Are ownership and authorship of thoughts necessary for intentionality and rationality?

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There is already an extensive philosophical literature on the nature and rationality of delusions, aimed at establishing whether the behaviour of subjects with delusions can be genuinely characterised in intentional terms and what norms ofrationality deluded subjects violate. In this project I will attempt to advance the existing debate by suggesting that in some cases of psychopathology subjects exhibit a failure of self-knowledge, that is, they do not seem to genuinely endorse (and be able to justify with reasons) some of the thoughts that they can access by introspection. Let me offer an example. You tell me that you have just decided to move to Egypt, when I know that you have lived most of your life in the UK, and I ask you: 'Really? How come?' and you reply: 'I don't know. No reason'. This exchange is puzzling because an important decision that is likely to significantly affect someone's life in a variety of ways cannot be supported by any reasons and as a result the interpreter does not know whether the reported intention should be taken seriously. Sometimes this is what happens in delusions: a thought is reported with what appears to be absolute conviction, but no reasons can be given for it, or no reasons that the interpreter can recognise as relevant.In his very influential 'Authority and Estrangement' Richard Moran argues for a connection between reason giving and self-knowledge. He claims that the capacity to justify a belief (or decision) with reasons shows that the subject has some kind of authority over the content of the belief (or decision). My project aims at developing this notion of authority and exploring its links with degrees of self-knowledge and intentionality. Maybe what is puzzling about delusions is that they are not justified with reasons by the people reporting them. This might suggest that subjects with delusions lack some form of authority over the content of the thoughts they report. This breakdown of self-knowledge does not eually affect all delusional subjects and does not affect delusional subjects alone and therefore might not be a promising criterion of demarcation between normal and delusional beliefs. However, importing the notion of authority in the philosophical literature on psychopathology has other important applications. By endorsing reported thoughts an agent forms a conception of herself (e.g. as the person who wants to move to Egypt for, say, a sense of adventure) which guides future action and decision-making (see David Velleman's notion of self-constitution). Gaps in the self-narrative impair this process and affect the exercise of autonomy in thought and action. It is this aspect of the failure of self-knowledge that I want to account for in the project and that could have a contribution to make to current analyses of self-determination, autonomy and moral responsibility.