Online research in philosophy

(revisions posted 12/5/2006) to appear in Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, ed. by Sanford Goldberg (to be published by Oxford in 2006 or 2007) Michael McKinsey formulated an argument that raises a puzzle about the relation between externalism about content and our introspective awareness of content. The puzzle goes like this: it seems like I can know the contents of my thoughts by introspection alone; but philosophical reflection tells me that the contents of those thoughts are externalist, and so I couldn.

Suppose that a physical duplicate of me, right down to the arrangements of subatomic particles, comes into existence at the time at which I finish this sentence. Suppose that it comes into existence by chance, or at least by a causal process entirely unconnected with me. It might be so situated that it, too, is seated in front of a computer, and finishes this paragraph and paper, or a corresponding one, just as I do. (i) Would it have the same thoughts I do? (ii) Would it speak my language? (iii) Would my duplicate have any thoughts or (iv) speak any language at all? To fix the interpretation of these questions, I will take ‘thought’ to cover any mental state which has a representational content, where ‘representational content’ is intended to be neutral with respect to psychological mode. By 'psychological mode' I mean what distinguishes kinds of thoughts, such as belief, visual perceptual experience, desire, etc. Representational content, or thought content, as I will also say, determines the conditions under which a thought is true or false, veridical or non-veridical, or, more broadly, is satisfied or fails to be satisfied, independently of relativization to circumstances, possible worlds, or the like. Beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, and perceptual experiences will all count as thoughts on this usage. The question whether one person has the same (type of) thought as another is the question whether both have a mental state with the same representational content in the same psychological mode. I will not count epistemic verbs, however, as picking out or expressing a (pure) psychological mode. Thus, although knowing that the time is ripe, seeing that there is a goldfinch in the garden, and remembering that my wife’s birthday is next Tuesday are all thoughts, they do not pick out the thoughts by using a verb that expresses a psychological mode. Therefore knowing, seeing or remembering the same things is not a requirement on having the same thoughts..

The subject of this paper is the debate between externalism and internalism about mental content presented by Tim Crane in Chapter 4 of his book Elements of Mind. Crane’s sympathies in this debate are with internalism. The paper attempts to show that Crane’s argumentation is not refuting the Twin Earth argument and externalism, and that in its basis it does not differ much from externalism itself Crane’s version of the argument for externalism features two key premises: (1) The content of a thought determines what the thought is about/what it refers to (the Content Determines Reference Principle); and (2) Twins are referring to different things when they use the word “water”. From these, in a few simple steps, Crane’s externalist infers: Therefore, their thoughts are not “in their heads”. Crane suggests denying the Content Determines Reference Principle in the light of indexical thoughts. In the first stage, Crane reduces “content” to “some aspect of content”, although he needs all aspects of content to secure identity of thoughts. However, his view then comes close to something acceptable to externalists. In the second stage, Crane makes content relative to context, but then reference still determines content.

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.

Many bclicvc that content cxtcrnalism is inconsistent with commonscnsc views about our kmowlcdgc of thc contents of our own thoughts} Content cxtcrnalism is thc vicw that thc propositional contents of an individual’s thoughts do not supcrvcnc on thc intrinsic properties of that individual. Relations bctwccn you and your social and physical environment partly dctcrminc thc comtents of your thoughts.? But if what dctcrmimcs thc content of your thoughts lics partly outside your mind, it might sccm that you have to investigate your social and physical cnvironmcnt bcforc you can know thc content of your thoughts. If such investigation were nccessary, our kmowlcdgc of our own mind would bc much lcss direct and much lcss warranted than we ordinarily bclicvc. How do wc connect content cxtcrnalism with failures of sclf-.

A typical strategy of those who seek to show that externalism is compatible with authoritative knowledge of content is to show that externalism does nothing to undermine the claim that all thinkers can at any time form correct and justi?ed self-ascriptive judgements concerning their occurrent thoughts. In reaction, most incompat- ibilists have assumed the burden of denying that externalism is compatible with this claim about self-ascription. Here I suggest another way to attack the compatibilist strategy. I aim to show that forming a justi?ed true self-ascriptive judgement about one.

Externalism holds, and internalism denies, that the individuation of many of an individual's mental states (e.g., thoughts about the physical world) depends necessarily on relations that individual bears to the physical and/or social environment. Many philosophers, externalists and internalists alike, believe that introspection yields knowledge of the contents of our thoughts that is direct and authoritative. It is not obvious, however, that the metaphysical claims of externalism are compatible with this epistemological thesis. Some (e.g., Burge, 1988; Falvey and Owens (F&O), 1994) have sought to dispel the worry that there is a conflict, though they admit that if such a conflict exists, it spells trouble for externalism (see, e.g., F&O, 1994, p. 108). Boghossian has argued that there is indeed a conflict between externalism and introspective knowledge of content. Surprisingly, however, he also argues that there is a conflict between internalism and introspective knowledge of content. I will defend Boghossian's claim that there is a conflict between externalism and knowledge of content, but criticize his claim that there is a conflict between internalism and knowledge of content.