Externalism and Self-Knowledge

This paper examines popular‘conventionalist’explanations of why philosophers need not back up their claims about how‘we’use our words with empirical studies of actual usage. It argues that such explanations are incompatible with a number of currently popular and plausible assumptions about language's ‘social’character. Alternate explanations of the philosopher's purported entitlement to make a priori claims about‘our’usage are then suggested. While these alternate explanations would, unlike the conventionalist ones, be compatible with the more social picture of language, they are each shown to (...) face serious problems of their own. (shrink)

A person’s authoritative self-knowledge about the contents of his or her own beliefs is thought to cause problems for content externalism, for it appears to yield arguments constituting a wholly non-empirical source of empirical knowledge: knowledge that certain particular objects or kinds exist in the environment. I set out this objection to externalism, and present a new reply. Possession of an externalist concept is an epistemological skill: it depends upon the subject’s possession of demonstratively-based knowledge about the object or kind (...) to which it refers. Thus, a person’s knowledge that he or she has an externalist belief, since this depends upon actually having that belief, and therefore upon possessing the relevant externist concept, presupposes knowledge about the object/kind in question, which provides a direct and perfectly empirical source of knowledge that this object/kind exists. Hence, the putatively problematic arguments do not constitute a non-empirical source of such empirical knowledge. (shrink)

This paper attempts to undermine Michael McKinsey’s Important objections to Kripke’s attempts to refute cluster versions of description theories of name reference. McKinsey argues that Kripke Ignores descriptions to which a clustser theorist might appeal In constructing his counterexamples, but that these same descriptions are what guide our intuitions In evaluating the examples. I argue that the descriptions McKinsey offers are question-begging, and thus of no help to a cluster theorist. In a second brief section, I offer an argument designed (...) to show that even If McKinsey*s descriptions were legitimate, the views Kripke endorses in "Naming and Necessity" would be supported rather than vitiated. (shrink)

Note first that knowledge of one's own thought-contents would not count as a priori according to the usual criteria for knowledge of this kind. Surely, then, incompatibilists are using this term to refer to some other, stipulatively defined, epistemic property. But could this be, as suggested by McKinsey { 1 99 1: 9), the property of being knowable 'just by thinking' or 'from the armchair'? Certainly not if these were metaphors for knowledge attainable on the basis of reason alone, since (...) self-knowledge would fail to come out a priori in this sense. And exactly the same would happen if the property were that of being knowable by inference, since, according to a common intuition, self-knowledge is noninferential. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This paper criticizes the widespread view whereby a second-order judgment of the form ‘I believe that p ’ qualifies as self-knowledge only if the embedded content, p , is of the same type as the content of the intentional state reflected upon and the self-ascribed attitude, belief, is of the same type as the attitude the subject takes towards p . Rather than requiring identity of contents across levels of cognition self-knowledge requires only that the embedded content of the second-order (...) thought be an entailment of the content of the intentional state reflected upon. And rather than demanding identity of attitudes across levels of cognition self-knowledge demands only that the attitude of the intentional state reflected upon and the attitude the subject self-attributes share certain features such as direction of fit and polarity. (shrink)

The term `code-switching' is used to describe the mixing of different language varieties which often results from language contact. This book is the first full-length study of code-switching in a European context.

Fourteen new essays by a distinguished team of authors offer a broad and stimulating re-examination of transcendental arguments. This is the philosophical method of arguing that what is doubted or denied by the opponent must be the case, as a condition for the possibility of experience, language, or thought.The line-up of contributors features leading figures in the field from both sides of the Atlantic; they discuss the nature of transcendental arguments, and consider their role and value. In particular, they consider (...) how successful such arguments are as a response to sceptical problems. The editor's introduction provides historical context and philosophical orientation for the discussions. This is the first major appraisal of transcendental arguments since the 1970s; they have continued to play a significant role in philosophy, and recent developments in epistemology and metaphysics have raised new questions and challenges for them. Transcendental Arguments will be essential reading for anyone interested in this area of philosophy, and the starting-point for future work. (shrink)

