Belief, Desire, Epistemic Justification, Propositional

Attitude.

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Luis Manuel Valdés-Villanueva

Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of Self-Knowledge

Vol. XXXIV/1, 2015, pp. 107-1 19

Transparency, Justification and the Achievements of

In his book Transparent Minds, Jordi Fernández proposes a high-

that our self-knowledge is a

II. The Bypass Model

would be other desires, urges, o

that, according to Fernandez, should be applicable to most ordinary

III. Knowing Our Beliefs About Our Own Beliefs

Suppose, for example, the following situation: I am looking at a

right with which we can say

conceive of a situation in which the process of formation of the first-

wife had not just left him. The

IV. Knowing Our Beliefs About Our Own Desires

In the case of non-instrumental desires, Fernandez says that the

is that these states can be considered as privileged generators of de-

nificant feats: vanitas vanitat

explained because the relevant belief is based on the non-instrumental

If S desires P and S believes that Q is the case, then S is justified in be-

Jordi Fernandez's book is a highly sophisticated attempt to ex-

that this might be a desire of o

Fernández, J. (2013), Transparent Minds , Oxford, Oxford University Pre

WIGGINS, D. (1987), "A Sensible Subjectivism?", in Needs, Values, Truth:

Se argumenta que el modelo sobre el autoconocimiento defendido en el libro de

Palabras clave: autoconocimiento, creencia, deseo, justificación epistémica, actitud

Keywords: Self-Knowledge, Belief, Desire, Epistemic Justification, Propositional

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