davidson on first-person authority

The Journal of Value Inquiry (2004) 38: 457–472DOI: 10.1007/s10790-005-1572-y C© Springer 2005

Davidson on First-Person Authority∗

A. MINH NGUYENDepartment of Philosophy and Religion, Eastern Kentucky University,268 Case Annex, 521 Lancaster Avenue, Richmond, KY 40475, USA;e-mail: [email protected]

1. First-Person Authority Defined

One of the most entrenched philosophical intuitions is that every person enjoysspecial authority with respect to his own present intentional states. This allegedmark of the mental has been the focus of much of the recent work by DonaldDavidson. “The existence of first-person authority,” writes Davidson, “is not anempirical discovery, but rather a criterion, among others, of what a mental stateis.”1 What Davidson means by “first-person authority” is that it is necessarythat, for any person, if he sincerely ascribes the presence, or absence, ofa particular intentional state to his present self, then there is a legitimatepresumption that what he says is true, whereas it is not necessary that, forany person, if he sincerely ascribes the presence, or absence, of a particularintentional state to another person, or to his own nonpresent self, or if hesincerely makes a claim about a certain physical aspect of the external world,then there is a legitimate presumption that what he says is true. To say that forany sincere determinate first-person singular simple present-tense ascriptionof intentional state that any competent speaker makes there is a presumptionthat the ascription is true amounts to saying this. Given that a speaker with anadequate command of appropriate concepts sincerely says that he is, or thathe is not, in a certain intentional state, his utterance is presumed to be true.We shall treat his utterance as if it were true unless, or until, we have sufficientevidence, or other epistemic grounds, to the contrary.2

Many philosophers have taken it to be an integral part of first-person au-thority that we usually apply intentional predicates such as “believe that soand so is the case” and “desire that such and such is the case” to others on thebasis of behavioral evidence but to our present selves without benefit of such

∗This article is a winner of the 2002 Rochefeller Prize awarded by the American PhilosophicalAssociation.

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aid. Some have gone so far as to insist that it is constitutive of first-person au-thority that, normally, sincere present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptionsare not mediated by any inference, perceptual output, or product of any othercognitive process. Davidson, to his credit, is not one of them. He rightly pointsout that, in general, claims made without epistemic support are neither moreprobable nor more trustworthy than claims made with such support, and so “itis a strange idea that” claims made without epistemic support should “carrymore authority than” and “be favored over” claims made with such support.3

The idea that self-ascriptions carry special authority and the idea that self-ascriptions involve no cognitive achievement seem not only independent ofbut also contrary to each other. That at least one of the ideas is false seemsnot only possible but also necessary.

2. The Problem of First-Person Authority

First-person authority raises a philosophical issue. In general, the mere factthat a property is capable of being instantiated by a subject does not confera presumption of truth on his sincere claim that he instantiates it. In general,the mere fact in question does not entitle us to assume in advance that thesubject’s claim is true. It is not necessary that if a person sincerely claims thathis weight, holiday address, or retirement account number is thus and so, thenthere is a legitimate presumption in favor of the claim. Why is the situationany different when the properties are mental?4

But the main reason why there is a problem about first-person authority isthat unless the authority is adequately explained, it will invite skepticism aboutother minds.5 If there is no accounting for the fact that sincere present-tenseintentional-state self-ascriptions carry authority, whereas other-ascriptions donot, then it is a serious possibility that the intentional states that we ascribeto our present selves and the intentional states that we ascribe to others arenot the same sort of state. Likewise, if there is no accounting for the factthat intentional predicates are necessarily presumed to be true of a subjectwhen self-applied in the present indicative, whereas not so when applied tothe subject by another person, then it is a serious possibility that the terms haveneither the same meaning nor the same referent in the first-person and third-person contexts. In light of the insalubrity of skepticism, first-person authoritycannot be deemed a brute fact or left unaccounted for. If first-person authorityis known or reasonably believed to be unexplainable or unexplained, then askeptic is surely justified in asking how we know that intentional predicatesare univocal or unireferential across first-person and third-person contexts andhow we know that intentional ascriptions uttered in the two contexts pertainto the same subject matter.

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3. The Charity-Based Account

What, then, explains first-person authority? What explains the presumptionthat an utterance is true when it is a sincere determinate first-person singu-lar simple present-tense ascription of intentional state? Davidson offers fourdifferent accounts of first-person authority: the charity-based account, thedisquotational account, the intention-centered account, and the reductionistaccount. In his view, each of these accounts would have us trace the sourceof first-person authority to some necessary feature of the interpretation ofspeech.

