Peter Carruthers (left) and Eric Schwitzgebel (right) on self-knowledge of attitudes.

According to an intuitively plausible and widely accepted view, we have direct, privileged, and highly reliable access to our own beliefs. In the first part of this conversation, Carruthers and Schwitzgebel both reject that view, while disagreeing about the exact implications of empirical studies that are commonly cited in debates on privileged access. But their positions raise a nagging question: If we lack privileged access to our own beliefs, then why does it seem to us that we have such access? They defend different views (starting at 29:31) about the best answer to that question.

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Tamar Gendler (left) and Eric Schwitzgebel (right) on implicit associations and belief.

Most of us explicitly renounce racist beliefs. Yet empirical work suggests that, for many people, their implicit racial associations are in tension with their explicit avowals. So what do we really believe? Gendler contends that, in general, our implicit associations (which she calls “aliefs”) are distinct from our beliefs, while Schwitzgebel argues that our beliefs are a composite that includes our implicit assumptions.

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