Donald Davidson and John Searle famously differ, among other things, on the issue of animal thoughts. Davidson seems to be a latter-day Cartesian, denying any propositional thought to subhuman animals, while Searle seems to follow Hume in claiming that if we have thoughts, then animals do, too. Davidson’s argument centers on the idea that language is necessary for thought, which Searle rejects. The paper argues two things. Firstly, Searle eventually argues that much of a more complex thought does depend on (...) language, which reduces a distance between himself and Davidson. Secondly, some of Davidson’s suggestions are promising – in particular the idea that we may lack a vocabulary to capture the contents of animal thoughts. Based on this insight, one might, pace Davidson, grant thoughts to animals. However, this does not mean, pace Searle, that it should be possible to construe even the simplest of such thoughts as propositional. Perhaps we need to move beyond Davidson and Searle by developing a theory of nonpropositional thought for animals. (shrink)

One of the main arguments intended to show that content externalism undermines the privileged access thesis is the ‘slow switching argument’, originally proposed by Boghossian. In this argument, it is supposed that a subject is unknowingly switched back and forth between Earth and Twin Earth: then it is claimed that, given externalism, when the subject is on Earth thinking that water is wet, he cannot know the content of his thought a priori, for he cannot, by mere reflection, rule out (...) the relevant alternative hypothesis that he is on Twin Earth thinking that twater is wet. One of the controversies surrounding this argument stems from the fact that it is not clear which epistemological principle underlies it. Here, I examine two suggestions made in the literature as to what that underlying principle might be. I argue that neither of these suggested principles is plausible, and thus that the slow switching argument never gets off the ground. (shrink)

Reliabilism is invoked by a standard causal response to the slow switching argument for incompatibilism about mental content externalism and privileged access. Though the response in question is negative, in that it only establishes that, given such an epistemology, externalism does not rule privileged access out, the appeal to reliabilism involves an assumption about the reliability of introspection, an assumption that in turn grounds a simple argument for the positive conclusion that reliabilism itself implies privileged access. This paper offers a (...) two-part defense of that conclusion: the reliabilist account of privileged access is defended both againstarguments in favor of the rival content inheritance strategy and against an argument turning on empirical considerations concerning the individuation of the belief-producing process of introspection. (shrink)

The essay which follows is about the relationship between mind and language. Most recent thought about intentionality has it that (i) mental states of individuals are largely, or in the most fundamental cases, independent of social facts about public languages, and (ii) these social facts are derived from, or constituted by, the mental states of individuals. The purpose of this essay is to challenge this individualist orthodoxy (as well as the view of the relationship between mind and action which often (...) accompanies it), and suggest in its place a communitarian picture of intentionality which gives public languages a role to play in the constitution of thought. (shrink)

I elaborate and defend a set of metaphysical and epistemic claims that comprise what I call the acquaintance approach to introspective knowledge of the phenomenal qualities of experience. The hallmark of this approach is the thesis that, in some introspective judgments about experience, (phenomenal) reality intersects with the epistemic, that is, with the subject’s grasp of that reality. In Section 1 of the paper I outline the acquaintance approach by drawing on its Russellian lineage. A more detailed picture of the (...) approach emerges in succeeding sections, which respond to a range of objections. Some critics charge that approaches of this sort are overly idealized, in that they ignore the cognitive flaws and limitations of actual human beings. I begin to address these worries in Section 2, by arguing that the epistemic commitments of the acquaintance approach are in fact relatively modest. In Section 3, I sketch a picture of introspective reference that explains how phenomenal reality can intersect with the epistemic in a phenomenal judgment, as the acquaintance approach requires. Drawing on this picture of introspective reference, Section 4 sets out a practical strategy for achieving knowledge by acquaintance. Some contemporary acquaintance theorists (BonJour 2003, Fumerton 1996) employ demanding epistemic standards for knowledge by acquaintance, standards beyond those mandated by the acquaintance approach. In Section 5 I show that instances of introspective knowledge that meet less demanding standards can satisfy the acquaintance approach’s epistemic commitments. The final sections concern the most direct challenges to the acquaintance approach, which target the claim that phenomenal reality intersects with the epistemic. According to one such challenge, this claim is belied by the fact that possessing a phenomenal concept is a matter of having certain dispositions. Section 6 draws on a discussion by Sosa (2003) to articulate this challenge, and responds to it on behalf of the acquaintance approach. Section 7 addresses Stalnaker’s (2008) worry that, if phenomenal reality intersected with the epistemic, phenomenal information would be incommunicable. (shrink)