The charity-based account is as follows. The principle of charity is a con-straint on interpretation. It implies that most of a person’s beliefs must betrue. But if it is necessary that most of a person’s beliefs are true, then it isnecessary that every one of the beliefs is more likely to be true than false.Hence, it is necessary that, for every one of the beliefs, there is a legitimatepresumption that it is true.6

Unfortunately, this account is inadequate. The fact that most of a person’sbeliefs must be true does not mean that most of the person’s beliefs abouthis own present intentional states must be true. Perhaps Davidson intends theprinciple of charity to apply indifferently to a person’s beliefs about his ownpresent intentional states and beliefs about other subject matters.7 But if theprinciple is so applicable, then most members of each of the belief classes mustbe true and the parity would destroy the asymmetry that defines first-personauthority itself.

4. The Disquotational Account

The disquotational account begins with the premise that it is necessary that aspeaker is presumed to know what a sentence means when he utters it, whereasit is not necessary that there is a presumption that an interpreter knows whatthat utterance means. Assuming we know that we hold a sentence true when weutter it, the presumption that we know the meaning of our utterance entails thepresumption that we know that we hold the belief expressed by that utterance.A person holds a sentence true if and only if he believes that the sentence istrue in his language, and the sentence means that so and so is the case in aperson’s language if and only if the sentence is true in his language just ifso and so is the case. Leaving aside all problems arising from substitutionin intensional contexts, if a person holds a sentence true, and if the sentencemeans that so and so is the case in his language, then he believes that so andso is the case. Therefore, the fact that a person knows that he holds a sentencetrue, together with the presumption that he knows that the sentence means thatso and so is the case in his language, raises the presumption that he knows that

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he believes that so and so is the case. Likewise, the fact that a person knowsthat he wants a sentence true, together with the presumption that he knowsthat the sentence means that so and so is the case in his language, raises thepresumption that he knows that he desires that so and so is the case.

But what justifies the initial premise? Davidson’s answer is this. “Thespeaker, after bending whatever knowledge and craft he can to the task ofsaying what his words mean, cannot improve on the following sort of state-ment: ‘My utterance of “Wagner died happy” is true if and only if Wagnerdied happy.’ An interpreter has no reason to assume this will be his best wayof stating the truth conditions of the speaker’s utterance.”8

The disquotational account is unsatisfactory. It is incomprehensive andincomplete. The account is incomprehensive for two reasons. First, it dealswith authoritative self-ascriptions of only intentional states that are verballyexpressed. Second, it deals with authoritative self-ascriptions of only the pres-ence of such intentional states. Davidson does nothing to explain first-personauthority with respect to intentional states that are not verbally expressed.The best he could show by employing the disquotational strategy is this. It isnecessary that, for every sentence that a person utters, if the person knowsthat he holds the sentence true, then there is a legitimate presumption that heknows that he believes that things are thus and so, where the person’s utteranceof the sentence means that things are thus and so and expresses his belief thatthings are thus and so.

Similarly, Davidson does nothing to explain first-person authority with re-spect to the absence of intentional states. The disquotational account proceedsfrom considerations of a speaker’s utterances of sentences that he holds true.But normally such an utterance expresses only the presence of a belief, thecontent of which is what the utterance means in his language. Sometimes suchan utterance arguably expresses the absence of a belief. If the context is clearand there is no chance of being misunderstood, then a single utterance of “Thecat is on the mat” may simultaneously express the presence of a belief that thecat is on the mat and the absence of a belief that the cat is in the vat. But in thatcase, the content of the absent belief is not so straightforwardly related to theliteral meaning of the utterance that it will be readily specifiable by just dis-quoting the sentence being uttered. Therefore, the disquotational account doesnothing to explain the presumption that a speaker is right when he sincerelyascribes the absence of a belief, desire, or intention to his present self.

The account is incomplete for two reasons. First, Davidson simply as-sumes that it is necessary that, for every sentence that a person utters, if theperson holds the sentence true, then he knows that he holds the sentence true.9

Davidson answers this objection by conceding that he does nothing to justifythe assumption in question. But he insists that no asymmetry between first-person and third-person ascriptions or perspectives is presupposed becausehe assumes the same for every interpreter of the person involved. Davidson


assumes that it is necessary that, for every sentence that a person utters, if theperson holds the sentence true, then, for every interpreter of the person, theinterpreter knows that the person holds the sentence true.10 This response isinadequate. After all, the second assumption is not only unfounded but alsountrue. There could be an interpreter who is utterly ignorant of the languageand psyche of his subject. Furthermore, in order to establish the first assump-tion, we have to do more than just accept the second assumption. We have toprovide something like an argument for the first assumption or some positivereason to think that it is true. The total lack of rational support for the secondassumption, in and of itself, does not render the first assumption justified.

