| Sumario: | The premises of a valid argument don't get you to a conclusion unless you have put them together. But what is it for thoughts to be together? I argue that the togetherness of our mental states is constituted by consciousness of ourselves as their common subject. I describe a special sort of necessity—rational necessity—that links the beliefs $p$ p and $q$ q , when someone infers $q$ q from $p$ p. It is a modal connection between beliefs that is grounded in our understanding of the relation between the topic of those beliefs. But beliefs are only tied together in this manner in so far as I am able to self-ascribe them knowledgeably, yet not on the basis of evidence or observation. When beliefs are integrated, doxastic self-ascription is simply the result of an unobfuscated consciousness of the truth of the relevant propositions. Fragmentation occurs when this capacity is masked, on account of self-deception, distraction, confusion, etc. The capacity to bring thoughts together so that reasoning happens just is the capacity to know what one thinks by thinking it. Self-consciousness is the source of our rationality.
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