Externalism and “knowing what” one thinks

Authors: T Parent

Publish Date: 2014/12/16

Volume: 192, Issue: 5, Pages: 1337-1350

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Abstract

Some worry that semantic externalism is incompatible with knowing by introspection what content your thoughts have In this paper I examine one primary argument for this incompatibilist worry the slowswitch argument Following Goldberg Pac Philos Quart 87301–314 2006 I construe the argument as attacking the conjunction of externalism and “skeptic immune” knowledge of content where such knowledge would persist in a skeptical context Goldberg following Burge J Philos 851649–663 1988 attempts to reclaim such knowledge for the externalist however I contend that all Burgestyle accounts at best vindicate that a subject can introspectively know that she is thinking that “water is wet” They do not yet show how a subject can introspectively know what she is thinking—which is the distinctive type of knowing at issue in the slowswitch argument Nonetheless I subsequently amend the Burgestyle view to illustrate how an externalist can introspectively “knowwhat” content her thought has and know it in a skeptic immune manner despite what the slowswitch argument may suggest For one I emphasize that “knowing what” can be ontologically noncommittal so that knowing your thought is about water does not require knowing that water exists For another following Boer and Lycan Knowing who 1986 I stress that “knowing what” is purposerelative–and for at least some purposes it seems possible for the externalist to “know what” content her thought has even if skeptical hypotheses about XYZ are relevantThe semantics and metaphysics concerning “knowingwh” is receiving more attention than ever these days Because of that I wish to spell out in a bit more detail the purposerelative semantics and what it says about Descartes and his “knowing what” he thinks Further details on such a semantics are also found in Boer and Lycan 1986 I refer the reader to their impressive discussion Chaps 1 and 2Note that KW1 does not require S to actually possess the ability A differentlyabled person can “know what” just as much as anyone else The idea is rather that S “knows what” if the relevant ability does not demand any further knowledgethat about water beyond what S already has Naturally the ability might require other things as well But as long as she has the requisite knowledgethat she then counts as “knowing what” even if other requisites for the ability are absentDescartes satisfies ulcorner upmu knows what underlineupmu thinksurcorner at t for the purpose of answering Q2 affirmatively iff for an ability in Descartes to answer Q2 affirmatively K St requires no predicates beyond ‘x knowstrue that water is a possible colorless odorless liquid in lakes and rivers’ ‘x knowstrue that x is thinking forthwith that water is wet’ and ‘x knowstrue it is certain that x is thinking forthwith that water is wet’

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