The second reason for the incompleteness is that Davidson fails to estab-lish the initial premise of the disquotational account. The crucial part of thepremise is that it is necessary that, for every sentence that a person utters, thereis a legitimate presumption that the person knows what the sentence meansin his language. According to Davidson, this holds because the best way fora speaker to state the truth conditions of his own utterances is to disquote thesentences he utters. But Davidson’s reason for the crucial part of the premiseis neither true nor sufficient to justify it.

Disquoting the sentences he utters is not always a speaker’s best way ofstating the truth conditions of his own utterances. When the object languageto which the sentences belong is not a part of the metalanguage that the speakeruses to state their truth conditions, his statements of the form “My utteranceof ‘So and so is the case’ is true if and only if so and so is the case” may notbe true. The reason for this is that the sentence-token used on the right-handside of any such biconditional may not correctly translate the sentence-tokenmentioned on its left-hand side.

But even if the speaker’s metalanguage contains his object language,Davidson’s reason for the crucial part of the initial premise is far from truebecause of the presence of ambiguous expressions, as well as proper namesand indexicals, in natural language. To disambiguate an utterance is to estab-lish a single interpretation for the utterance or determine that the utterancemeans one thing rather than another. The task is much more involved than justdisquoting. As a result, the speaker’s disquotational specification of the truthconditions of his own ambiguous utterances may present lies or insufficientlyilluminating truths. Either case is enough to show that Davidson’s reason forthe crucial part of the initial premise does not hold.

But even if Davidson’s reason for the crucial part of the initial premiseholds, that does not mean that the crucial part of the initial premise itselfholds. Let us consider a speaker most of the terms in whose idiolect are am-biguous. There could be such a speaker because “verbal polysemy, i.e. a word’shaving more than one sense, . . . is the rule rather than the exception in natu-ral language.”11 Since most of the sentences in such a speaker’s idiolect areambiguous, they each can be used to express different statements in different

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contexts. Consequently, it is not necessary that whenever such a speaker dis-quotationally specifies the truth conditions of any one of his utterances, hisspecification should be presumed to be true. It is possible that some suchspecification has at least as much chance of being false as true. Sometimesthe best is not enough.

5. The Intention-Centered Account

The intention-centered account is predicated on the assumption that a speakeris presumed to know what he intends by his words. The account can be re-constructed as follows.12 If a person masters a language, then he normallyexhibits patterns of sounds and marks in conjunction with objects and eventsin such a way that he has reason to believe they are salient to his interlocutor. Ifhe normally applies syntactic tokens of the same type to worldly constituentsof the same sort in the manner described above, then he normally uses hiswords properly. If he uses his words properly, then he is interpretable. If he isinterpretable, then he intends his words to mean certain things. If he intendshis words to mean certain things, then he is presumed to know the content ofhis linguistic intention. If he is presumed to know the content of his linguisticintention, then he is presumed to know what his words mean. After all, whathe intends his words to mean is, in general, what they mean themselves. Thus,a competent speaker is presumed to know what his words mean.

The intention-centered account is sadly incomplete. Davidson simply as-sumes that if a person intends his words to mean certain things, then he ispresumed to know the content of his linguistic intention. This assumptioncannot be made without begging the question at issue. The question whethersomeone intends to mean that so and so is the case by uttering such and sucha sentence depends in part on whether he wants to mean that so and so isthe case and believes that by uttering the sentence he will mean that so andso is the case. It also depends on whether the belief and desire have caused,in the right way, a desire to utter the sentence. Nothing seems to prevent usfrom assuming an account of first-person authority with respect to beliefs anddesires once we assume one with respect to linguistic intentions. But if weassume this, then, given the central roles that belief and desire play in ourpsychological economies, whatever explanation of first-person authority thatwe manage to come up with will be hopelessly partial.

6. The Reductionist Account

In his first full-fledged paper on first-person authority, Davidson writes, “Ob-viously the speaker may fail [to be interpretable] from time to time; in that


case we can say if we please that he does not know what his words mean.”13

Davidson’s guardedness aside, the remark suggests that failure to be inter-pretable is tantamount to failure to know what our words mean. This in turnsuggests that being interpretable is tantamount to knowing what our wordsmean, whence we can explain the presumption that a competent speakerknows what his words mean provided that the first three statements of theintention-centered account are true. Davidson’s remark thus hints at yet an-other strategy for explaining first-person authority. The strategy is carriedout in a later paper where he equates knowing what we mean with beinginterpretable. Davidson contends that “unless there is a presumption thatthe speaker knows what she means, i.e. is getting her own language right,there would be nothing for an interpreter to interpret. To put the matter an-other way, nothing could count as someone regularly misapplying her ownwords.”14

Unfortunately, Davidson gives no reason for equating the two. In any event,that is a mistake, one due to conflating two sorts of failure. A speaker failsto be interpretable on an occasion only if the utterance that he makes onthat occasion is not meaningful. By contrast, his failure to know what hiswords mean presupposes their meaningfulness. In light of this, it is a mistaketo equate being interpretable with knowing what we mean. It is a mistakealso because a speaker could intend his words to mean certain things withoutknowing the existence or character of his intention.

