AWARENESS AND AUTHORITY:
THE STRUCTURE OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Fred Dretske
I have lately (Dretske 2003a, 2003b, 2003c and forthcoming) been advancing a view
about self-knowledge that forty years ago I would have thought implausible. Maybe even a
little silly. Nonetheless, here I am, once again, promoting it. Why? Not because of any
sudden revelation or insight into the nature of knowledge or character of mind. No, I defend
it because over the years I have developed a number of commitments—all of which seem
quite reasonable to me--that lead, irresistibly, to the conclusion that although we have direct
awareness of and, therefore, a unique authority about, what is in our mind, about what we
experience, think, and feel, we enjoy no special access to or authority about the fact that we
have a mind—to the fact that we actually have thoughts, feelings and experiences.
So I thought it might be worth describing how I got here, what led me to this bizarre
view. If there is something wrong with my reasoning, or if some of my commitments are not
as irresistible as I take them to be, I hope someone will point this out. It might save me the
embarrassment of defending this view in the future.
Let me be clear, though, about the view I mean to be defending. It is not the denial
that we know we have thoughts and feelings. It is the denial that we have a way of knowing
this not available to others, a kind of awareness of or access to our thoughts and feelings that
gives us a special authority about the fact that we have them. You know you have thoughts
and feelings, yes, but you know that your spouse, children, friends and colleagues have them
2
too. And they know you have them. So knowledge is not the issue. It is the source of this
knowledge. Where does it come from?
Although I spoke above of thoughts, feelings, and experiences, I will here focus on
current conscious thoughts where a thought (that P) is construed broadly enough to include
any propositional attitude having P as its content in which the truth of P is accepted but not
required. So believing and judging (as well as thinking in its ordinary sense) that P are ways
of thinking that P in this enlarged sense, but knowing, remembering, and seeing that P (since
they require the truth of P) are not. Neither are wanting, hoping and doubting that P since
the truth of P is not thereby accepted. I believe the argument can be generalized, but the
effort to make the general case would entangle me in too many troublesome details (for an
attempt to deal with some of these details see Dretske 2003a).
1. Self-Knowledge.
The view I am promoting is a modest form of skepticism. Perhaps it should not
be called skepticism at all since it does not deny the existence of self-knowledge. It only
challenges a widely accepted view about the source of this knowledge. I, nonetheless,
call it conciliatory skepticism. It is conciliatory in its willingness to accept the existence
of self-knowledge, but skeptical about a common picture of where this knowledge comes
from. To set the problem, then, I begin by conceding that:
(1) Those who understand what thinking is and are thus able to think they
think know they think.
This is not a claim I expect much debate about. There may be skeptics who will quarrel
about it, but most people, I assume, will find it laughably obvious. So I will not waste
time defending it. I merely point out that the claim to self-knowledge is, as it must be,
3
restricted to those who are conceptually developed enough to believe they think. There
are those—young children, for instance—who think but who do not think (i.e., believe)
they think.1 They do not, therefore, know they think. But those of us who understand
what thinking is (well enough anyway to think we think) know we do. What is at issue,
once again, is not that we know it, but how we know it.
A word of clarification about (1): it concedes knowledge to those able to think they
think. The thought that one thinks is, of course, a very special kind of thought. It is selfverifying. If I think I think I have to be right. My thinking it makes it so. But if you think
I think, you can be wrong. Your thinking it doesn’t make it so. So my thought that I think
is infallible in the way that your thought that I think isn’t. This is clearly true, but the truth
of (1) is not to be interpreted as deriving from the self-verifying character of these higherorder thoughts. That is not the explanation of why (1) is true. Thinking you think would
be a way of demonstrating that you think if you had a way of knowing you had these selfverifying thoughts, yes, but that doesn’t represent a way of coming to know you think. It
assumes you already know it. It merely pushes the question up one level. How do you
know you think you think?2
1
Or so developmental psychologists tell us: see Astington 1993, Baron-Cohen 1995,
Bartsch and Wellman 1995, Carpendale & Lewis 2006, Flavell, Miller, P. & Miller, S.