In recent years, much attention has been given to the question of whether content externalism is compatible with an account of self-knowledge maintaining that we have an epistemically privileged access to the content of our propositional mental states. Philosophers who maintain the two are incompatible have put forward two majors types of challenge, which I call - following Martin Davies - the Achievement and Consequence Problems, which aim to demonstrate that self-knowledge cannot be reconciled with externalism. These challenges have spawned (...) a great deal of literature, and a diverse range of arguments and positions have emerged in response. In this dissertation, I intend to focus on examples of these different avenues of response, and show how none of them are adequate. In the first chapter, I lay the groundwork for the debate, setting up how externalism and self-knowledge are to be understood, and outlining both the incompatibilist challenges as well as the available responses to them. In the second chapter I examine these responses in more detail, concluding finally that the best available response is Tyler Burge's. Burge has two arguments that together establish his compatibilist position. First, he shows that even if externalism is true, our judgements about our occurrent thoughts are immunejrom error. This establishes that our judgements about our thoughts must be true. Second, he offers a transcendental argument for self-knowledge, arguing that our access to our mental states must be not only true, but non-accidentally true, in a way sufficient for genuine knowledge. This establishes that we possess the correct epistemic entitlement to our thoughts. In the third chapter, I argue Burge's arguments do not, in fact, give us good reason to suppose externalism and self-knowledge to be compatible. This, I argue, is because B urge relies upon a transcendental argument, which, in this context, cannot establish that we have self-knowledge if externalism is true. All it establishes, I argue, is that we do possess self-knowledge. And this is insufficient to establish that externalism and self-knowledge are compatible. (shrink)

In this paper I clarify my argument for the claim that contrastive self-knowledge entails anti-individualism.

We study a canonical modal logic introduced by Lemmon, and axiomatised by an infinite sequence of axioms generalising McKinsey’s formula. We prove that the class of all frames for this logic is not closed under elementary equivalence, and so is non-elementary. We also show that any axiomatisation of the logic involves infinitely many non-canonical formulas.

I deal here with one of Boghossian’s arguments against content externalism, related to our inferential rationality . According to his reasoning, the apriority of our logical abilities is inconsistent with certain externalist assumptions. Nevertheless, the problem constitutes an important challenge for any theory of content, not just for externalism. Furthermore, when we examine what internalists may propose to solve the problem, we see that externalists have at their disposal a more promising repertoire of possible replies than internalists. In that sense, (...) insofar as Boghossian’s scenario is relevant to the debate externalism/internalism, it can be seen as providing additional evidence for content externalism. (shrink)

It is widely held that individuals have some sort of special access to their own minds. In recent philosophy of mind, the view that thought content depends on extra-mental environmental factors has become the dominant view. Many philosophers have argued and are convinced that this externalism about thought content is incompatible with the thesis that individuals have special access to their own minds. ;In this thesis I refute the case for the inconsistency of privileged access and externalism and offer a (...) positive case for their consistency. I also argue that privileged access and externalism can be combined to generate a powerful anti-skeptical argument similar to Hilary Putnam's famous anti-skeptical argument. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the question whether externalist theories of thought content provide a satisfactory response to the traditional problem of skepticism about the external world. I address two questions. If externalist theories of thought content are true, do they provide a satisfactory response to skepticism about the external world? Are externalist theories of thought content true? My answer to the first question is yes, and to the second no. The argument of the dissertation is divided into three parts. In the (...) first part, I argue that skepticism about the external world rests on two fundamental assumptions about the mind-world relation. The contents of the mind are logically independent of the nature of the world around us. The contents of the mind are all the evidence we have for the nature of the world around us. Externalism attacks the first of these assumptions. In the second part, I criticize crucial and representative arguments for externalism by Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and Donald Davidson. In the third part, I argue directly that the thesis of externalism is incorrect. The arguments in this part divide into three groups. The first shows that we cannot retrieve from our causal relations with our environment a determinate picture of the contents of our thoughts, without assuming that what determines those thoughts is not logically dependent on the environment. The second shows that if externalism were true, thought content would not be causally relevant to what we do. The third argues that attention to the first person point of view shows that thought content cannot plausibly be thought to be determined by external relations. (shrink)

