A persuasive monograph that answers the keyepistemological arguments against anti-individualism in thephilosophy of mind.

This essay is a long one. It is not meant to be read in a single sitting. Its structure is as follows. In section I, I explicate perceptual anti-individualism. Section II centers on the two aspects of the representational content of perceptual states. Sections III and IV concern the nature of the empirical psychology of vision, and its bearing on the individuation of perceptual states. Section V shows how what is known from empirical psychology undermines disjunctivism and hence certain further (...) views that entail it, including naive realism. In Section VI, I raise a further point against disjunctivism. Section VII indicates how general reflection on perceptual perspective and epistemic ability supports the constraints from empirical psychology. It also explains how reflection on veridicality conditions, psychological explanation, and cognitive ability conspire to force recognition of the two kinds of representation mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In the Appendix, I criticize attempts to support disjunctivism. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

David Lewis (1941-2001) was Class of 1943 University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His contributions spanned philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. In On the Plurality of Worlds, he defended his challenging metaphysical position, "modal realism." He was also the author of the books Convention, Counterfactuals, Parts of Classes, and several volumes of collected papers.

John Campbell investigates how consciousness of the world explains our ability to think about the world; how our ability to think about objects we can see depends on our capacity for conscious visual attention to those things. He illuminates classical problems about thought, reference, and experience by looking at the underlying psychological mechanisms on which conscious attention depends.

Suppose we think in a language of thought. Then Paul Boghossian' is prepared to argue, first, that there may be ambiguous Mentalese expression types that have unambiguous tokens, and, second, that the way in which this is possible allows for otherwise valid theoretical or practical reasoning to be rendered invalid owing to equivocation of a sort that may be undetectable to the reasoner. Paul sees this as a possible basis from which to launch an argument for what some might call (...) "narrow content", and this is a question I'll take up later. (shrink)

I believe that the notion of epistemic transparency does play an important role in our ordinary conception of mental content and I want to say what that role is. Unfortunately, the task is a large one; here I am able only to begin on its outline. I shall proceed somewhat indirectly, beginning with a discussion of externalist conceptions of mental content. I shall show that such conceptions violate epistemic transparency to an extent that has not been fully appreciated. Subsequently, I (...) shall look at the implications of this violation and at the reconstructive project that a rejection of transparency entails. I am inclined to think it unlikely that we will get a conception of propositional content that underwrites epistemic transparency. But I am concerned that we have not fully appreciated the role that transparency currently plays and the work that would need to be done were we to discard it. (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)

The book, written in a clear, engaging style, contains four chapters.

I argue that externalism about mental content is consistent with the thesis that individuals need not investigate their environment to come to know the contents of their thoughts. In particular, externalism is consistent with the thesis that we come to know the contents of our thoughts on the basis of introspection.

The question I want to look at in this paper is this: To what extent does an externalist conception of mental content threaten our ability to know the contents of our thoughts? I shall argue that, in an important sense, externalism is inconsistent with the thesis that we have authoritative first-person knowledge of thought content: in particular, I shall argue, it is inconsistent with the thesis that our thought contents are epistemically transparent to us. I shall further argue that this (...) is true in a sense that falsifies another important and traditionally fundamental view —that we can detect a priori whether our inferences are logically valid or not. I shall leave for another occasion the question whether these results reflect badly on epistemic transparency or on externalism. (shrink)

Sanford C. Goldberg argues that a proper account of the communication of knowledge through speech has anti-individualistic implications for both epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language. In Part I he offers a novel argument for anti-individualism about mind and language, the view that the contents of one's thoughts and the meanings of one's words depend for their individuation on one's social and natural environment. In Part II he discusses the epistemic dimension of knowledge communication, arguing that the epistemic (...) characteristics of communication-based beliefs depend on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers. In acknowledging an ineliminable social dimension to mind, language, and the epistemic categories of knowledge, justification, and rationality, his book develops fundamental links between externalism in the philosophy of mind and language, on the one hand, and externalism is epistemology, on the other. (shrink)

Most explorations of the epistemic implications of Semantic Anti- Individualism (SAI) focus on issues of self-knowledge (first-person au- thority) and/or external-world skepticism. Less explored has been SAIs implications forthe epistemology of reasoning. In this paperI argue that SAI has some nontrivial implications on this score. I bring these out by reflecting on a problem first raised by Boghossian (1992). Whereas Boghos- sians main interest was in establishing the incompatibility of SAI and the a priority of logical abilities (Boghossian 1992: 22), (...) I argue that Boghossians argument is better interpreted as pointing to SAIs implications for the na- ture of discursive justification. (shrink)

[Michael Tye] Externalism about thought contents has received enormous attention in the philosophical literature over the past fifteen years or so, and it is now the established view. There has been very little discussion, however, of whether memory contents are themselves susceptible to an externalist treatment. In this paper, I argue that anyone who is sympathetic to Twin Earth thought experiments for externalism with respect to certain thoughts should endorse externalism with respect to certain memories. /// [Jane Heal] Tye claims (...) that an externalist should say that memory content invoking natural kind concepts floats free of the setting where the memory is laid down and is at later times determined by the context in which the memory is revived. His argument assumes the existence of 'slow switching' of the meaning of natural kind terms when a person is transported from Earth to Twin Earth. But proper understanding of natural kind terms suggests that slow switching (contrary to what is often presupposed) is likely never to be completed. Hence the situation of a person unknowingly transported to Twin Earth is not that his memories switch content but rather that he gets two natural kinds confused. (shrink)

People often become confused, mistaking one thing for another, or taking two things to be the same. How should we assign semantic values to confused statements? Recently, philosophers have taken a pessimistic view of confusion, arguing that understanding confused belief demands significant departure from our normal interpretive practice. I argue for optimism. Our semantic treatment of confusion can be a lot like our semantic treatment of empty names. Surprisingly, perhaps, the resulting semantics lets us keep in place more of our (...) everyday interpretive practices in the face of confused belief. (shrink)

[Michael Tye] Externalism about thought contents has received enormous attention in the philosophical literature over the past fifteen years or so, and it is now the established view. There has been very little discussion, however, of whether memory contents are themselves susceptible to an externalist treatment. In this paper, I argue that anyone who is sympathetic to Twin Earth thought experiments for externalism with respect to certain thoughts should endorse externalism with respect to certain memories. /// [Jane Heal] Tye claims (...) that an externalist should say that memory content invoking natural kind concepts floats free of the setting where the memory is laid down and is at later times determined by the context in which the memory is revived. His argument assumes the existence of 'slow switching' of the meaning of natural kind terms when a person is transported from Earth to Twin Earth. But proper understanding of natural kind terms suggests that slow switching is likely never to be completed. Hence the situation of a person unknowingly transported to Twin Earth is not that his memories switch content but rather that he gets two natural kinds confused. (shrink)