Research

In current work, I am interested in answering questions such as:

  • How do we know our own psychological states?
  • What is the relation between our ability to express our psychological states and our ability to know them?
  • How should we understand failures of self-knowledge (self-ignorance, self-deception, etc.)?
  • What is the role of inner speech in self-knowledge?
  • What is the relationship between inner speech, thought, and self-knowledge of thought?
  • How does the acquisition of inner speech affect development of the self?
  • How should we understand the epistemological aspects of mental illness?

Papers:

"The Role of Inner Speech in Self-Knowledge: Against Neo-Rylean Views" with Dorit Bar-On. (2018) Teorema 37.1: 5-22

Our knowledge of our own present states of mind is thought to be both distinctive and privileged. Gilbert Ryle has famously offered a deflationary account of self-knowledge, arguing that our inner speech episodes (ISEs) could serve as a privileged (and possibly also distinctive) evidential basis for self-knowledge of mental states. Ryle’s account has been, for the most part, rejected. However, several authors have recently attempted to revive the Rylean account by way of explaining the role of inner speech in self-knowledge. In this paper, we critically evaluate two such “neo-Rylean” accounts, arguing that they are unsatisfactory, especially since they cannot account for the privileged character of our self-knowledge of mental states. We extract desiderata for a theory that can adequately explain the significance of ISEs for privileged self-knowledge. We conclude by suggesting that these desiderata favor a neo-expressivist approach to understanding the role of inner speech in self-knowledge.


"The Dual-Aspect Competence Theory of Self-knowledge" (in progress)

The tradition of Virtue Epistemology—in its various strands— has gained traction over the last few decades. Yet, philosophers have not applied a virtue theoretic framework in the domain of knowledge of our occurrent mental states (so-called "basic self-knowledge"). One exception is a suggestion made by Bar-On and Nolfi (2016). They propose that pairing a particular view about avowals, called ‘neo-expressivism’ with a version of virtue epistemology could explain basic self-knowledge. The idea is that the ability we have to express our current states of mind using self-ascriptive linguistic tokens and our ability to possess true beliefs about those states share a ‘psychological seat’. When one successfully avows her mental state, she is, in virtue of the shared psychological seat, guaranteed to manifest an epistemic competence. I develop this idea in ways that depart from the original suggestion in Bar-On and Nolfi. Most notably, I argue that our expressive competence and epistemic competences are not distinct, but are two aspects of a single competence. Thus, I call my view the Dual-Aspect Competence Theory of self-knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that, after a certain point of competence development, we have self-knowledge not only when using self-ascriptive linguistic tokens to express our mental states, but any time we engage in an act of expressing those states. Finally, I discuss how this theory can be used to explain basic self-knowledge even in cases that do not involve overt expression.


"The Role of Inner Speech in Self-knowledge of Thoughts and Other States of Mind" (in progress)

Philosophers argue that our inner speech episodes (ISEs) play a role in knowing our thoughts (instances of thinking that or about p). But we might think that ISEs also play a role in the self-knowledge we have of our other states of mind, such as hoping, fearing, or desiring p. In this paper, I analyze two explanations of the role of inner speech in self-knowledge of thoughts and determine the extent to which they can be extended to explain the role of inner speech in self-knowledge of other mental states. I argue first that the practical self-knowledge theory cannot explain the role of ISEs in self-knowledge of other mental states. Further, I show that it cannot explain why certain classes of ISEs are knowledgeable and others are not (in accordance with our best intuitions). I then turn to the Dual-Aspect Competence Theory. I argue that it can avoid both of the criticisms facing the practical self-knowledge theory. Therefore, I conclude that we should adopt the dual-aspect competence theory of the role of inner speech in self-knowledge of thoughts and other states of mind.

Dissertation:

The Dual-Aspect Competence Theory and the Role of Inner Speech in Basic Self-knowledge

There are all sorts of voices in our heads. We cheer ourselves on, privately express our feelings, remark, plan, complain, and curse. We “hear” the voices of others, such as the nagging voice of a parent or encouraging voice of a mentor. Characters “speak” to us when we silently read a novel and when songs and poems run through our heads. The occurrence of inner speech episodes (ISEs) can also be symptomatic of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Research in cognitive psychology has established that ISEs occur nearly universally and during approximately 25% of our waking lives. In addition it has been shown that ISEs are implicated in cognitive tasks such as memorization, action-planning, and silent reading.[1] Though empirical inquiry can help guide philosophical theorizing, it cannot, by itself, address some of the most pressing questions about the role of inner speech in our mental economy. In particular, it cannot explain the epistemological aspects of that role. We take our ISEs to be an especially reliable, private source for knowledge of our thoughts and other psychological states. After all, as Plato famously stipulated, “…the soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking… to oneself and in silence, not aloud or to another.[2]” Despite the long-standing intuition that our ISEs illuminate our mental goings-on, philosophers have not, until recently, attempted to explain this epistemic dimension of ISEs.

As I argue in Chapters 2 and 3, existing attempts at explaining the relationship of ISEs to self-knowledge of thoughts are unsatisfying. Some presuppose an epistemology at odds with our best cognitive scientific data on ISEs; others go against some of our strongest philosophical intuitions. And none of them can explain the role of ISEs in self-knowledge of mental states other than thoughts. Instead of seeking to produce improved versions of accounts on offer, I strike out afresh and, in Chapters 4 and 5, advance a novel explanation of self-knowledge which I call the “Dual-Aspect Competence Theory” (DACT). The DACT is a virtue-reliabilist view of self-knowledge, meaning that it explains self-knowledge of thoughts and other psychological states in terms of an agent’s proper exercise of a reliable belief forming mechanism. I argue that the process of developing proficiency with use of self-ascriptive linguistic tokens as vehicles for expressing our mental states results in the cultivation of a competence which is at once both expressive and epistemic. I then argue that we are able to express our psychological states aloud or in inner speech. So, when we express our mental states either aloud or in inner speech and, in so doing, manifest this expressive-epistemic competence, we know what state of mind we are in.

If the DACT is correct (and there are good philosophical and empirical reasons for thinking it is) then we should understand the role of inner speech in self-knowledge of thoughts and other mental states as follows. Of all the voices in our heads, some of them include instances of expressing our mental states. For example, we may internally utter “Thank god” to express relief after a near-accident, or “I wish this would end…” to express boredom during a business meeting. When we manifest our expressive-epistemic competence by performing such an utterance in inner speech, we know the state of mind expressed. In Chapter 6, I argue that the DACT accommodates both our best science of ISEs and our philosophical intuitions about them. This theory also affords an understanding of self-ignorance and other failures of self-knowledge including instances of self-deception and cognitive bias.

My investigation offers an evaluation of the various ISE types and the extent to which they feature in the knowledge we have of our mental states. This evaluation, together with my account of the relation between inner speech, expression and self-knowledge, brings into view new territory in the philosophy of self-knowledge in general and a new application of virtue epistemology in particular. My view provides a foundation for further exploration of the role of ISEs in other types of self-knowledge such as knowledge of personality and character traits. In conducting such explorations, we may develop a more complete understanding of the intimate epistemic relation we bear to ourselves in virtue of the voices within.


[1] Alderson-Day, B., & Fernyhough, C. (2015). Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology. Psychological Bulletin, 141(5), 931-965. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000021

[2] Plato, Theaetetus