The "incompatibility charge" argues that externalism fails to explain "self-knowledge" or the privileged knowledge that we ordinarily take ourselves to enjoy in relation to at least some of our own mental states. This dissertation attempts to provide an externalist reply to this charge. First, I suggest that the "compatibility debate" needs to be reoriented. This is because the mere internality or externality of determining factors cannot by itself explain how one can know the content determined by those factors. Thus the (...) task of explaining self-knowledge is one of explaining how we come to make these claims and where do they derive their privileged status from. Further, a story about the underlying epistemology of these claims has to be told not only by the externalists but also by the internalists. ;Chapter One introduces a distinction between two ways of understanding the epistemic privilege, namely, between "privilege in access", that consists of the way in which these claims are made and validated, and "privilege in authority", that consists of their infallibility. I argue that the epistemology underlying the phenomenon of self-knowledge can be best understood in terms of the privilege in access. ;Chapter Two turns to the incompatibility charge. I argue that the exchanges of arguments that have been taken place between the incompatibilists and the compatibilists in the literature rely on the implicit presupposition that a concept must always have an univocal and unambiguous referent and this fact should be discoverable a priori. I argue that a thorough going externalist should reject this questionable presupposition. ;Chapter Three criticizes the internalist argument that the internalists' job in accounting for self-knowledge is different from the externlaists' job. I conclude by noting that the internalist accounts have as much, if not more, difficulty in accounting for self-knowledge. ;Chapter Four suggests an externalist account of self-knowledge from the perspective of Sellars. The uniqueness of the Sellarsian account lies in the fact that it offers an interesting way of understanding the privilege of self-knowledge claims according to which though these claims enjoy non-inferential privilege, they are nonetheless defeasible and also justifiable from an independent source. (shrink)

Anti-individualism is the thesis that features of the social and physical environments contribute to determining the contents of our beliefs. The notion of content implicit in the thought experiments supporting anti-individualism is tied to explications of how our terms and the concepts they express are correctly applied. Since anti-individualists should regard these explications as a subject of ongoing dispute, they should claim that sameness and difference of content is not always detectable upon reflection. Many philosophers accordingly worry that anti-individualists cannot (...) accommodate the use of belief attributions to characterize individual points of view. The key to these objections is the thesis that belief attributions have the same truth-value if they attribute beliefs with the same content. When the semantic and metaphysical motivations for this assumption are discredited, anti-individualism's alleged problems with characterizing individual points of view may be solved without introducing an additional notion of "cognitive" content which tracks differential dubitability judgments. The resulting account of belief requires a new account of understanding and responsibility to evaluation which emphasizes participation in ongoing attempts to formulate explications rather than knowledge thereof. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;The subject matter of this thesis is a particular form of individualism--anti-collectivist individualism. ;To be differentiated from more collectivist, humanist strands of individualism, anti-collectivist individualism can readily be equated with the classic liberal creed that accompanied a new stress on the individual and the emergence of a capitalist market economy in the West in the post-feudal period. ;The thesis places anti-collectivist individualism within the classic liberal tradition. It addresses anti-collectivist individualism both (...) as an issue of substantive relevance to people and to politics and as an issue within sociological explanation, from the perspective of that atomism which underlies it, and through an examination of the atomistic view of humankind, of history and of social causation. ;Specifically addressed in relation to the anti-collectivist framework are: the presumed atomistic relations of exteriority between individuals. the presumption that nothing exists in the phenomenal world other than individuals in aggregate and that explanatory power therefore rests with individuals. the presumption that to provide people with the conditions for self-reliance is a contradiction in terms. the presumption that human individuals lack the rationality to construct a 'good' society and should relinquish 'constructivist' rationalism in favour of 'evolutionary' rationalism. ;The question of whether capitalism and individualism are merely historically contingent or are mutually defining is also considered, it being concluded that they are not mutually defining but have entered into a second order symbiotic relation of dependence which may prove difficult to deconstruct. The ontology underlying anti-collectivist individualism is rigorously criticised, but it is suggested that individualism, far from no longer featuring in dominant discourse, as Abercrombie et al claim, remains the pivotal underlying premise of social and economic activity in the West, and indeed, being a historically evolved, even though particular manifestation of important and necessary elements of the human psyche for security, identity and self-actualisation, is likely to remain a prime mode of orientation in the West. It is claimed that this acceptance is not incompatible with communitarian and/or socialist forms of organisation. (shrink)