We are not immune to self-cognitive deficiency. Failure of self-knowledgemay result from error, from ignorance, or from a lack of justification. Erroris possible because we may misperceive or misconstrue elements of our ownmotivational structures, especially when something of great practical impor-tance is at stake or otherwise involved. Those of us with a meager capacityfor self-criticism may sincerely yet falsely avow self-inflating motives anddisavow self-deflating ones. But we do not have to engage in self-deception inorder to be fallible about aspects of our own intentional psychology. We maybe wrong about them simply because we are confused, forgetful, or inattentive.Because of these factors, we may also be ignorant of the mental states thatcause and rationalize our own behavior. It is worth noting that both Freudiantheorists and cognitive scientists cheerfully postulate content-bearing statesthat fail to intimate themselves to the persons who have them. They contendthat a vast range of behavior, in particular anomalous behavior, could be ex-plained within the framework of intentional psychology only by reference tounconscious intentional states, intentional states of whose existence or char-acter the persons are unaware. Finally, failure of self-knowledge may stemfrom a lack of justification. A self-belief hardly qualifies as self-knowledgewhen it is nothing but a shot in the dark or based on exiguous or selectiveevidence.

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7. Determinateness Considerations

Davidson fails to explain first-person authority. This is not surprising sincethere is no such thing as first-person authority. The problem of first-personauthority is based on a false assumption. The problem has no solution andmay instead be dissolved as follows. First-person authority is characterized interms of the apparently legitimate presumption rule that, given that a personsincerely ascribes a particular intentional state to his present self, we shalltreat his utterance as if it were true unless we have sufficient evidence to thecontrary. According to the best account of presumption available, there areonly four types of consideration that can contribute to the justification of apresumption rule: determinateness, procedural, inductive-probabilistic, andvalue-related considerations.15 But these types of consideration individuallyand collectively fail to make it the case that it is necessary that the presump-tion rule characterizing first-person authority is justified. Hence, first-personauthority does not exist.

Sometimes the need for some presumption rule to operate in a certaintype of situation leaves little real choice in the matter of which rule shouldbe adopted.16 For instance, the presumption in favor of equal treatment isdeterminate, whereas the counterpresumption in favor of unequal treatment isso indeterminate that it is useless unless we know the extent of similarity anddifference among the individuals involved. Likewise, the presumption thatfluent speakers mean what they say is determinate and useful, whereas anypositive counterpresumption is so indeterminate that it is useless as a guidefor action.

It may be thought that determinateness considerations favor the presump-tion defining first-person authority over its counterpresumption. The presump-tion defining first-person authority is a presumption of truth, whereas its coun-terpresumption is a presumption of falsity. Since it is constitutive of truth andfalsity that there is only one way to be right but many ways to be wrong, thepresumption that a self-ascription is true is determinate and useful, whereasthe presumption that the self-ascription is false is so indeterminate that it isuseless as a guide for action.

We ought to resist this line of thinking. The presumption of truth thatdefines first-person authority is said to apply to every sincere present-tenseself-ascription, whether the self-ascription is a claim about the presence orabsence of a particular intentional state. But the presumption of truth is deter-minate and the presumption of falsity indeterminate only if the self-ascriptionexemplifies the affirmative form “I am in such and such an intentional state.”Just the opposite happens when it exemplifies the negative form “I am not insuch and such an intentional state.” If a person sincerely claims that he is notin a particular intentional state, the presumption that the claim is false is de-terminate, whereas the presumption that the claim is true is so indeterminate


that it is useless as a guide for action. Determinateness considerations thusfavor neither the presumption defining first-person authority nor its counter-presumption. Even if there is a recognizable need for some presumption ruleto operate in the type of situation where the agent is constrained to act, wherehis choice of the course of action depends on whether he considers a certainself-ascription true or false, and where all in all he has no reason to considerit one way or the other, the question of which presumption should be adoptedremains unanswered.