1993, Flavell 2003 and Gopnik 1993. The developmental transition (to understanding
what thinking is) is gradual and indeterminate, but for the sake of brevity I speak of it as
occurring somewhere between the ages of three and four years. All that is important for
my purposes is that children think before they (are able to) think they think. That much
seems incontestable.
2
For the same objection to the self-verification of reflexive thoughts as a source of selfknowledge see Brian Loar (1994: 64) and the discussion in Bernard Kobes’ (2003: 203205).
4
There may, of course, be those (reliability theorists?) who will argue that it isn’t the
knowledge that we have self-verifying thoughts (that we think) that gives us knowledge that
we think. That, obviously, would be circular. It is, rather, the mere existence of these selfverifying thoughts. Since they are guaranteed to be true, they are perfectly reliable—in fact,
absolutely infallible--guides to truth. This, and this alone, qualifies the belief that one thinks
as knowledge.
This is too simplistic a view of knowledge to spend time arguing about. Aside from
obvious objections involving necessary truths (belief in which enjoy a rock solid guarantee),
there are contingent truths belief in which are perfectly reliable for the same reason. That
doesn’t make them knowledge. The fact that carbon is essential for life and life is necessary
for belief—thus making the belief that carbon exists self-verifying—surely wouldn’t, all by
itself, make a belief that carbon exists knowledge. Or so I shall assume.
So (1) is not true in virtue of the self-verifying character of the thought that one
thinks. 3 You can’t go wrong in thinking you think, yes, so if you think you think you are
certainly right. But this indisputable fact leaves open the question of how (or even whether)
you know you think? There may be something about the process by means of which one
acquires the concept of thought—acquires, that is, the resources for thinking one thinks--that
automatically promotes a belief that one thinks to the rank of knowledge--thereby
3
There are passages in “Individualism and Self-Knowledge” (1988) where Tyler Burge
seems to suggest that it is the self-verifying character of cogito beliefs that makes them
knowledge (e.g., p. 649, 658), but he later (Burge 1996) makes clear that he thinks it is the
role such beliefs play in making possible critical reasoning that underlies our (knowledgeconferring) entitlement to these beliefs.
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explaining why (1) is true--but if this is so, we want to know what that is. The fact that the
belief is self-verifying doesn’t tell us.
2. Awareness of Current Thoughts.
We are aware of our currently conscious thoughts in a way that gives us authority
about what we think. We may not be infallible. We may sometimes be wrong, sometimes
uncertain, and at other times we may have to make up our mind about what exactly we
think, but the fallibility, uncertainty and indeterminacy that characterizes so much of our
thinking in no way challenges our authority when we are certain about what we think.
When the magician, in the midst of a card trick, asks the young lady to think of a card,
the lady, surely, is the authority about what card she is thinking of. The trick falls flat if
the magician, by way of explaining his failure to produce the right card, accuses the lady
of being mistaken about what card she is thinking of. Sorry! That is not an option. The
lady knows in a way the magician does not what card she is thinking of. If he wants to
know what card that is, he has to ask her. He can’t tell her.
Privileged access to one’s thoughts doesn’t mean one has exclusive access to them,
but it is obviously an enormous advantage. I can find out what you think, but most of my
ways of finding this out depend on you already knowing what you think. You can tell me
what you think. I can read your secret diary. Or I can observe your behavior. Surely you
wouldn’t be taking your umbrella unless you thought it might rain. You, though, have a
kind of access to information about what you think that I don’t have.
6
My second concession, then, is merely an expression of the widely (universally?)
accepted idea that we all enjoy a kind of privileged access to, and consequent authority
about, our currently conscious thoughts.4
(2) One has unique access to one’s currently conscious thoughts, and this
access gives one authority on (and is the source of one’s knowledge of)
what one is presently thinking.
This, though, sounds like a damaging admission for me to make. It appears to be an
admission that the self-knowledge described in (1) has its source in the privileged access
described in (2). Isn’t this exactly what I am denying?
