Favourite Reads

October Pick | Selected by Dr Ashley Shaw

Richard Moran | Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge

Ask yourself: Do you believe a third world war is imminent?  Strikingly, Gareth Evans observed that to answer this question about one’s beliefs, one attends not inward, but outward by considering the question whether a third world war is imminent. This is puzzling: how can one learn something about oneself by determining what the world is like?  

Moran’s Authority and Estrangement explores features like these that characterise the distinctive relationship between a thinker and her attitudes.

A key insight of Moran’s is the difference between two stances one can take. Taking the deliberator’s stance, one considers what to believe: one reflects on what reasons support an impending world war. But taking a theoretical stance, one considers what one believes as an empirical matter to be investigated like any other. Consider how one might determine whether Trump believes that war is imminent. One would, detective-like, piece together clues from speeches or budgets.  But this is not the usual stance one takes to one’s own beliefs; instead, one takes the deliberator’s stance, making up one’s mind about the world.

I discovered this wonderful book as a graduate student, and it immediately drew me to the problems of self-knowledge and the first-person.

October 2025

Past Favourite Reads