8. Procedural Considerations

Some presumptions have no reason for existence save a purely proceduralconvenience. Such a presumption is created only to satisfy the need to avoid orcut through a procedural impasse in a situation where an agent is constrainedto act, where his choice of the course of action depends on whether in hisview a certain state of affairs obtains, and where all in all he has no reason tobelieve either way. Other presumptions owe their existence to considerationsof the comparative convenience with which the disputing parties can producecompetent evidence about the existence or nonexistence of the presumed fact.Such a presumption springs from two convictions. First, the party enjoying thebetter access to the evidence about the existence or nonexistence of the factat issue should be called upon to come forward with the relevant evidence,because considerations of such evidence help the neutral triers of fact reach theright verdict. Second, one reasonable way to make the more privileged partyto try to meet this requirement is to insist on some suitable presumption thatwould serve to further the case of the less privileged party if left unrebutted,because a rational agent should make decisions by maximizing expected utilityand act accordingly. A caveat, however, is in order. Access is a matter of degreeand having some access to a domain does not guarantee the reliability of theinformation gained via that access.

Presumptions of these types have come to be known as procedural pre-sumptions and considerations that give rise to them procedural considerations.There are two types of procedural consideration: considerations of procedu-ral convenience and considerations of comparative access. Considerations ofprocedural convenience concern the need to avoid a procedural impasse in asituation where an agent is constrained to act while his deliberation process isstill unresolved. Considerations of comparative access concern the questionof which party is so privileged with respect to the evidence of the fact at issuethat we should impose on the person the burden of proof by charging theperson with the task of producing evidence sufficient to justify some suitablefinding in his favor. One example of a procedural presumption, based on con-siderations of procedural convenience, would be that the death of a person

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who has disappeared and has not been heard from for more than seven yearsoccurred on the first day of the eighth year. Another example of a proceduralpresumption, based on considerations of comparative access, would be thatthe last carrier was responsible for the damage when freight was delivered ingood condition to the initial carrier, transported over connecting roads, anddelivered in bad condition to the consignee by the final carrier.

That a presumption arises from procedural considerations does not meanthat the considerations rationally justify the presumption. Indeed, we cannotrationally justify any presumption that has no reason for existence save apurely procedural convenience. It is true of all such presumptions that we canjust as effectively avoid the very impasses that the presumptions enable usto avoid by presuming the opposite. Consequently, the presumption definingfirst-person authority, and thus the authority itself, cannot be rationally jus-tified by considerations of procedural convenience. Nor can it be rationallyjustified by considerations of comparative access. There is an empirical factthat, in general, it is easier for a person to gather or receive information abouthis own present intentional states than for others to do the same. Whetherevery person is reliable and, if so, necessarily reliable in relation to the subjectmatter of present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptions, it seems like a surething that, as a matter of empirical fact, a person generally enjoys better accessto aspects of his own present intentional psychology than others do. In viewof this, if there were a recognizable need for a presumption rule in the area ofevaluating self-ascriptions, then considerations of comparative access wouldmake it plausible that here the presumption has to be one to the effect thatself-ascriptions are false, contrary to the presumption defining first-person au-thority. If, as is the case, the person himself is in a better position than othersto produce competent evidence of the facts about his own mental life, then heshould be called upon to come forward with the evidence sufficient to justifysome suitable finding in his favor. We should impose on him the burden ofproof by charging him with the task of rebutting some appropriate presump-tion. This, together with the assumption that there is a recognizable need for apresumption rule in the area of evaluating self-ascriptions, means that the ap-propriate presumption has to be one to the effect that self-ascriptions are false.

It is not being claimed that the presumption in question is justified. Con-sideration of comparative access is only one of the two types of proceduralconsideration and procedural consideration is only one of the four types ofjustificatory consideration. As a result, the presumption may not have the up-per hand once all types of consideration are considered. Moreover, it is notobvious that there should be any presumption rule in the area of evaluating self-ascriptions in the first place. What is being claimed is this. The presumptiondefining first-person authority is not justified, not even partially justified, byconsiderations of comparative access, because such considerations actuallyfavor its counterpresumption. Since it is not justified by considerations of


procedural convenience either, the presumption is not justified by proceduralconsiderations.

9. Inductive-Probabilistic Considerations

Inductive-probabilistic considerations are the kind of justificatory consider-ation that exhibits the elements and structure of an inductive-probabilisticargument. The crucial premise of the argument is that the probability of thepresumed fact-type given the presumption-raising fact-type is greater thanone-half. The basic idea behind inductive-probabilistic considerations is that,given the presumption-raising fact, the presumed fact so often obtains that,in the absence of sufficient countervailing evidence, it should be taken forgranted. That two people living together as man and wife are man and wifeand that a child born in lawful wedlock is legitimate are presumptions widelythought to be justified by inductive-probabilistic considerations.