No it isn’t. (1) and (2) are perfectly consistent with the denial that our unique
access to our own thoughts, an access that makes us authoritative about their content,
about what we think, is the (or even a) source for the knowledge that we think. The
following section explains why this is so.
3. Forms of Awareness.
The conciliatory skeptic denies neither (1) nor (2). What he denies is the connection
between them. He denies that your unique access to your own thoughts, a form of awareness
that makes you authoritative about what you think, is the source of your knowledge that you
think.
The point the skeptic is making here is really quite simple. It is merely that:
4
I restrict myself to currently conscious thoughts—the only ones we have much authority
about. One clearly doesn’t enjoy such authority on one’s past thoughts, and it seems clear
that there are a good many dispositional beliefs one is not conscious of having. Those who
are surprised to hear that Los Angeles is east of Reno, Nevada, for instance, betray a tacit
belief that Los Angeles is west of Reno. I found out I believed Los Angeles was west of
Reno when I found out it wasn’t.
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(3) Awareness of X can give one knowledge of X without being the (or even a)
source for one’s knowledge (if one has it) that it is X
One can be aware of (see) a counterfeit $100 bill and thereby come to know in this way,
by the way it looks, that it has Ben Franklin’s picture on it, and not be able to learn, at
least not in this way, that it is counterfeit. When the forgery is good, knowledge that it is
counterfeit must come from a source other than perception of the counterfeit—the mode
of awareness that gives you knowledge of the counterfeit. Maybe someone (the person
who printed it) tells you it is counterfeit. Or you read the analysis of treasury department
experts. If so, then knowledge that it is counterfeit has a different source than perceptual
knowledge of the counterfeit. The same is true of things (and this is a lot of things) that
fail to reveal to those aware of them (in the mode in which they are aware of them) what
they are. Seeing spies and widows is not normally a mode of awareness of these people
that tells you what they are. Awareness of X, whether this is a spy or a thought, is one
thing. Awareness (knowledge) that it is X is quite another. So the kind of privileged
awareness acknowledged in (2), must be carefully distinguished from the knowledge
(fact-awareness) conceded in (1).
Wait a minute! (2) does not merely acknowledge a unique access to one’s own
thoughts. It concedes that this access gives one a special authority about the thoughts. It
concedes, furthermore, that this awareness is the source of one’s knowledge of what one
thinks. Isn’t this exactly what is being denied?
No it is not. A conciliatory skeptic does not deny that your awareness of your own
thoughts gives you authority on, and knowledge of, them. Of course it does. It makes you an
authority on their content, on what you think. It is the source of your knowledge (if you have
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it; more of this in a moment) of what you are thinking. Just as the mode of awareness that
provides you with information about whose picture is on the counterfeit bill doesn’t give you
the information that it is a counterfeit bill, the mode of awareness that tells you what you are
thinking doesn’t—or needn’t--reveal that you think it.5
Consider the following analogy. It is a bit of a cartoon, but it makes the essential
structure clear when one is dealing (as we are with thought) with awareness of an abstract
object:
The Philosophical Gazette, smitten with my deep insights, arranges to publish
everything I write. They give me oral assurances of this, and (let us assume) their word is
gold. On the basis of their assurances, then, I know they publish everything I write. I now
write P. The Gazette promptly publishes it. Given what I have been told, I know they are
publishing P. Yet the way I know what they are publishing is not the way I know they are
publishing it. They told me they were publishing what I write, and it is in virtue of that
knowledge that I can tell (come to know) what they are publishing by observing what I
write. It is vision (together, of course, with what I already know) that tells me what The
Gazette is publishing, but it is audition (hearing and understanding what they tell me) that
how I know that they are publishing it.
Self-knowledge has the same structure. It is a privileged awareness of one’s own
thoughts that gives one authority on what one thinks (thus (2)), but it is not the source of
one’s knowledge that one thinks it. That knowledge has a different source.
