Abstract
I argue that our physical and social environments play a role in determining the content of most of our thoughts only indirectly—by playing a role in causing, and therefore, determining the content of, our reference-securing beliefs concerning general terms, beliefs that, when true, dictate what a general term will pick out. I also show that the problem of empty natural kind terms can be solved.
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Notes
A queer objection to this claim might be that drinkable liquid is not a natural kind concept while the first person who dubbed ‘water’ intended to use it to express a natural kind concept. It is not easy to find another natural kind concept that ‘water’ might express; nonetheless, how the first person could so intend would be a mystery, especially when we notice that probably people had the concept of water before they had the concept of natural kind.
See Besson (2012).
For the distinction between de jure rigid designator and de facto rigid designator, see Sidelle (1992).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out to me.
See Boghossian (1989).
I do not oppose content externalism but rather defend it by fully characterizing the mechanism through which our physical and social environments play a role in determining the content of most of our thoughts. Internalists or friends of internalism therefore might find the arguments in this article less convincing.
Or one might call it a presupposition. Though, one might knowingly presuppose something that is false, which implies that one does not believe what one presupposes, for my purpose in this article, the difference between a belief and a presupposition is not important.
It might be argued that if the speaker is using ‘the F’ referentially, she might still express a determinate thought by ‘The F is G’ even when her belief that there is someone or something that is the F is false. See Donnellan (1966). It is controversial whether in that case, the speaker expresses a determinate thought, which would be a singular one, or only communicates a determinate thought. See Kripke (1977), Reimer (1998). I do not have to take a stand on this issue. To avoid this complication, let us restraint our discussion to cases in which ‘The F is G’ is used to express a general proposition.
The term ‘normally’ is used here to exclude the abnormal cases in which we misidentify some instance of liquid as an instance of water only because we are in an abnormal circumstance, such as when I suddenly lose my sense of taste without my knowledge of it.
Internalists might not agree with this claim, but as I indicate in note 2, in this article, I accept content externalism and only want to give a more thorough characterization of the mechanism through which the physical and social environments play a role in determining the content of most of our thoughts.
Surely, for chemically ignorant people, when they claim that two particular instances of liquid are instances of the same substance, they cannot mean that they have the same chemical structure in a certain conceptual sense. But that does not mean their belief that the two particular instances of liquid are instances of the same substance is not the same belief as a chemist’s belief that the two particular instances of liquid are instances of the same substance metaphysically. I might believe that personal identity consists in the continuity of consciousness, while others might believe that it consists in the continuity of physical body, but this does not mean that my belief that Aristotle in 365 B.C. is the same person as Aristotle in 366 B.C. is different from others’ belief that Aristotle in 365 B.C. is the same person as Aristotle in 366 B.C.
‘Watery’ expresses the superficial properties that an instance of water normally has.
It indeed might be a problem when we consider a layman. He may still hold his false reference-securing belief concerning ‘jade’ even in nowadays. Would his jade thoughts be all indeterminate thoughts? I tend to think that they are, but I admit that this is a problem that needs more investigation.
The reference-securing belief concerning a general term, given that it dictates what the term would pick out when true, would have the following form: there is an x such that F(x); then when Fa, I will say that the belief is true of a. Clearly, the term will pick out what the reference-securing belief concerning it is true of when used to express a general proposition.
We also normally use this criterion in applying ‘water’ to an instance of liquid. But because we have a belief as expressed by RSw, we take it only as a convenient way of identifying an instance of water.
The mechanism provides an explanation of why we acquire water instead of other concepts by causally interacting with instances of water. But it does not justify such acquisition, if by this claim we mean that we ought to form the belief RSw.
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This project is supported by Major Program of National Fund of Philosophy and Social Science of China (18ZDA032).
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Ren, H. Reference-Securing Belief and Content Externalism. Acta Anal 36, 87–99 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-020-00427-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-020-00427-z