First-person authority is not explained by inductive-probabilistic consider-ations. Since first-person authority is explained by such considerations onlyif it is logically necessary that, for any person, whenever he sincerely ascribesan intentional state to his present self, the self-ascription is more likely tobe true than false, it is enough to show that it is logically possible that thereexists some person some of whose sincere present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptions is not more likely to be true than false. It seems that no contradictionis derivable from any correct and complete description of a first-personallynonauthoritative agent such as the one just described. It is surely conceivablethat such an agent exists and conceivability constitutes at least prima facie evi-dence for possibility. We can imagine such an agent because we can imagine anagent who is so self-deceived, hypnotized, drugged, brain-damaged, perplexed,forgetful, anxious, fatigued, tense, irritable, restless, hypersensitive, overex-cited, distracted, or inattentive that his sincere present-tense intentional-stateself-ascriptions are unreliable. Nor is it necessary that, for every nonauthor-itative agent, his existence and character violates some of the laws of naturethat govern the natural phenomena of the actual world. It is hard to see thatthe nomological structures of our world must always be altered by the mereaddition of a nonauthoritative agent, granted that our world does not containany agent of this kind at the start. We can imagine a world that contains suchan agent and has exactly the same set of natural laws as our world. A nonau-thoritative agent is therefore not only logically but also physically possible.As a matter of fact, such an agent may even be a product of evolution.

In The Fragmentation of Reason, Stephen Stich observes that “strategies ofinference or inquiry that do a good job at generating truths and avoiding false-hoods may be expensive in terms of time, effort, and cognitive hardware.”17

Stich goes on to contend: “If the costs are very high, and if there is an

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alternative available that does a less good, but still acceptable, job of gen-erating truths and avoiding falsehoods, then natural selection may prefer it.”18

Stich’s contention is that if implementing a cognitive strategy in such a wayas to generate a high proportion of truths makes excessive demands on theattention, memory, time, physical strength, emotional intelligence, and othercritical resources of an intentional system, as running a program designed toproduce reliable mental self-reports may very well do, then, from the stand-point of survival and reproductive success, it may be prudent to trade offaccuracy for quickness and economy. The upshot of these reflections is thatnatural selection may well select an unreliable system over a reliable systemas long as the unreliable system has a higher level of overall fitness. Thus, it isconsistent with the theory of evolution that some organism, on the whole andin the long run, fails to produce more true self-beliefs than false self-beliefs.

Once we adopt a naturalistic perspective on the human mind, we will seethat the capacity for forming first-person present-tense thoughts about in-tentional states has a developmental feature. Virtually all of the intentionalstates of normal infants just dwell in the deep, dark, preconscious recesses oftheir psyches, whereas such states tend to intimate themselves more readilyand more often to normal adults, with the tendency being especially strongamong adults determined in self-reflectional endeavor. In addition, normalchildren are unreliable in reporting their own intentional states, whereas nor-mal adults are more reliable, with the reliability being especially high amongthose skilled in the art of self-meditation. These empirical realities indicatethat self-ascriptive or introspective capacity emerges with brain complexityand maturation and is something we gradually acquire, cultivate or neglect,and exercise with continuously varying degrees of success or failure. Theyindicate, moreover, that to have such capacity, we do not have to have theability to exercise the capacity so well that we ensure that our self-ascriptionscome out more likely to be true than false.

These conclusions are much more plausible than their contradictories. Toembrace the contradictories would amount to imposing too stringent a re-quirement on self-ascriptive capacity and its acquisition. There is no similarrequirement on the acquisition of other cognitive capacities such as memoryand perception. A perceiver need not be a reliable source of information aboutthe external world. A memorizer need not be a reliable recorder of past events.To embrace the contradictories would also amount to insisting that our acqui-sition of self-ascriptive capacity, as well as our acquisition of the ability toself-ascribe reliably, is not gradual but sudden. The problem is that the magicalemergence of the capacity and the ability in every one of us, our self-reflectingancestors included, cannot be explained by reference to our first-order inten-tional states and their causal powers. This would suggest stark discontinuitiesin the laws of nature, if not straightforward violations of them. It would runcounter to the fact that we are naturally evolved self-cognizing beings.


In Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett writes, “Since there hasn’t al-ways been human consciousness, it has to have arisen from prior phenomenathat weren’t instances of consciousness.”19 If consciousness is an emergentproperty, one that comes into being when things that do not instantiate it areof the right sort and interact in the right way, then the same arguably appliesto self-consciousness. But the fact that we acquire self-ascriptive capacityand come to self-ascribe reliably only in a gradual manner has the followingconsequences. First, it is not true of every one of us, especially during our cog-nitively formative years, that our sincere present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptions are more likely to be true than false. Second, such not being the casedoes not threaten our status as bona fide self-ascribers. First-person authorityis not justified by inductive-probabilistic considerations. It is only contingentthat an agent possessed of self-ascriptive capacity self-ascribes reliably.