5
This may be what Davidson (1988: 664) had in mind when he said in his reply to Burge
that Burge’s argument “. . . shows only that one cannot go wrong in identifying the content
of an attitude, which is not a reason why one cannot go wrong about the existence of the
attitude.” For the same point see, also, Gallois 1996: 168
9
I am not here disputing6 that:
(4) One has to know (by some means or other) that one thinks in order to
know what one thinks.
All I am contesting is that these pieces of knowledge—knowledge of an act’s content
(what one thinks) and knowledge of the act itself (that one thinks it)—necessarily have
the same source. Knowledge that one thinks P may not have its source in introspection
any more than knowledge that The Gazette is publishing P has its source in perception of
what I write even though it is perception of what I write that (given what I know) tells me
what they are publishing.
To better understand this form of awareness, a mode of awareness that makes one an
authority on what one thinks without disclosing—and thus without making one an authority
on--the fact that one thinks it, it is useful to consider people—small children—who are aware
of what they think without knowing they think it. This discussion will also reveal the respects
in which such awareness can be the source of one’s knowledge of content, of what one thinks,
without being the (or even a) source of one’s knowledge that one thinks it.
6
Though I have disputed it (see Dretske 2003b, 2003c). The basis for the dispute involves
the distinction between a referential and an attributive sense of knowing-what. Boër and
Lycan (1986, p. 18) distinguish between a referential and an attributive sense of knowing
who in which a person could, in the referential (but not attributive) sense, know who the
murderer is without knowing she is a murderer. So too, one might argue, a person might
(in the referential sense) know what is on the table without knowing that it is on the table.
Generalizing, then, one might go on to argue that a person might know what he thinks (in
the referential sense of “what I think”) without knowing he thinks it. Such an argument,
though, would take me into controversial waters. It raises issues about closure. Although
willing to abandon closure (see Dretske 2005) I here avoid this controversy by accepting
(4). That is, I grant, for the sake of argument (and to strengthen the case for conciliatory
skepticism), that one cannot know that X (e.g., what one thinks) is Y without knowing of
X both that it is Y and that it is X (i.e., something one thinks).
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4. Unwitting Authority.
Sarah, a normal three-year old, doesn’t think she has thoughts. She doesn’t think she
doesn’t have them either. She doesn’t understand what thinking is. She nonetheless thinks
Daddy is home. That is what she tells Mommy. That is why she runs to open the door when
she hears a car pull in the driveway. What Sarah tells her mother is (what else?) what she
thinks: that Daddy is home. She does not yet understand, though, that what she tells her
mother is what she thinks. Despite this ignorance, her thoughts and desires explain her
behavior in the same way our thoughts and desires explain ours. The only difference is that
Sarah does not yet understand that her behavior can be explained by the fact that, whether or
not her father is home, she thinks he is home. We do.
If Sarah’s behavior is to be explained by what she thinks even when she does not
realize she thinks it, and the behavior in question is a deliberate, purposeful act (Sarah has
and is prepared to give reasons for what she does, and these reasons are, in part, what she
thinks), there must be a sense in which Sarah is aware of what she thinks—that her father is
home—without understanding, without knowing, without being aware, that it is something
she thinks. This is the epistemically uncommitted or neutral form of awareness we spoke
of earlier in our discussion of (3). Just as you can be aware of my cousin (a concrete object)
without realizing it is my cousin, Sarah can be aware of what she thinks (an abstract object)
without realizing it is something she thinks. If Sarah takes this “object” to be anything at
all, she takes it to be (what philosophers would call) a fact: the fact that her father is home.
When it is important to distinguish this non-epistemic form of awareness from knowledge,
from awareness of facts, I will use the term acquaintance. Sarah is aware of, acquainted
with, the proposition that her father is home. She may also, of course, be aware of the fact
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(know) that her father is home. Awareness of the proposition is, if you will, the subjective
component of fact-awareness. Her awareness of the fact that that her father is home is an
awareness of the proposition that he home when this is brought about (by the fact) in the
appropriate (knowledge-making) way.