Most content externalists concede that even if externalism is compatible with the thesis that one has authoritative self-knowledge of thought contents, it is incompatible with the stronger claim that one is always able to tell by introspection whether two of one’s thought tokens have the same, or different, content. If one lacks such authoritative discriminative self-knowledge of thought contents, it would seem that brute logical error – non-culpable logical error – is possible. Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have argued (...) that this would present a big problem for externalism, forcing the externalist to overhaul our norms of rationality. I consider several externalist strategies to block this possibly unhappy epistemological consequence, but I argue that they all fail. (shrink)

Hillary Putnam has famously argued that we can know that we are not brains in a vat because the hypothesis that we are is self-refuting. While Putnam's argument has generated interest primarily as a novel response to skepticism, his original use of the brain in a vat scenario was meant to illustrate a point about the "mind/world relationship." In particular, he intended it to be part of an argument against the coherence of metaphysical realism, and thus to be part of (...) a defense of his conception of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Putnam's conclusions about the scenario are, however, actually out of line with central and plausible aspects of his own account of the relationship between our minds and the world. Reflections on semantics give us no compelling reason to suppose that claims like "I am a brain in a vat" could not turn out to be true. (shrink)

It has become increasingly popular to suggest that non-individualistic theories of content undermine our purported a priori knowledge of such contents because they entail that we lack the ability to distinguish our thoughts from alternative thoughts with different contents. However, problems relating to such knowledge of 'comparative' content tell just as much against individualism as non-individualism. Indeed, the problems presented by individualistic theories of content for self-knowledge are at least, if not more, serious than those presented by non-individualistic theories. Consequently, (...) considerations of self-knowledge give one no reason to embrace individualism. If anything, they give one reason to reject it. (shrink)

Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs), it is necessary to be related to the environment in the right way.

This paper develops a puzzle about non-merely-verbal disputes. At first sight, it would seem that a dispute over the truth of an utterance is not merely verbal only if there is a proposition that the parties to the dispute take the utterance under dispute to express, which one of the parties accepts and the other rejects. Yet, as I argue, it is extremely rare for ordinary disputes over an utterance’s truth to satisfy this condition, in which case non-merely verbal disputes (...) are extremely rare. After examining various responses to the puzzle, I outline a solution using the framework of truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

According to standard assumptions in semantics, ordinary users of a language have implicit beliefs about the truth-conditions of sentences in that language, and they often agree on those beliefs. For example, it is assumed that if Anna and John are both competent users of English and the former utters ‘grass is green’ in conversation with the latter, they will both believe that that sentence is true if and only if grass is green. These assumptions play an important role in an (...) intuitively compelling picture of communication, according to which successful communication through literal assertoric utterances is normally effected thanks to our shared beliefs about the truth-conditions of the sentences uttered in the course of the conversation. Against these standard assumptions, this paper argues that the participants in a conversation rarely have the same beliefs about the truth-conditions of the sentences involved in a linguistic interaction. More precisely, it argues for Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition which more than one language user believes to be that utterance’s truth-conditional content. If Variance is true, we must reject the standard picture of communication. Towards the end of the paper I identify three ways in which ordinary conversations can be communication-like despite the truth of Variance and argue that the most natural amendments to the standard picture fail to explain them. (shrink)