10. Value-Related Considerations

Let us consider the presumption of innocence. As the United States SupremeCourt has stated, “The principle that there is a presumption of innocence infavor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, andits enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminallaw.”20 The presumption of innocence provides a vital protection against thepowerful resources of the State. It strikes a fair balance between the rightsof individuals suspected by the State of criminal conduct and the right ofthe State to investigate and prosecute those suspected of criminal activity.But the provision of such protection is not the chief reason we adopt thepresumption of innocence in the American justice system; the chief reason issimply that proceeding as if a defendant were innocent when he is guilty ismore tolerable, on grounds of the moral values we hold or the social goals wehope to achieve, than proceeding as if he were guilty when he is innocent. Interms of the moral values reflected in the American Constitution, the mistakeof acquitting a guilty person is more tolerable than the mistake of convictingan innocent person.21

The presumption of innocence is thus taken to be justified by value-relatedor normative considerations. In general, considerations of this kind have to dowith two questions. From the standpoint of morality or prudence, is proceedingas if so and so were the case when it is not more acceptable than proceedingas if so and so were not the case when it is? From the standpoint of morality orprudence, does the institution and operation of the presumption that so and so isthe case have a better regulative effect on people’s behavior than the institutionand operation of the counterpresumption that so and so is not the case?22

With respect to the presumption defining first-person authority, value-related considerations concern two questions. From the standpoint of morality

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or prudence, is proceeding as if a sincere present-tense intentional-stateself-ascription were true when it is false more acceptable than proceeding asif it were false when it is true? From the standpoint of morality or prudence,does the institution and operation of the presumption defining first-personauthority have a better regulative effect on people’s behavior than the institu-tion and operation of its counterpresumption? If both questions are correctlyanswered in the affirmative, the presumption defining first-person authorityis normatively justified. If it is necessary that the presumption is normativelyjustified, first-person authority is justified by value-related considerations.

But value-related considerations do not make any contribution to the justi-fication of first-person authority. From the standpoint of morality or prudence,neither one of the above questions has to be answered affirmatively. Let usconsider prudence. Probably the most promising prudence-based proposalis that the presumption defining first-person authority helps to produce andprolong a stable social environment and thus can be justified on the groundsthat it promotes social utility. Victoria McGeer, a champion of this approach,argues as follows: “Why is it necessary for us to develop the . . . competen-cies involved in treating our first-person psychological claims as claims thatcommit us to act in . . . sense-making ways [ways that ensure a fit between thepsychological profile we create of ourselves in first-person utterances and theacts our self-attributed intentional states are meant to predict and explain]? Isuggest . . . it is necessary for ensuring that we shall act in ways that createand maintain a stable social environment – that is, one in which each of uscan, from the intentional stance, predict and explain what others will do withreasonable success.”23 McGeer’s comment is reminiscent of Crispin Wright’sfamous observation that “taking the self-conceptions of others seriously, inthe sense of crediting their beliefs about their intentional states, as expressedin their avowals, with authority, will almost always tend to result in an over-all picture of their psychology which is more illuminating – as it happens,enormously more illuminating – than anything which might be gleaned byrespecting all the data except the subject’s self-testimony.”24

Given that the presumption defining first-person authority promotes socialutility whereas its counterpresumption does not, the presumption apparentlyhas a better regulative effect on people’s behavior than its counterpresumptionand proceeding as if a sincere present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptionwere true when it is false seems more acceptable than proceeding as if itwere false when it is true. This does not mean that the presumption defin-ing first-person authority is justified by prudential considerations. Indeed theprudence-based approach is fundamentally flawed. The primary problem withthe approach is that in judging the value of the presumption, for the purposeof establishing its validity, McGeer and Wright are all the while assumingthe presumption to be valid. If the presumption is thought to be invalid, thenthe estimate of its worth would be quite different. If we believe that sincere


present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptions are neither systematically re-liable nor presumably accurate, then surely we would not judge that self-ascriptions are authoritative or that taking them as authoritative will likelyresult in a more illuminating picture of the subject’s psychology and behav-ior. All that McGeer and Wright succeed in proving is that the presumptiondefining first-person authority contributes to the general good only if thispresumption, which stands in need of justification, is justified.