This talk of propositions as the objects of thought, as things we are aware of, may
appear quaint, maybe a little old fashioned. It certainly is not trouble-free.7 If one deems
the troubles too great, one can substitute the words “content” or “what is thought” for the
word “proposition” in what follows. This won’t change anything. We need some way to
describe a person’s mental state when (like Sarah) she is doing something because of what
she thinks and who would, moreover, give this (what she thinks) as her reason (both as a
justification and an explanation) for acting that way. How, after all, are we to describe
Sarah’s mental state when she tells her mother that her father is home and runs to the door
with a mistaken belief that her father is home? Despite our willingness to describe her this
way (as being aware that her father is home) when her father is home, Sarah is clearly not
aware that her father is home. He isn’t home. So that can’t be what Sarah is aware of. Nor
is she aware that she thinks he is home. She is not aware (doesn’t realize) that she thinks
this. So, it would seem, we are left with what she thinks, the content of her thought, the
proposition that he is home, as what she is conscious of that explains why she behaves (and
7
The troubles involve singular thoughts (e.g., Freddy is home, Santa lives at the North
Pole), de se thoughts (I spilled the sugar) and indexical thoughts (the treasure is buried
here). For useful discussion see Davies (1998), MacLaughlin & Tye (1998), Feit (2006)
and Aune (2008). I ignore these problems here with the conviction (hope?) that whatever
view one has about the objects of thought one will have to find some way of saying what
I here say using the language of propositions. I think the epistemology is independent of
the metaphysics.
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talks) this way.8 We use this proposition to specify what it is like for Sarah at that moment.
If qualia are understood to be how things seem or appear to be, then among Sarah’s qualia
is to be included what she thinks as she runs to the door. Unlike sensory qualia (e.g., the
qualities of the sound produced by the car she hears pulling in the driveway) this aspect of
Sarah’s conscious life takes the form of a proposition: Daddy is home. It now seems to
Sarah as though her father is home. It didn’t seem that way to her a minute ago. So there
has been a change in her overall conscious state when, upon hearing a car in the driveway,
she came to believe that her father was home. 9
It is, moreover, Sarah’s direct awareness of what she thinks, the proposition that
her father is home, that explains her authority on what she thinks. Sarah’s authority is an
“unwitting” authority because she doesn’t know she thinks her father is home. So (given
our earlier stipulation (4): you can’t know what you think without knowing that you think
it) Sarah doesn’t know what she thinks. Nonetheless, although she doesn’t know what she
thinks, she is aware of (acquainted with) what she thinks, and it is her awareness of this
proposition that enables her, without realizing it, to say what she thinks and thus speak her
mind. It is what puts Sarah in a privileged position to explain to others why she ran to the
door. Her reasons for going to the door reveal, quite unerringly, what Sarah thinks. They,
thereby, confirm her unique authority about what is “in” her mind.
8
I will doubtless be accused of committing a version of the sense-datum fallacy--inferring
that if one seems to be aware of a fact, one must be aware of a seeming-fact (a proposition).
I confess to inferring this, but I don’t think it is a fallacy. Nor do I think that it is a fallacy
to conclude that if it seems to you as though you are seeing a cup, you are aware (not see,
but nonetheless aware of) a seeming-cup. One just has to be very careful not to confuse
seeming-cups with cups (or perceptual objects of some kind).
9
For a similar view of “cognitive” qualia see Peacocke (1998: 64) who describes current
conscious thoughts as contributing “to what, subjectively, it is like for the person who
enjoys them.” Also see Flanagan (1992; Chapter 4), and Goldman (1993; section 8).
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This is not the kind of authority Andreas Kemmerling (unpublished) has in mind
when he describes absolute authority as what you possess when anyone who assumes you
are honest cannot rationally doubt P when you say that P but can coherently doubt it when
anyone else (who is assumed to be honest) says it. Kemmerling says, and I agree, that we
each enjoy absolute authority on whether we are currently thinking that P. If I say I think
P, and you regard me as honest, you cannot rationally doubt I think P, but this is something
you might well doubt if someone else you regard as honest told you that I think P. Sarah
doesn’t have this kind of authority because she doesn’t say she thinks her father is home.
