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The Discrimination Argument Revisited

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Abstract

The first explicit argument for the incompatibility of externalism in the philosophy of mind and a priori self-knowledge is Boghossian’s discrimination argument. In this essay, I oppose the third premise of this argument, trying to show by means of a thought experiment that possessing the “twater thought” is not an alternative, a fortiori not a relevant alternative, to having the “water thought.” I then examine a modified version of Boghossian’s argument. The attempt is made to substantiate the claim that the standard incompatibilist support for its second premise is untenable. Furthermore, a third Boghossian-style argument is rejected on the ground that either its second premise cannot be warranted in the way suggested by incompatibilists or its third premise is mistaken because having the “twater thought” instead of the “water thought” is not relevant. Finally, it is argued that the discrimination argument cannot be saved by invoking closure. The upshot of my discussion is that a compatibilist can dismiss Boghossian-style arguments for incompatibilism without having to deal with fundamental issues concerning self-knowledge and the nature of slow switching.

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Notes

  1. See Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979, 1982, 1986).

  2. See Boghossian (1989, pp. 12–14). The term “discrimination argument” is due to Brown (2004, p. 26). For further arguments for incompatibilism, see Bilgrami (1993, p. 240), Boghossian (1989, pp. 22–23; 1992, pp. 18–22; 1997, pp. 165–166), Brown (1995, pp. 152–155; 2000, p. 118, 121, 128; 2004, p. 121, 123), Brueckner (1990, p. 448; 1994, pp. 327–328), Butler (1997, pp. 787–788), and McKinsey (1991, p. 15).

  3. See Warfield (1992, pp. 234–235).

  4. See Dretske (1970) and Goldman (1976).

  5. See Lewis (1999).

  6. See Falvey and Owens (1994, pp. 116–118).

  7. See Burge (1988, 1996, 1998b, 1999).

  8. See Peacocke (1996, pp. 127–131).

  9. The barn example is due to Goldman (1976, pp. 772–773).

  10. See Goldman (1976, pp. 774–775).

  11. See Boghossian (1989, p. 13).

  12. See Burge (1988, pp. 652–653), and Loar (1988, pp. 106–107).

  13. See Warfield (1992, pp. 234–235).

  14. See Ludlow (1995, pp. 46–49).

  15. Going beyond what Ludlow claims, Butler maintains that slow-switching cases also happen in actuality when one does not embrace Burge’s social anti-individualism, but acknowledges only Putnamian physical externalism (Butler 1997, pp. 779–780).

  16. This line of reasoning follows Brown (2004, pp. 138–142). For a similar argument, see Smith (2003, pp. 77–86). Goldberg rejects Brown’s reasoning because he thinks that we have the intuition that compatibilism is not only true in most, but in all cases (Goldberg 2006, pp. 310–311). The objection to Brown’s argument to be developed in the following does not rely on Goldberg’s, in my opinion, problematic view that we have such an intuition.

  17. See Falvey and Owens (1994, p. 116).

  18. As usual in the literature on twin earth, I neglect the fact that the human body consists to large percentage of water.

  19. Loar endorses the fourth interpretation for all slow-switching scenarios in which the protagonist speaks English as well as Twin English, not just for the commuter case as envisaged here (Loar 1988, pp. 106–107). The fourth interpretation has also been advocated by Bernecker (1998, p. 341), and Kobes (2003, pp. 217–220). Recently, Fernández has argued that having a belief with the “subjective content” that twater is wet is not an alternative to having a belief with the “subjective content” that water is wet because the “subjective content” of the protagonist’s belief is the same on earth and on twin earth (Fernández 2004, p. 32). (This is, however, not a convincing objection to the discrimination argument since Boghossian does not talk of “subjective contents” in stating his argument.)

  20. Note, however, that in sections five and six I draw on the thesis that in slow-switching cases one never has the water belief without the twater belief, and vice versa.

  21. This objection was pointed out to me by an anonymous referee.

  22. See Putnam (1975, pp. 227–229).

  23. See Burge (1998a, pp. 352–354).

  24. For an alternative rejoinder to the second objection, see Bernecker (2004, p. 614, 616).

  25. Brueckner (1990, p. 448).

  26. Burge (1988, p. 653).

  27. See Lewis (1973, pp. 32–35).

  28. This objection draws on Lewis’ “Rule of Belief,” according to which a proposition is relevant if the protagonist believes that it is true (Lewis 1999, pp. 428–429).

  29. Of course, apart from Goldman’s “actuality” (my term) and Lewis’ “Rule of Belief,” there are further criteria of relevance, both in Goldman and Lewis and in other authors (see Cohen (1988, pp. 100–103), Dretske (1970, p. 1021), Goldman (1976, p. 776), Lewis (1999, pp. 426–435), Luper(-Foy) (1984, pp. 47–48), Luper (2006, pp. 380–381), and Stine (1976, pp. 252–253)). However, these criteria are either inadequate or cannot be used to demonstrate that the above proposition is relevant without assuming that it is actual. Due to limitations of space, I cannot elaborate on this here.