The method of thought experiments or possible cases is widespread in philosophy and elsewhere. Thought experiments come with variegated theoretical commitments. These commitments are risky. They may turn out to be false or at least controversial. Other things being equal, it seems preferable to do with minimal commitments. I explore exemplary ways of minimising commitments, focusing on modal ones. There is a near-consensus to treat the scenarios considered in thought experiments as metaphysical possibilities. I challenge this consensus. Paradigmatic thought experiments (...) do not have to come with a commitment to metaphysical possibilities. In the first section, I point out difficulties with the prevailing focus on metaphysical possibilities. In the second section, I present alternative formalisations of a paradigmatic thought experiment, the Gettier experiment. Gettier’s words leave open the kind of possibilities under consideration. The standard way of spelling out Gettier’s argument uses metaphysical possibilities. One alternative proposal uses nomological possibilities. A second one uses epistemic possibilities. My modest conclusion: as long as it is not established that a thought experiment requires a commitment to metaphysical modality, one should avoid such a commitment. My preferred way of doing so is to replace the commitment to one particular formalisation by a commitment to a disjunction of alternative formalisations. (shrink)

Over the past fifty years the philosophy of language and mind has been dominated by a nondescriptivist approach to content and reference. This book attempts to recast and systematize that approach by offering an indexical model in terms of mental files. According to Recanati, we refer through mental files, the function of which is to store information derived through certain types of contextual relation the subject bears to objects in his or her environment. The reference of a file is determined (...) relationally, not satisfactionally, so a file is not to be equated to the body of (mis-)information it contains. Mental files are the mental equivalent of singular terms, and the reference of linguistic expressions is inherited from that of the files we associate with them. On this approach, mental files, the vehicles of singular thought, do all the work of so-called 'modes of presentation' in Fregean and neo-Russellian theories. (shrink)

My concern in this paper is with the claim that knowledge is a mental state – a claim that Williamson places front and centre in Knowledge and Its Limits. While I am not by any means convinced that the claim is false, I do think it carries certain costs that have not been widely appreciated. One source of resistance to this claim derives from internalism about the mental – the view, roughly speaking, that one’s mental states are determined by one’s (...) internal physical state. In order to know that something is the case it is not, in general, enough for one’s internal physical state to be a certain way – the wider world must also be a certain way. If we accept that knowledge is a mental state, we must give up internalism. One might think that this is no cost, since much recent work in the philosophy of mind has, in any case, converged on the view that internalism is false. This thought, though, is too quick. As I will argue here, the claim that knowledge is a mental state would take us to a view much further from internalism than anything philosophers of mind have converged upon. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge a widely presupposed principle in the epistemology of inference. The principle, (Validity Requirement), is this: S’s (purportedly deductive) reasoning, R, from warranted premise-beliefs provides (conditional) warrant for S’s belief in its conclusion only if R is valid. I argue against (Validity Requirement) from two prominent assumptions in the philosophy of mind: that the cognitive competencies that constitute reasoning are fallible, and that the attitudes operative in reasoning are anti-individualistically individuated. Indeed, my discussion will amount to (...) a defence of anti-individualism against a novel ‘slow-switch’ argument against it. This argument contra anti-individualism has it that given anti-individualism and certain auxiliary assumptions, A, a switched reasoner may, in certain slow-switch circumstances, C, reason invalidly by equivocating concepts. More specifically: -/- (Valid 0): Peter is in circumstances C, and auxiliary assumptions, A, hold.(Valid 1): If Peter is in circumstances C, and auxiliary assumptions A hold, then (if the attitudes operative in Peter’s reasoning R are anti-individualistically individuated, then R is not valid). (Valid 2): Peter’s reasoning, R, generates warrant for the conclusion-belief. (Valid 3): Peter’s reasoning, R, generates warrant for the conclusion-belief only if the reasoning, R, is valid. (Valid 4): So, the attitudes operative in Peter’s reasoning R are not anti-individualistically individuated. -/- The argument involves weaker premises than those of familiar slow-switch arguments against anti-individualism. In particular, it requires only that the reasoning be de facto valid. This assumption is much weaker than the requirement that the validity of the reasoning be ‘transparent’ to the reasoner. Indeed, (Valid 3) is simply an instance of (Validity Requirement). However, I argue that anti-individualism and (Valid 0)–(Valid 2) should be upheld at the expense of (Valid 3). In consequence, (Validity Requirement) stands in need of restriction. Thus, I argue for a surprising result in the epistemology of inference from widely accepted assumptions in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Much debate has surrounded "switching" scenarios in which a subject's reasoning is said to exhibit the fallacy of equivocation ( Burge 1988 ; Boghossian 1992, 1994 ). Peter Ludlow has argued that such scenarios are "epistemically prevalent" and, therefore, epistemically relevant alternatives ( Ludlow 1995a ). Since a distinctive feature of the cases in question is that the subject blamelessly engages in conceptual equivocation, we may label them 'equivocational switching cases'. Ludlow's influential argument occurs in a discussion about compatibilism with (...) regards to anti-individualism (or content externalism) and self-knowledge. However, the issue has wide-reaching consequences for many areas of epistemology. Arguably, the claim that equivocational switching cases are epistemically relevant may bear on the epistemology of inference, testimony, memory, group rationality and belief revision. Ludlow's argument proceeds from a now well-known "down to Earth" switching-case of a subject, Biff, who travels between the US and the UK. I argue that Ludlow's case-based argument fails to support the general claim that conceptual equivocational switching cases are prevalent and epistemically relevant. Thus, the discussion addresses the basis of some poorly understood issues regarding the epistemological consequences of anti-individualism. Simultaneously, the discussion is broadened from the narrow focus on self-knowledge. Finally, the critical discussion serves as the basis for some general reflections on epistemic relevance and the epistemic risks associated with conceptual equivocation. Specifically, I suggest that philosophy is an area where the risk of conceptual equivocation is extraordinarily high. (shrink)