She hasn’t yet learned to play that language game. All she says is that he is home, and she
is not an authority on her father’s whereabouts. Nonetheless, if we understand Sarah’s
declarations not as statements about where her father is, but instead as expressions of where
she believes he is—which is, after all, what we know them to be--she enjoys Kemmerlinglike authority. Assuming she is sincere, I cannot rationally doubt she thinks that her father
is home when she tells me he is home--something I can certainly doubt if someone else I
believe to be sincere tells me Sarah believes it.
Sarah has the same authority about what she thinks as I would have about what The
Philosophical Gazette is publishing if they neglect to tell me they are publishing everything
I write. If they don’t inform me of their intentions, I won’t know that they are publishing P
when I write P. Given our earlier concession (you can’t know what they are publishing if
you don’t know they are publishing it) I won’t know what they are publishing despite my
awareness (via my perception of what I write) of what they are publishing. My ignorance
that they publish what I write prevents me from knowing what they publish, but it doesn’t
prevent me from being aware of what they publish, and this awareness gives me unwitting
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authority about what they publish. If you (unlike me) know they publish everything I write,
I will be the person you will consult when you want to know (in advance) what they are
publishing. You cannot, of course, ask me what they are publishing. I won’t know the
answer to that question. Still, my authority on what they are publishing will be evident in
my answers to questions about what I am writing. These answers tell you, quite reliably,
what they are publishing. They give you knowledge of what The Gazette is publishing
despite coming from someone who doesn’t himself know what they are publishing. It is this
kind of authority Sarah has about what she thinks.
Once Sarah learns—from whatever source—that the reason she gives for what she
does is an expression of what she thinks, she will achieve a mature (a “witting”) authority
about what she thinks. She will graduate from mere acquaintance with what she thinks to
knowledge of what she thinks. But until she graduates, we have a mildly paradoxical (to
Cartesians) state of affairs: by listening to and watching her, Mother knows what Sarah is
presently thinking, something that Sarah herself (given her ignorance that she is thinking it)
cannot know.
5. Introspection.
The point we have reached so far is this: for purposes of finding out that you think,
awareness of what you think is of absolutely no help. It is of no help for the same reason
awareness of what was reported on the evening news—that it is snowing in Miami—is of no
help in finding out whether this was reported on the evening news. If you want to find out
whether the Miami snowfall was reported on the news you have to consult something other
than what was reported on the news because that—that it is snowing in Miami-- won’t tell
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you what you want to know. In this respect, propositions are evidentially worthless. They
have no probative value. The fact that it is snowing in Miami might give you a reason to
believe something—that, for instance, it is abnormally chilly in Miami--but the proposition
won’t give you a reason to believe it. It won’t give you a reason to believe anything--even
(if you happen to believe it) that you believe it. This is why awareness of what you think
and the resulting authority this awareness gives you about what is going on in your mind
doesn’t make you an authority on the fact that you have a mind.
It would, for this reason, be a mistake to view introspection as a form of inner sense,
as a perception-like awareness of one’s own thoughts. Sarah is aware of her own thoughts,
yes, but unlike the (often) revealing aspects of ordinary objects (trees, people, automobiles,
houses), the aspect of her thoughts she is aware of, their content, does not disclose, indicate,
or reveal what sort of thing it is. It doesn’t indicate or reveal anything at all. There is, as a
result, no transfer of information. Sarah cannot, therefore, come to know she has thoughts
by awareness of her thoughts in the way she might become aware (know) that the dog is on
the couch by awareness of the dog on the couch. Unlike perception of ordinary concrete
objects (dogs on couches), awareness of one’s own thoughts is not a way of coming to know
one has thoughts anymore than awareness of what The Gazette publishes is a way of coming
to know they publish it. 10
6. Conclusion.
I have conceded in (1) that we know we think, but I have carefully avoided saying, or
even speculating on, how we know it. I have spent my time trying to show that our access to
10
I take this to be merely an additional (probably unnecessary) nail in the coffin
Shoemaker (1996) constructed for perceptual models of introspection.