  30. This rejoinder does not work with regard to the thesis that the proposition “P thinks that twater is wet” can be shown to be relevant because P believes it to be true without assuming that it is actual. There is, however, a different objection to this thesis. It runs like this: If P believes that she thinks that twater is wet, she would assent to the sentence “I think that twater (or water—if she speaks Twin English) is wet.” Since avowals like this are “authoritative” (Wright 1998, pp. 14–15, 17), it follows that P thinks that twater is wet. In short, the assumption that P believes that she thinks that twater is wet implies that P thinks that twater is wet and cannot therefore be used to demonstrate that the foregoing proposition is relevant without assuming that it is actual. But if one is not able to establish that the above proposition is relevant without assuming that it is actual, Warfield’s objection to the discrimination argument can be defended against Butler’s criticism (Butler 1997, pp. 775–776). In contrast to Butler’s view, Warfield seems to be justified in inferring from the claim that the proposition “P thinks that twater is wet” is not actual that it is not relevant.

  31. Similar lines of argument can be found in Brueckner (1990, p. 448; 1994, pp. 327–328), and Butler (1997, pp. 787–788).

  32. The fourth premise can also be criticized by questioning its belief condition. This strategy is adopted by Butler, who argues that P may not believe that she does not think that twater is wet if she thinks that water is wet because she may not make a distinction between the thought that water is wet and the thought that twater is wet (Butler 1997, pp. 787–788). Butler’s objection is unconvincing, however, because for the incompatibility argument to go through it is enough if people sometimes believe that they do not think that twater is wet if they think that water is wet; it is not necessary that people always believe this. (For a related objection to the fourth premise, see Stueber (2002, p. 275.))—The second step of the above argument can of course also be attacked by denying closure. For a critique of this principle, see Dretske (1970, 2003, 2005) and Nozick (1981, chap. 3). For a defense of closure, see Hawthorne (2005) and Luper (2006).

  33. But possibly the discrimination argument can be saved by using the idiom of mental events and their contents. Consider the following content-based variant of Boghossian’s incompatibilist argument (e is meant to be the mental event that takes place “in” P when she occurrently thinks that water is wet):

    (P1) To know that q by introspection, P must be able to rule out introspectively all relevant alternatives to q.

    (\(\hbox{P}_{2}\dag\)) P cannot rule out introspectively that e has the content “Twater is wet.”

    (\(\hbox{P}_{3}\dag\)) The proposition that e has the content “Twater is wet” is a relevant alternative to the fact that e has the content “Water is wet.”

    (\(\hbox{C}\dag\)) So P does not know by introspection that e has the content “Water is wet.”

    (\(\hbox{P}_{4}\dag\)) P knows by introspection that e has the content “Water is wet” if she is thinking that water is wet.

    (P5) Closure: If, first, P knows by introspection that p and, second, P knows by introspection that if p, then q, then P knows by introspection that q.

    (C) So P does not know by introspection that she is thinking that water is wet.

    A proponent of this version of the discrimination argument is confronted with the following dilemma. Either it is possible that e has the content “Water is wet” and the content “Twater is wet,” then the premise (\(\hbox{P}_{3}\dag\)) is mistaken; or it is not possible that e has both contents just mentioned, then the premise (\(\hbox{P}_{2}\dag\)) cannot be warranted by means of a Brueckner-style counterfactual.

    The second horn of this dilemma can be substantiated as follows: Mental events have their contents necessarily. It is impossible that they exist without having the content they actually have. The proposition “e has the content ‘Twater is wet’ ” therefore implies the proposition “e has the content ‘Water is wet’ as well as the content ‘Twater is wet’.” However, by assumption it is impossible that e has these two contents simultaneously. Thus, it is impossible that e has the content “Twater is wet.” But this means that the antecedent of the Brueckner-style counterfactual “If e had the content ‘Twater is wet,’ everything would seem to P as it seemed to her in actuality” is impossible. From this it follows that the truth value of this counterfactual is indeterminate. Thus, it cannot be used to support the second premise (\(\hbox{P}_{2}\dag\)). In sum, the discrimination argument cannot be saved by employing content terminology.

  34. See McKinsey (1991, p. 15). For other formulations of McKinsey’s paradox, see Boghossian (1997, pp. 165–166), and Brown (1995, pp. 152–155).

  35. See footnote 2 for references.

  36. For comments on earlier versions of this paper thanks to Fred Dretske, Louise Röska-Hardy and two anonymous referees for this journal.

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    Simon Dierig

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Dierig, S. The Discrimination Argument Revisited. Erkenn 72, 73–92 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-009-9191-9

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