Recent discussions of externalism about mental content have been dominated by the question whether it undermines the intuitively plausible idea that we have knowledge of the contents of our thoughts. In this article I focus on one main line of reasoning (the so-called 'slow switching argument') for the thesis that externalism and self-knowledge are incompatible. After criticizing a number of influential responses to the argument, I set out to explain why it fails. It will be claimed that the argument trades (...) on an ambiguity, and that only by incorporating certain controversial assumptions does it stand a chance of establishing its conclusion. Finally, drawing on an analogy with Benacerraf's challenge to Platonism, I shall offer some reasons as to why the slow switching argument fails to reveal the real source of tension between externalism and privileged self-knowledge. (shrink)

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 80:2, 136-56 (June 1999).

A growing number of philosophers and linguists have argued that many, if not most, terms in our language should be understood as semantically context sensitive. In opposition to this trend, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore defend a view they call "Semantic Minimalism", which holds that there are virtually no semantically context sensitive expressions in English once you get past the standard list of indexicals and demonstratives such as "I", "you", "this", and "that". While minimalism strikes many as obviously false, it (...) will be argued here that the view is more plausible than commonly assumed if one accepts the 'normative' conception of the relation between meaning and use characteristic of the literature on semantic externalism. That said, it is not clear that Cappelen and Lepore always conceive of their minimal semantic contents in this more normative fashion, and once this framework is place, a version of 'moderate contextualism' that they do not consider comes into view. (shrink)

Sentences in context have semantic contents determined by a range of factors both internal and external to speakers. I argue against the thesis that semantic content is transparent to speakers in the sense of being immediately accessible to speakers in virtue of their linguistic competence.

Pa ul Boghos s i a n’ s ‘ Me mor y Ar gume nt ’ a l l ege dl y s hows , us i ng t he f ami l i a r s l ow-switching scenario, that externalism and authoritative self-knowledge are incompatible. The aim of this paper is to undermine the argument by examining..