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our own thoughts, a mode of awareness that given an antecedent knowledge that we think is
the source of our knowledge of what we think, cannot be the source of this knowledge. That,
I submit, is enough to establish what I set out to show: conciliatory skepticism.
By a tendentious choice of examples and analogies, however, I have also suggested
that this disputed knowledge comes from others—from parents, teachers, and friends, those
from whom (or with the help of whom) we came to understand what thinking is.
I have suggested this. I haven’t shown it.
Frankly, I don’t know how we know we think. I don’t even know how we came to
think we think. But I am convinced the answer to how we know it lies in the answer to how
we came to think it—how, that is, we came to understand what thinking is. There must be
something about the process of acquiring this understanding that makes those who undergo
the process not only able to think they think, but to think it for exactly the right reasons, the
kind of reasons that qualifies their thinking it as a form of knowledge.
Other philosophers have had similar hunches. In his well-known study of concepts
(1992; 157-58), for instance, Chris Peacocke, suggests that to possess the concept of thought
and, thus, to be able to think you think, you must be caused to think you think so-and-so by
your thinking so-and-so. If you are not “compelled” to have this 2nd order belief (that you
think so-and-so) by your 1st order thought (that so-and-so)--thereby converting (according to
Peacocke) the 2nd order belief into knowledge--you don’t (yet) have the concept of thought.
You don’t yet fully understand what thinking is. You don’t yet think you think so-and-so.
Acquiring the concept of thought transforms causal arrangements in the head so that when one
thinks one thinks, one is caused to think it in the right (knowledge-making) way.
17
This, of course, would be a neat explanation of (1). It would explain why those who
understand what thinking is know they think. It would not, however, answer the question I
am struggling with here. It would merely transform the way this question is asked. It would
transform the question, “How do we know we think?” into the question, “What made us able
to think we think?” What made four-year old Sarah’s belief that her father is home cause her
to believe she thought he was home (thus giving her knowledge that she believed it) when it
didn’t do so twelve months earlier? Did someone just tell her: Look, Sarah, whenever you
think your father is home, you can (indeed, you are entitled to) believe you think he is home.
Even if someone did say this to Sarah, how was she expected to follow the instructions? She
could follow them, it seems, only if she already had a way of telling whether she thought her
father was home. But if she already had a way of telling this, she didn’t need the instructions.
My own hunch (and it is only a hunch) is that since one is already aware of what one
thinks (see §3 and §4 above) before one knows one thinks it, the key to understanding that one
thinks is learning to identify this “object” as what one thinks. Since (see §5) there is nothing
about this object of awareness that reveals what kind of object it is, identifying it would seem
to involve understanding the complex interplay between explanatory and justifying reasons. 11
When Sarah, mistakenly thinking her father is home, runs to the door to greet him and sees
only the mailman’s truck, her reason for going to the door vanishes. What she was prepared to
give as her reason is no longer available. Her father isn’t there. So when Mother, observing
her disappointment, asks, “Did you think Daddy was home?” Sarah must come to understand
that this proffered explanation for her action, although it somehow involves both Daddy and
11
See Moran’s (2001: §4.5) insightful discussion of an agent’s knowledge of his own
intentional actions and the unique stance this involves on the part of the actor towards his
own beliefs.
18
being home does not require Daddy to be home. Although it somehow involves both her father
and home, it is a fact about her, Sarah, not her father, a fact about her that can explain her rush
to the door wherever Daddy happens to be. This, surely, is critical step in coming to
understand what it is to think Daddy is home.
How one achieves this understanding is a mystery to me. But maybe that is because I
don’t spend much time around three-year olds. I hope the psychologists who do will someday
explain it to me. When they do, they will also explain why (1) is true: why we can’t be made
to understand what thinking is without knowing we think.
19
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