Online research in philosophy

The argument known as the 'McKinsey Recipe' tries to establish the incompatibility of semantic externalism (about natural kind concepts in particular) and _a priori _self- knowledge about thoughts and concepts by deriving from the conjunction of these theses an absurd conclusion, such as that we could know _a priori _that water exists. One reply to this argument is to distinguish two different readings of 'natural kind concept': (i) a concept which _in fact _denotes a natural kind, and (ii) a concept which _aims_ to denote a natural kind. Paul Boghossian has argued, using a _Dry Earth _scenario, that this response fails, claiming that the externalist cannot make sense of a concept aiming, but failing, to denote a natural kind. In this paper I argue that Boghossian's argument is flawed. Borrowing machinery from two-dimensional semantics, using the notion of 'considering a possible world as actual', I claim that we can give a determinate answer to Boghossian's question: which concept would 'water' express on Dry Earth?

Skeptical theses in general claim that we cannot know what we think we know. Content skepticism in particular claims that we cannot know the contents of our own occurrent thoughtsat least not in the way we think we can. I argue that an externalist account of content does engender a mild form of content skepticism but that the condition is no real cause for concern. Content externalism forces us to reevaluate some of our assumptions about introspective knowledge, but it is compatible with privileged access and the distinctive epistemic character of introspective judgments.

Controversy continues to attach to the question whether an externalism about mental content is compatible with a traditional doctrine of privileged self-knowledge. By an externalism about mental content, I mean the view that what concepts our thoughts involve may depend not only on facts that are internal to us, but on facts about our environment. It is worth emphasizing, if only because it is still occasionally misperceived, that this thesis is supposed to apply at the level of sense and not merely at that of reference: what concepts we think in terms of -- and not just what they happen to pick out -- is said by the externalist to depend upon environmental facts. By a traditional doctrine of privileged self-knowledge, I mean the view that we are able to know, without the benefit of empirical investigation, what our thoughts are in our own case. Suppose I entertain a thought that I would express with the sentence `Water is wet'. According to the traditional doctrine, I can know without empirical investigation (a) that I am entertaining a thought; (b) that it has a particular conceptual content, and (c) that its content is that water is wet.

Several authors have argued that, assuming we have a priori knowledge of our own thought-contents, semantic externalism implies that we can know a priori contingent facts about the empirical world. After presenting the argument, I shall respond by resisting the premise that an externalist can know a priori: If s/he has the concept water, then water exists. In particular, I think Boghossian’s own Dry Earth example suggests that such thought-experiments do not provide such a priori knowledge. Boghossian himself rejects the Dry Earth experiment, however, since it would imply that externalism is true of empty concepts as well as non-empty concepts. Yet in this paper I respond by defending empty-concept externalism, from criticisms deriving from Boghossian as well as from Jessica Brown. Specifically, I argue that such a view does not preclude an empty concept from having the appropriate form or structure—nor would it reveal a priori that a linguistic community is necessary for an empty concept to have a content.

In Beyond Rigidity I argue that, like ‘red’, ‘water’ can be used both as a singular term, and (when combined with the copula) as a predicate – as illustrated by (1) and (2). 1a. Red is a color. b. Bill’s shirt is red. 2a. Unlike gold, which is an element, water is a compound. b. The liquid in the glass is water. Just as ‘red’ designates a kind instances of which (at a world-state w) constitute the extension of the predicate ‘is red’ (at w), so ‘water’ designates a kind instances of which constitute the extension of the predicate ‘is water’. This observation is used in analyzing examples of the necessary aposteriori like those in (3), which have the force of quantified conditionals in which both the grammatical subjects and ‘is H2O’ function as mass predicates, true of all instances of the associated kinds. 3a. Water is H2O. b. Ice is H2O. c. Water vapor is H2O..

Part 1 argues that, despite rhetorical appearances, McDowell accepts a standard version of epistemic externalism. Moreover, epistemic externalism plays an important role in McDowell’s response to skepticism. Part 2 argues that, contra McDowell, epistemic externalism is necessary for rejecting skepticism, and content externalism is not sufficient for rejecting skepticism.

Paul Boghossian has argued that Externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge because (i) the Externalist can cite no property to be the reference of an empty natural kind concept such as the ether; (ii) without reference there is no content; hence (iii) either we do know on the basis of introspection alone whether an apparent natural kind thought has content or not, in which case we can infer from self-knowledge and a priori knowledge of Externalism alone to the existence in our environment of water, gold etc.; (iv) or we do not know, without empirical investigation, whether an apparent natural kind thought has content. An Externalist not wanting to accept either (iii) or (iv) can deny (i). All empty natural kind concepts refer to the necessarily uninstantiated property of being identical to nothing. Since they have different senses and self-knowledge is only held to extend to the existence and identity of sense, this is compatible with privileged self-knowledge, and Externalism is still true of the concepts.

Some worry that semantic externalism is incompatible with knowing by introspection what content your thoughts have. In this paper, I examine one primary argument for this incompatibilist worry, the slow-switch argument. Following Goldberg (2006), I construe the argument as attacking the conjunction of externalism and skeptic-proof knowledge of content, where such knowledge would be immune to skeptical doubt. Goldberg, following Burge (1988), attempts to reclaim such knowledge for the externalist; however, I contend that all Burge-style accounts (at best) vindicate that a subject can introspectively know that she is thinking that “water is wet.” They do not yet show how a subject can introspectively know what she is thinking—which is the distinctive type of knowing at issue in the slow-switch argument. Nonetheless, I subsequently amend the Burge-style view to illustrate how an externalist can introspectively “know what” content her thought has, and know it in a skeptic-proof manner, despite what the slow-switch argument may suggest. For one, I emphasize that “knowing what” is intensional (one can know what a water-thought is sans familiarity with H2O-thoughts). Second, I exploit the fact that such knowledge can be ontologically non-committal (so that knowing your thought is about water does not require knowing that water exists). Finally, following Boër and Lycan (1986), I point out that “knowing what” is purpose-relative—and for at least some purposes, I suggest it is possible for the externalist to “know what” content her thought has, even when skeptical hypotheses about XYZ are entertained.

In "Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Skepticism,"' Kevin Falvey and Joseph Owens argue that externalism with respect to mental content does not engender skepticism about knowledge of content. They go on to argue that even when externalism is freed from epistemological difficulties, the thesis cannot be used against Cartesian skepticism about knowledge of the external world. I would like to raise some questions about these claims.

Suppose, as I stare at a glass in front of me, I say or think: There.