John Perry
(Published in Logos, 1990: 17-31.)
Abstract
"Self-beliefs" are beliefs of the sort one ordinarily has about oneself, and expresses with the first person. These contrast with the beliefs one has in "Castañeda cases," in which one has a belief about oneself without knowing it. This paper advances an account of the nature of self-belief. According to this account, self-belief is a special case of interacting with things via notions that serve as repositories for information about objects with certain important relations to the knower, and as motivators for actions the success of which is dependent on the object in that relation to the agent. Identity is such a relation, and "self-notions" play this special role: they are the repositories for information gained in normally self-informative ways, and the motivators of types of action whose success normally depends on facts about the agent. Self-beliefs involve such self-notions, while the beliefs that one has about oneself in Castañeda cases do not.
"Not long ago," Mach wrote in 1885, "after a trying railway journey by night, when I was very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at the other end. 'What a shabby pedagogue that is, that has just entered,' thought I. It was myself: opposite me hung a large mirror. The physiognomy of my class, accordingly, was better known to me than my own."
Mach acquired a belief at the beginning of the episode, which we can imagine him expressing as:
(1) That man is a shabby pedagogue.
By the end of the episode he has another, which we can imagine him expressing as:
(2) I am a shabby pedagogue
While (2) expresses self-knowledge, (1) does not. And yet (1) is, in a perfectly clear sense, a case of Mach believing something about himself. Mach implies that he was, in fact, a shabby pedagogue. It is because he was a shabby pedagogue that we take the belief expressed by (1) to be true. If it is Mach's being a shabby pedagogue that makes (1) true, then (1) was about Mach, and expressed a belief about him. Nevertheless (1), unlike (2), is not an expression of self-knowledge.
Henceforth I shall use the unfamiliar term ``self-belief'' rather than ``self-knowledge.'' Although ``self-knowledge'' sounds more familiar, it is somewhat misleading since the distinction between knowledge and mere belief is orthogonal to the issues I discuss. I take beliefs to be complex cognitive particulars, that come into existence as a result of perceptions, inferences and other events, and influence the occurrence and nature other beliefs and actions. I assume that two beliefs are involved here, one that Mach acquired when he stepped on the bus, and one that he acquired a bit later, when he figured out that he was looking at himself. I want to understand the difference between those beliefs. It is not sufficient, for this purpose, to note that (2) contains the word ``I'' where (1) contains the words ``that man''. This is why (2) is an expression of self-belief and (1) is not. But I want to know why the belief thus expressed is a self-belief.