No One Left to Trust
By this process we end up in the vague state described earlier where the dissonance erodes the state to being too insecure for it to count as a belief state. Beliefs are important. They are the maps we need and use to navigate our world. What happens when we discover that even the most considered and self-assigned beliefs, such as my belief that I am an anti-racist, may be disqualified by revelations that I have subliminal racist reactions? Am I, despite my sincere declaration of being an anti-racist, really a racist? Am I hypocritical? Schwitzgebel argues a belief has to be able to guide us, and in these cases the guidance is suspect. He suggests that we are not in any state of belief. We are not racists, but there are things in our thoughts that don’t warrant us having a belief in anti-racism either.
Richard Marshall reviews Eric Schwitzgebel‘s Perplexities of Consciousness.