In this talk I investigate whether a mental analogue to the speech act of retraction can be meaningfully identified—specifically, whether retracting a previously unretracted belief generates distinctive normative effects at the level of mental states. At the level of speech-acts, retraction—expressed through statements such as “I take that back”—serves primarily to revoke the normative commitments of an assertion, including the obligation to defend the claim and the authority vested in its accuracy (MacFarlane 2014; Marques 2018; Caponetto 2020).
But what would retraction at the mental level entail? I address this question by first critically examining MacFarlane’s skepticism about the existence of a comparable process in the domain of mental attitudes and by challenging his main objection. I then focus on the epistemic commitments associated with mental attitudes. Drawing on Chrisman (2018) and Ferrari (2022), I distinguish between two forms of mental normativity: input/output norms, which govern the adoption or rejection of mental attitudes, and management norms, understood in terms of normative commitments that regulate the maintenance of our doxastic ecosystem. I argue that withdrawing a belief gives rise to a series of normative adjustments within one’s mental ecosystem, requiring a reassessment of interconnected doxastic states to preserve consistency. Understanding these normative adjustments, I contend, provides the strongest foundation for making sense of mental retraction. More broadly, this analysis sheds new light on the relationship between speech-act normativity and mental normativity.

References
• Chrisman, M. (2018) “Epistemic Normativity and Cognitive Agency”, Noûs 52, 3: 508-529.
• Caponetto, L. (2020) “Undoing Things with Words”, Synthese 197(6): 2399–2414. Ferrari, F. (2022) “Disagreement and suspended judgement”, Metaphilosophy 53(4): 526-542.
• MacFarlane, J. (2014) Assessment Sensitivity, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Marques, T. (2018) “Retractions”, Synthese 195: 3335–3359