It is often alleged that semantic externalism, the thesis that mental content is partially determined by external factors, conflicts with the view that we have some kind of privileged access to the contents of our own mental states. If this is correct, we have a paradox: externalism is powerfully intuitive, but so is the idea of privileged access. In this essay, I examine the apparent paradox and argue that the alleged conflict is illusory. ;After sketching the paradox and its significance (...) in Chapter I, I take a close look at privileged access and externalism . ;In Chapter IV, I address arguments for the incompatibility. I argue that all the significant arguments for it turn out to be the same argument; I call it the Improved McKinseyan Argument . In essence, IMA alleges that it is possible to infer from non-empirically justified knowledge of one's own thoughts and of externalism that certain paradigmatic empirical facts obtain; because it seems that one can know in a privileged way what one deduces from other privileged knowledge, it seems to follow, contrary to intuition, that one can have privileged knowledge of empirical facts. ;In Chapter V, I address the significant solutions offered by others to the paradox, and argue that none of them work. ;I turn in Chapter VI to a fresh examination of IMA. Crucial to the argument is the notion of non-empiricality it appeals to, and I argue that it divides into three separate notions. It turns out that on no consistent understanding of non-empiricality are all the premises of IMA true. I then diagnose the motivation for IMA, that is, what made it seem compelling in the first place. I suggest that two factors are at work here: first, reliance on an unexplicated notion of non-empiricality, and reliance on an unexplicated and controversial notion of privileged access. ;Chapter VII briefly addresses the underlying explanation for privileged access, and in it I suggest that what explains its non-empirical authority is a combination of naturalistic and conceptual factors. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the question of whether externalism and privileged access are compatible. I defend the view according to which they are, indeed, incompatible. However, this follows unproblematically from a distinction between two notions of mental content that I introduce and develop. My main suggestion is that a confusion between two notions of mental content is responsible for the view that the incompatibility of privileged access and externalism is problematic, since these are views about, strictly speaking, different varieties of mental (...) content. ;The discussion is divided into an introduction and four chapters. In the second chapter, I discuss the main argument for the position according to which externalism and privileged access are compatible. In the third chapter, I distinguish two kinds of mental content by using the two-dimensional semantics framework developed by David Kaplan, Robert Stalnaker and others. I then move to argue that externalism and privileged access are views about different sorts of content. Externalism is correct only when it is understood as a view about "objective content", essentially constituted by truth-conditions, whereas privileged access is correct only when it is understood as a view about "subjective content", a kind of "narrow" content essentially constituted by Stalnaker's "diagonal proposition". In the fourth chapter, I focus on privileged access and I offer an explanation of it. The main tenet of my account of privileged access is that our grounds for our first-order beliefs are the same as our grounds for the appropriate second-order beliefs. In the fifth chapter, I discuss the two main arguments for the position according to which externalism and privileged access are incompatible. By using the distinction regarding mental content drawn on chapter three, I argue that neither argument shows the incompatibility of externalism about objective content and privileged access about subjective content. Thus, I conclude that the incompatibility of privileged access and externalism is not problematic. (shrink)

Due to arguments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge it is generally, although not universally, held that the content of a mental state depends not on facts about the individual in isolation, but on the relationship that the individual has to his or her environment. It has been observed that this position, "externalism," has strong consequences for theories of self-knowledge, for if the contents of our mental states are determined by external factors, then we could hardly be said to have (...) authoritative self-knowledge. The dissertation explores the consequences of externalism for self-knowledge. Taking a leaf from Hegel's arguments in the Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue that self-knowledge cannot be direct and immediate, but rather is mediated and requires investigation. I then go on to show some of the implications of this externalist theory of self-knowledge, including those for a theory of the self and Cartesian skepticism as well as certain social and political consequences. (shrink)