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental content is (...) central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language. (shrink)

Boghossian argued that externalism is incompatible with a transparency thesis according to which we can know a priori whether any two of our occurrent thoughts have the same or distinct content, and that this transparency thesis is integral to our commonsense conception of rationality, which requires the apriority of our logical abilities. Stalnaker offered a detailed compatibilist response to Boghossian. Boghossian criticized this response, and Stalnaker replied. But the outcome of that important discussion remained unclear, partly because it was unclear (...) how to understand the amended transparency thesis at which Stalnaker was gesturing. My aim in this paper is to settle the matter. I wish to clarify the terms of the debate, also by highlighting the relevant commitments of Stalnaker’s two-dimensionalist account, and to show that his compatibilist response, which appeals to diagonal propositions, is unsuccessful. (shrink)

I here argue against the viability of Peter Ludlow’s modified version of Paul Boghossian’s argument for the incompatibility of semantic externalism and authoritative self-knowledge. Ludlow contends that slow switching is not merely actual but is, moreover, prevalent; it can occur whenever we shift between localized linguistic communities. It is therefore quite possible, he maintains, that we undergo unwitting shifts in our mental content on a regular basis. However, there is good reason to accept as plausible that despite their prevalence we (...) are in fact able to readily adapt to such switches, as well as to the shifts in mental content that accompany them. The prevalence of slow switching between linguistic communities does not then necessarily entail incompatibility after all. (shrink)

Este texto faz considerações introdutórias sobre o argumento externalista no contexto do debate filosófico atual. Não é um resumo, um retrato fiel ou uma história do externalismo, mas uma apresentação a partir de um certo ângulo, traçando um cenário precário onde o problema da subjetividade (e os temas a ela associados, como conhecimento e racionalidade) remete à pergunta sobre qual a relação entre a mente e seus conteúdos e o mundo físico-social-lingüístico circundante.

RESUMO A recente publicação de Faria tem como objetivo demonstrar que, “se o anti-individualismo estiver correto, então a obscuridade da validade é mais ampla do que necessitamos presumir para os objetivos atuais.” Através da rejeição de “uma variedade de movimentos exculpatórios, projetados para blindar a racionalidade de um pensador possivelmente azarado,” Faria sugere que o externalismo de conteúdo pode afetar drasticamente nossa autocompreensão como seres racionais. Temo que tenha que discordar. Faria superintelectualiza o pensamento, sempre performado da perspectiva de primeira (...) pessoa e é sujeito ao controle reflexivo pelo pensador. Para ter certeza, o externalismo de conteúdo mostra que um pensamento saudável é contingente no amplo ambiente e, assim, não depende exclusivamente das habilidades lógicas do ser vivo, mas é uma questão de sorte lógica. Apesar disso, o externalismo de conteúdo não é ameaça à racionalidade. Meu diagnóstico: através da adoção da estratégia de Wittgenstein de “trazer as palavras de volta pra casa”, Faria negligencia as conquistas da ciência cognitiva: na sua forma mais simples, a “inferência transitiva,” a racionalidade pervade o reino animal. (shrink)

Externalism holds that the individuation of mental content depends on factors external to the subject. This doctrine appears to undermine both the claim that there is a priori self-knowledge, and the view that individuals have privileged access to their thoughts. Tyler Burge's influential "inclusion theory of self-knowledge" purports to reconcile externalism with authoritative self-knowledge. I first consider Paul Boghossian's claim that the inclusion theory is internally inconsistent. I reject one line of response to this charge, but I endorse another. I (...) next suggest, however, that the inclusion theory has little explanatory value. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for Semantic Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition that more than one languge user takes to be that utterance's truth-conditional content. I argue that Semantic Variance is problematic for standard theories concerning the nature of communication, the epistemic significance of ordinary disputes, the semantics of speech reports, and the nature of linguistic competence. In response to the problems arising from the truth of Semantic Variance, I develop new accounts of (...) the transmission of relevant information, ordinary disputes, and the semantics of speech reports. Towards the end of the dissertation I outline a pluralistic account about the nature of communication and linguistic competence. (shrink)