Prudential considerations thus fail to make any contribution to the justi-fication of first-person authority. Moral considerations fare no better. Fromthe standpoint of morality, neither one of the key questions has to be an-swered affirmatively. Taking only the first question, let us suppose that itdoes have to be answered in the affirmative. Then it is necessary that thereexists some justifiable principle of morality, or some set of such principles,according to which proceeding as if a sincere present-tense intentional-stateself-ascription were true when it is false is more acceptable than proceedingas if it were false when it is true. If in all possible worlds there were somesuch principle, then the fact that it is a principle of morality would mean thatit would be very unlikely that the principle would include any specific refer-ence to sincere present-tense intentional-state self-ascriptions. No principleof morality observed in any culture or advanced by any philosopher includessuch a reference. But if a principle of morality included no such reference yetsomehow allowed us to justify the presumption that a sincere present-tenseintentional-state self-ascription is true, then it would be very likely that theprinciple was so fundamental that it also allowed us to justify the presumptionthat a sincere judgment of any other kind is true. But the parity would destroythe asymmetry that defines first-person authority itself.

There is a heavy dialectical burden imposed on philosophers who aim tojustify first-person authority by moral considerations. The burden consists inestablishing two claims. One claim is that it is necessary that the ascriptionof moral responsibility and the administration of social justice are intelligiblewhether determinism is true or not. The other claim is that it is necessary thatthe proposed principle of morality or justice is rational, objective, practical,absolute, binding on all self-reflective agents, and indefeasible by any normthat governs personal conducts or public institutions. However, in view of var-ious arguments for determinism, for the incompatibility between this doctrineand any robustly positive conception of morality or justice, for moral nihilism,skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and particularism, and for holism aboutvalue and about norm, the burden of proof that proponents of the moral strategyhave to carry is so oppressive that the suggestion that first-person authority isnot going to be justified by moral considerations seems eminently reasonableand inviting indeed.

The upshot of the preceding considerations is that the presumption ruledefining first-person authority is not justified by any one of the four types of

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justificatory consideration. Nor is the presumption rule justified by any com-bination of the four types in light of the fact that they are pairwise analyticallyand existentially distinct. First-person authority does not exist. The problemof explaining it should be dissolved.25

Notes

1. Donald Davidson, “Davidson, Donald,” in Samuel Guttenplan, ed., A Companion to thePhilosophy of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 234.

2. See Davidson, “First Person Authority,” Dialectica 38 (1984), p. 101.3. See Davidson, “First Person Authority,” p. 103; and “Knowing One’s Own Mind,” Pro-

ceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60 (1987), p. 442.4. Cf. Crispin Wright et al, “Introduction,” in Crispin Wright et al., eds., Knowing Our Own

Minds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1.5. See Davidson, “First Person Authority,” p. 101; “Knowing One’s Own Mind,” p. 442; and

“Davidson, Donald,” p. 235.6. See Davidson, “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” in Ernest LePore, ed.,

Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford:Blackwell, 1986), pp. 314 & 319.

7. See Davidson, “Hume’s Cognitive Theory of Pride,” in Davidson, Essays on Actions andEvents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 290.

8. Davidson, “First Person Authority,” pp. 110–111.9. Cf. Bernhard Thole, “The Explanation of First Person Authority,” in Ralf Stoecker, ed.,

Reflecting Davidson (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), p. 239.10. See Davidson, “Reply to Bernhard Thole,” in Ralf Stoecker, ed., Reflecting Davidson,

p. 250.11. L. Jonathan Cohen, “A Problem about Ambiguity in Truth-Theoretical Semantics,” Analysis

45.3 (1985), p. 131.12. See Davidson, “First Person Authority,” p. 111.13. Ibid.14. Davidson, “Knowing One’s Own Mind,” p. 456.15. See Edna Ullmann-Margalit, “On Presumption,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983).16. Ibid., p. 161.17. Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 61.18. Ibid.19. Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1991), p. 171.20. Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 453 (1895).21. See ibid.22. See Ullmann-Margalit, “On Presumption,” p. 161.23. McGeer, “Is ‘Self-Knowledge’ an Empirical Problem? Renegotiating the Space of Philo-

sophical Explanation,” Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996), p. 511.24. Wright, “Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy of Mind: Sensation, Privacy, and Intention,”

Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989), p. 632. See also Richard Rorty, “Incorrigibility as theMark of the Mental,” Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970), pp. 414 & 416.

25. I would like to thank David Beisecker, Akeel Bilgrami, Haim Gaifman, Erin Hamilton,David Harden, Arpy Khatchirian, Thomas Magnell, Achille Varzi, and David Webermanfor their helpful comments on an earlier draft. I would also like to thank Nhi Huynh forher constant support and encouragement.

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